The just-about-average spec: ~$1,000

By jumping up another $200, you will finally enter the realm of high-refresh-rate 1080p gaming, as well as low-to-mid-settings 1440p gaming. Additionally, Windows is going to feel a lot snappier now that we can include an NVMe SSD boot drive

The previous esport titles will run flawlessly (achieve monitor refresh rate) at almost any resolution you choose, at almost any setting. Emulation? No problem. You could even start to get into 1440p 60fps gaming on some triple-A titles. At 1080p, however, this tier will most likely hit at least 120-144fps on most games with medium settings at a minimum in triple-A titles. Warzone will most likely run at 120fps at 1080p minimum settings.

We're using a lot of the same parts from the previous tier, with a very important upgrade: jumping to an RX 6700XT GPU from AMD. We're talking about a 25-40fps increase in most titles.

At long last, we've upgraded the boot drive to an NVME SSD, which gives up to 3GB/s sequential read/writes. Windows really flies on an NVME boot drive. Lastly, the final change is an upgraded case. As is in all tiers, the case is subjective and one isn't necessarily better than the other.

To upgrade this tier between this spec and the next, you will again want to look for an NVME SSD of higher capacity. 2TB is a great amount of space to hold a lot of games. Additionally, you could look into an upgraded air cooler, like the Noctua NH-U14S. A better/higher-end case could also do the trick here.

The 2023 average spec: ~$1,200

After increasing the budget another $200, we find ourselves at the middle of the 'bell curve' when it comes to parts. This tier will absolutely crush 1080p gaming at any refresh rate, ultra settings, and will be able to play almost any triple-A title at a great framerate (120-144+ fps on Warzone).

Increasing to 1440p, it will still hold respectable frame rates even at medium to ultra settings (although you may have to decrease settings to achieve your refresh rate). How does 50-60fps on Cyberpunk 2077 sound? Or 144+ fps on Doom Eternal?

At this spec, we've ditched the 6-core 12400F for the overclockable, 10-core 12600K. More cores means more multitasking ability and better framerates. The NVME SSD is kept here, to keep our fast read/write speeds up. Finally, we've jumped up to AMD's enthusiast-tier GPU, the 6750XT. It's a small jump in framerates, but one that will allow us to boost up in-game settings slightly.

We've also jumped to the Z690 chipset, which means the motherboards in this tier will have the most bells and whistles in terms of I/O and more.

To upgrade this tier between this spec and the next, you have a ton of options. An NVIDIA RTX GPU (3070Ti), AIO liquid cooler for the CPU; higher-capacity SSD/additional SSD; case with more features; or even an Intel i7-12700K CPU (ignoring all other mentioned upgrades).

The "this is a great PC" spec: ~$1,500

Once you increase your budget to $1,500, the high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming sphere starts to be achieved. If you play games with a 240hz monitor, this tier would be the entry point for 1080p240 gaming in some esport titles. 

At 1440p you're talking 120-144fps+ in most Triple-A titles, even at high to ultra settings. You're still in respectable-frame-rate territory even with ray tracing enabled in some titles (games like Cyberpunk 2077 are an outlier, due to their poor optimization; this spec would get 50-60fps in that title with ultra ray tracing settings). Warzone likely runs at 100-144fps on medium-high settings at 1440p.

The Intel Core i5-12600k is still perfect for this tier, as well as the same CPU cooler. We also added 1TB of storage to our HDD, totaling 3TB just to hold some more games. More RAM is available at this price point as well, bumping us up to 32GB total.

As mentioned in the first paragraph of this spec, we can crush 1440p thanks to the addition of the AMD RX 6800. We're talking a nice 20-40+ fps boost in most titles at 1440p over the RTX 3060Ti or RX 6750XT.

Lastly, we've upgraded to a semi-modular 80+ Gold power supply from Seasonic, at 750W, to give a little headroom for any future upgrades.

To upgrade this tier between this spec and the next, you have even more options: AMD RX 6900XT, Intel Core i7-12700K; any tier of AIO liquid CPU cooler; jumping to a more expensive Z690 chipset motherboard; adding 16GB more RAM to total 64GB; more SSDs or HDDs; a better/nicer case; or a fully modular power supply.

The 1440p ultra-settings crusher spec: ~$2,000

This spec absolutely destroys 1440p in any game it encounters. Cyberpunk 2077 all maxed out, ultra ray tracing (with DLSS)? 65-80fps. Microsoft Flight Simulator, all ultra/maxed out? 55-65fps. Any other triple-A title that's not notoriously hard to run? Easily 120 to 144fps, without breaking a sweat, completely maxed out. Warzone will run at 144fps absolutely no problem at 1440p.

