Gaming desktops typically support display port connections as well, so most monitors are also compatible. Please take our 3-minute survey, If you're not going to buy in to the 30 Series (though we'd recommend it at this price tier), these are the next most recent high-end GPUs to go for. To that point, Intel also launched mainstream Core i9 chips outside of the Extreme Edition platforms in late 2018, bringing increased speed to the main consumer line. Huge interior for complete customization. PCMag is obsessed with culture and tech, offering smart, spirited coverage of the products and innovations that shape our connected lives and the digital trends that keep us talking.

Not only is this somewhat expensive desktop awesome to look at, it also has some of the most powerful components under the hood. Our gaming-desktop reviews will let you know if there is room in the system's case for adding more graphics cards, in case you want to improve your gaming performance in the future.

As we discussed up top, the most important aspect is the video card—on the original headsets, you are pushing a 1,080-by-1,200 display to each eye, after all—so go with the most powerful card you can afford from either the current or previous generation. Matthew Buzzi is a junior analyst on the Hardware team at PCMag. If it turns out you want something like a Blu-ray player, you could always purchase it separately and install it yourself. BestReviews spends thousands of hours researching, analyzing, and testing products to recommend the best picks for most consumers. With that in mind, there are also lower-end GTX cards built on Nvidia's Turing tech: the GeForce GTX 1650, the GeForce GTX 1660, and the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti.
Look for a machine that focuses on solid processing power (quad-core to six-core) and a decent graphics card. Filter Results. There were a few other excellent products we looked into while doing our research.

Buying a graphics card for VR is a different set of considerations, and not quite as demanding as 4K play on recent AAA games. While they were more of a half-step up before the Ampere generation arrived, boosts to clock speeds (and in some cases the introduction of newer memory) mean these are all a tick more capable than the original models. This is, admittedly, simplifying a complex argument. Multi-tasking and competitive gaming shouldn’t be a problem here. CONSCould be quieter under load.No flash-card reader. BestReviews. A system with a higher-power Nvidia GeForce GPU and a Core i5 processor is generally a better choice for 3D-intense FPS gaming than one with a low-end card and a zippy Core i7 or i9 CPU. High processing speeds (measured in GHz) translate to quicker access to memory and better multitasking capabilities, both of which can improve your gaming experience.

A six-core processor accompanies 16GBs of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card. One aspect not included in the 30 Series launch is the "Super" suffix that you may see on 20 Series GPUs while shopping. The raw performance gains were modest, and ray-tracing, while attractive, was a difficult proposition even on the best 20 Series GPUs. Our favorite part: they’re not just for PCs; they work with consoles and tablets, too. Runs cool. These GPUs push higher frame rates at the highest visual settings and resolutions, including with RTX active, even at 4K. For those who need to be on the cutting edge, or are buying a desktop that will be an upgrade from the Pascal card generation or earlier, your best bet may be to go with the latest tech, especially as ray-tracing sees wider adoption in coming years. Small footprint.

An RTX 2070 system will fit the bill for high-frame-rate 1080p or 1440p gaming, and you can try ray-tracing on a per-game basis or just turn it off to your preference.

If you can find a good deal on a 20 Series Super GPU, it may be worthwhile, but not at full price: The RTX 2080 Super has the same MSRP as the RTX 3080 for notably lesser performance.

The RTX 2060 Super, the RTX 2070 Super, and the RTX 2080 Super are, as you may have guessed, souped-up versions of the initial releases, and came with a price cut to boot. You can still get a rich gaming experience for thousands of bucks less by choosing a desktop with a single but robust middle-tier video card (an RTX 2060 or 2070, for example) and gaming at 1080p or 1440p; 2,560 by 1,440 pixels is an increasingly popular native resolution for gaming monitors.