MyGamingPCGaming PC gift guides
Buying a gaming PC for someone else? These guides are for parents and gift buyers, in plain English. Every pick is in stock today at a real store price we checked this morning, with FPS from Justin's own testing, and every one clears our quality bar.
Pick a guide
What to look for
- A real graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce RTX, AMD Radeon RX or Intel Arc), not "integrated graphics". The graphics card does most of the work in games.
- 16GB of memory (RAM) or more, and a 1TB SSD if you can: today's games take a lot of space.
- A recent processor. Every PC on this page clears our quality bar: no old processors and no GTX or RTX 20-series graphics cards.
- A store you can return to easily. The return windows for the stores on this page are below.
What to avoid
- Open-box, refurbished and used PCs for a gift: we leave them off our lists, because returns and warranties on them vary.
- Listings that hide the graphics card or say "integrated graphics". If a spec is not listed, we say "Not listed" rather than guess.
- Only 8GB of memory, or a drive under 500GB: a few big games fill it.
- Paying more for the same parts. A card says so when its PC is priced below similar PCs today, and the price history on each PC's page shows fake "was" prices.
Before you wrap it
- Buy early in November so there is time to set it up and still return it if something is wrong.
- Keep the box and the receipt until the return window ends.
- Turn it on the day it arrives, even before wrapping it, to make sure it works.