It's at this tier we can even start discussing getting into playable 4k gaming at tolerable frame rates. Expect to see 60fps+ in most titles at 4k, although you may need to turn some settings down. In games that support DLSS, you may have to set that feature to "performance" to see good/more-playable frame rates.

With $2,000, we can now jump up to the Intel Core i7-13600K, a 14-core CPU that does way more work at once than the 12600k (the 13700k is a BAD value, skip it; get the 13600k or 13900k or neither). We've also ditched the air cooler for an AIO (all-in-one) liquid CPU cooler. Our motherboard is still now on the Z790 chipset. Our boot drive is now upgraded to a PCIe Gen 4 SSD with HUGE sequential read/write speeds, and in order to keep costs down for the GPU, we're keeping the 3TB HDD.

The NVIDIA RTX 4070Ti makes its appearance at this spec; it's the newest enthusiast-class GPU from NVIDIA that's built to crush 1440p gaming, and even some 4k gaming. Another 35-55fps boost over the 6800XT in most titles. (One thing to note here: I originally had the RX 6900XT from AMD on this tier, but due to terrible AMD drivers I switched it to the 4070Ti. The 4070Ti is objectively a bad value at the price, but the experience is so much better in terms of stability/no crashing).

Lastly, our power supply has stayed the same from the previous tier to, again, keep costs down for the 4070Ti. 

To upgrade this tier between this spec and the next, we're getting into the upper echelon of parts, so your options are plentiful: RTX 4080, Intel Core i9-13900k; any tier of 360mm/420mm AIO liquid CPU cooler; RGB parts for everything; jumping to a more expensive Z790 motherboard; adding 16GB more RAM to total 32GB; more SSDs or HDDs; a better/nicer case; or an 80+ Platinum power supply.

The "better than 90% of other systems" spec: ~$2,500

Have a 4k monitor/TV and need a rig to play 4k games? Want to stream to Twitch/Facebook/YouTube all on one PC? Need an absolutely blazing-fast video-editing rig? This build will do all of that and more. At this tier, we can finally upgrade to near top-of-the-line parts. This is a tier of systems that popular streamers most likely have.

The biggest change at this tier is the addition of the Intel i9-13900k, a 24-core BEAST of a CPU that's, unquestionably, a multitasking machine. You can probably have 800 chrome tabs open on this CPU/RAM combo.  Our motherboard has been upgraded to one with essentially every creature comfort you would need. At $2,500, we can splurge 32GB of DDR5 RAM. Our boot drive has been upgraded to a 2TB version of the SSD from the previous tier. More space for games for lightning-quick loading times.

This may be worthy of a bigger discussion point, but for this tier we're keeping the GPU the same from the previous tier: the RTX 4070Ti. Having a 13900k is arguably better overall than spending $400 more just on the 4080. The value per frame is just so terrible right now on NVIDIA 40-series. AMD's 7900XT will do slightly better, but the drivers are straight garbage compared to NVIDIA's. DLSS 3.0 is a super nice feature to have too.

To upgrade this tier between this spec and the next, you can literally do whatever you want: any tier of 360mm/420mm AIO liquid CPU cooler; jumping to an even more expensive Z790 motherboard; adding 32GB more RAM to total 64GB (hugely overkill for 99.9% of people); more SSDs or HDDs; a better/nicer case; or an 80+ Platinum power supply. You have the money to spend, so do it. Might as well buy an RGB SSD/RAM/CPU cooler, RGB PSU cables, etc, whatever you need. Might as well switch to an RTX 4080 or 4090 instead!

The "I am unbelievably filthy rich and you are not" spec: $infinite

Won big on the stock market? Won the lottery? Trust fund account accessible with the touch of a button? Mid-life crisis? Extra $100 bills burning holes in every pocket of every article of clothing you own? Stacks of money in your house falling over and blocking the pathways around your room? No problem, this build will satisfy all of those situations. This is the best PC money can buy, period, full stop. High refresh rate 4k gaming is a reality with this build. Hell, if you're at this tier, you could probably game on one of the many LG 8k OLED TVs cluttering your house.

With infinite money, the only option for a CPU is the Intel i9-13900k (AMD Threadripper is not meant for gaming, you don't need all those cores). You could stream 1080p60, Play Crysis 3 Remastered, render an8k video in Adobe Premiere, and have 690 Chrome tabs all open at the same time and still have CPU power to spare. Our motherboard is the most feature-rich and expensive Z790 board available, the MSI MEG Z790 GODLIKE. 

