As 2019 comes to a close, and 2020 bringing some of the most anticipated games of the year, getting a gaming PC is a great choice. The PC gaming market has been growing, with the release of Halo on PC showing the love for gaming yet again. Gaming PC’s have become hot sellers and PC hardware sales steadily climbs from previous years. With the introduction of cross-platform play on games like Fortnite, Rocket League, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Minecraft, brings the gaming community even closer. Having a PC capable of gaming doesn’t mean it is restricted to that one task, gaming PC’s generally have better hardware than a typical home PC.
Any PC is capable of being a gaming PC, the key difference between the two being higher end components. Finding the right balance is the key to PC gaming success, you are in charge of your budget and in turn, the performance of the PC. For example, the Rogue by VRLA Tech is the best value gaming PC, with an i7 2600, 16GB of RAM, and a GTX 1060. At $600, this gaming computer is capable of running the latest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare at 1080p and a mix of high settings and still maintaining 60fps or more. The Rogue is also great for any office work or even video editing, the i7 processor even though slightly old, is still a capable processor for daily tasks.
We are excited to see some of the most anticipated games coming out PC in 2020. Most games can run of entry level gaming PC’s with a mix of low to high settings depending on the game. A list of games we are excited to play are:
- Monster Hunter World: Iceborn
- DOOM Eternal
- Destroy All Humans!
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Resident Evil 3
- Gears Tactics
- Fast & Furious Crossroads
- Dying Light 2
- Halo Infinite
- Half-Life: Alyx
- Watch Dogs Legion
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
CyberPunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2020 and PC gamers are excited to max out the settings to pull as much eye candy on the game. CD Projekt Red has been known to push gaming PC’s to their limits, and CyberPunk 2077 will do the same. CD Projekt Red has yet to release the PC system requirements but according to the demo rig used at E3 2018 was revealed to have some intense specs. The demo rig used had an i7-8700k 32GB of RAM, and a Titan RTX, among other specs. The three most crucial components reveal high core count, lots of system memory and video memory.
The Rogue mentioned above will definitely find it difficult to run CyberPunk 2077 at 1080p high settings but lower settings are still possible. At this point if visuals are important, the Titan or Centaur are the two best choices for under $2000. The Helios at $2900, is the closest in performance to the specs described for the E3 2018 demo rig for CyberPunk 2077. The gaming experience changes dramatically from a $600 gaming PC to an $1800 gaming PC and the main difference from an $1800 machine to a $2900 rig is the resolution you want to play. The Helios gaming PC will hit 4k resolution easily on most other games.
Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Halo Master Chief collection have released recently on PC and the recommended specifications for both games are met by Rogue, Legacy, Apollo for gaming PC’s under $1000. Games ported from Xbox or Playstation are not heavy on system requirements and exceeding those requirements benefits gameplay experience. The Legacy and Apollo gaming systems utilized AMD Ryzen processors which provide high core count without the “Intel Tax.”
The Ryzen 5 3600 is 2019’s best value gaming CPU at its $200 price point. Intel’s best offering at $50 less is the i5 9400F at around $150 but spending that extra $50 nets you a better overall system. This is the balance of building a gaming PC, the best overall system sometimes may not have the highest fps on some games, but the best overall gaming PC is what’s important.
AMD Ryzen based gaming PC’s are great platforms for expandability and pushing performance of the hardware. Ryzen processors are unlocked and allow for overclocking to get every bit of performance from the chips. The B450 motherboards used in the Legacy and Apollo builds have extra PCI-e slots for add-in cards and expansion cards.
Custom built gaming PC’s have become very popular in the past decade with lots of resources for anyone to build their own. Custom pre-built machines like the VRLA Tech gaming PC’s save you the hassle of configuring, building, and troubleshooting a new computer. Pre-built gaming PC’s like Alienware are more costly for the same or even better performance at the same price.
The savings continue with custom built gaming pcs, unlike game consoles, a monthly fee is not added for accessing multiplayer content. You are not restricted to a keyboard and mouse, a multitude of inputs such as driving wheels, Playstation and Xbox controllers, flight sim joysticks are all available. Digital distribution services like Steam, Origin, Uplay, Epic Games Store and more are popular for their large libraries of games with excellent deals. All you need is an internet connection and the possibilities are endless.
Invest in a gaming PC like Legacy or Titan for great overall performance in all E-Sports titles. These PC’s are able to give excellent gaming experience at 1080p and 1440p resolution on all E-Sports titles. Some triple A titles might have trouble running on Ultra settings or similar but those details are barely even differentiated between Medium and High settings which are settings used by Playstation and Xbox albeit at lower resolutions. You are able to customize your own settings to gain the maximum fps or have lower fps in exchange for better graphics.
Comment below for your favorite games coming out in 2020!