Our RAM is practically THE best kit you can buy: 64GB of G.Skill's Trident Z5 RGB 7800MHz CL36. It's basically as GODLIKE as the motherboard's name. RGB too.

The storage situation on this build would make a data-hoarder's mouth water. Want a shiny, new PCI-E Gen 4 SSD? With 4TB, and 7.1/6.6 GB/s sequential read/write speeds? Sure, let's do it. Actually, let's do 2 of them, because we can. Wait. YOLO. Let’s do 4 in a RAID0 config for the ultimate performance, since we have too much money lying around. Have a ton of memes about rich people being better than poor people? You can store them on the 20TB HDD from Seagate that's included on this build. Just kidding, scratch that, add another on there. Your "poor people" memes will take up too much space.

The most expensive part on this build is the NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU. Its eye-watering price easily justifies its "best graphics card money can buy'' moniker. This graphics card costs more than most of the builds on this page. This card is SO unbelievably overkill for basically everyone. The crazy thing is that its performance jumped so much over lower-tier cards. Think 100% fps improvements in some games.

We increased our power supply to an incredible 1600W 80+ Titanium unit from Seasonic as well. The case chosen here is the "2022 Case Of The Year" by 'Tech Jesus' himself, GamersNexus. It's such a cool design and maximizes space for custom waterloops and airflow since we'll be using a.....

...fully custom watercooling loop from EK Water Blocks. When you get to the infinite-money level of PC building, you can cool your CPU and GPU on the same loop of water. It comes with a waterblock for the GPU (you will have to disassemble your 4090's cooling shroud and install the block), a waterblock for the CPU, custom soft tubing, and a pump. It's also RGB. This is super advanced stuff, not recommended for people new to PC building.

So, where to go from here? It's hard to say. You have infinite money. Buy some higher capacity RAM when it comes out, or some more SSDs. Buy custom RGB lighting. Or, even, buy your friends/family this same PC as a gift, or maybe purchase 15 of a cheaper tier and donate them to a LAN center in your town. The edge of the atmosphere isn't even the limit!

The "I want to buy a pre-built system and not build a PC" spec

You've finally made it down to the pre-built systems. To start, it's important to note that in most cases, you are probably going to pay what's called the "pre-built tax" when choosing to not build your own system. This is an upcharge on a computer that a company charges on a prebuilt PC. Usually, it's a few hundred dollars over buying separate parts and building it yourself. But sometimes, that difference really isn't that much. 

The main reason folks buy a prebuilt system is for the convenience. You won't have to spend an entire evening putting together a system if you haven't done it before. It shows up to your door, you plug it in, you plug your keyboard/mouse/monitor in, and it just works. No driver issues, no BIOS issues, etc., everything works out of the box. Additionally, in early 2023, the other big reason to buy a prebuilt is to actually buy NVIDIA 40-series GPUs, or AMD 7000-series GPUs. System integrators get access to those parts and include them in prebuilt systems, while consumers buying them separately are out of luck.

One very crucial point about pre-build PCs is that some manufacturers cheap out on certain parts to keep costs as low as possible. That prebuilt you found that includes an Intel i7-13700k and 3070Ti for a decent price? It may have a 550W 80+ White power supply from a company you've never heard of before, or a cheapo mini ITX sized H610 motherboard in a full ATX case (usually the cheapest motherboards you can find, with the least amount of slots/ports/features). 

In our opinion, if you really have your mind set on a prebuilt system, you will want to look for a few things. First, if the power supply in the specs mentions "80+ white" or "80+ efficiency", without including the words "bronze" or "gold", it is almost certainly a garbage tier power supply. Going along with that, if your parts are similar to the more expensive tiers listed above (including a GPU like an RTX 3070 and above) and the power supply on the prebuilt is 500W-600W, it is absolutely too small of a wattage amount. One other thing to watch out for is the use of a "mini ITX" form-factor motherboard being used in an ATX form factor case. Mini ITX motherboards are tiny, and have minimal or no room for further expansion. It's a cost-cutting measure that the consumer bears in the end.

With that all said, here's a list of some reputable prebuilt manufacturers where you can price/customize a system. Each link should take you to the place to start configuring a system. We recommend sticking to the parts we've identified in the tiers above; in early 2023, Intel really has the edge over AMD at almost every price point for CPUs.

• NZXT
• iBuyPower
• CyberPowerPC
• Maingear
• Origin PC
• Xidax
• Digital Storm

With the tiers all out of the way, I want to thank you for reading my guide about PC builds/parts. And thank you to Alex for spending the time to compile all of this info for me and help organize everything for you guys to digest. I hope you're able to learn something from this guide!