The 6 Best Gaming PCs on Amazon in 2023
This article has been updated in June. We’ve reviewed the new options in 2023 and changed some of our top picks and included some new additional options where relevant.
Many of my readers have told me about just how overwhelming it can be to shop through 1000s of gaming PCs; how are you supposed to know what to buy without expert advice?
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. I’ve reviewed the top offerings and built this guide to take you through the best pre-built gaming PCs on Amazon available today for different budgets and requirements.
1
Overall Best Gaming PC on Amazon
Skytech Shiva RTX 3060 Ti
Our Rating: 9.75/10
Overall Best Gaming PC on Amazon: Skytech Shiva RTX 3060 Ti
When I get questions from our readers on this topic, they’re usually looking for the best choice under $1,500 as a mid-ranage pick.
This is slightly more than that, but I really think it’s worth pushing your budget a little further.
At a fantastic price point, you’re getting a well-rounded machine that is led by an RTX 3060 Ti, a fantastic GPU at this price point.
You can expect smooth 60+ FPS gameplay at 1440P in nearly every modern game; with fantastic future-proofing, VR ready, and some impressive capability for 4k gaming too.
Working alongside the card to achieve that gaming power is a fantastic Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz processor, 16GB 3200Mhz DDR4 Ram, and a 1TB SSD.
All of these specs make this a wonderful machine for not just gaming but some serious professional work if required (be it high-res video editing, rendering, production programming, and other intensive tasks).
All of this is housed in the fantastic InWin 103 case; a great chassis that offers good airflow and upgrade capabilities in the future if desired.
Tied in with the custom RGB lighting and fans, the unit will run well, look beautiful and most importantly, act perfectly as a gaming setup.
If you’re looking for a mid-range gaming PC that meets a sweet spot between price, performance, and build quality, this is the most ideal pick I’ve reviewed for the job.
2023 update: The 3060 Ti Shiva remains our top overall pick; although I reviewed several of the new 40XX PCs, these desktops are all coming in at $1,500+ and I see comments reflecting slightly lower budgets.
If you have a budget higher than this pick but lower than our most powerful choice below, a good in-between option is this MPG Velox version which manages to boast an RTX 4070 Ti for under $2,000 (this GPU usually performs better than an RTX 3090, so it’s a complete powerhouse).
If you can’t afford that, rest assured, I’ve kept the Shiva at the top for a reason; it offers great value for a mid-range build.
Best Gaming PC on Amazon Under $1,000 (Top Pick): Skytech Shadow RTX 3050
As much as I’d love to tell everyone to stretch to the top offering, Skytech have an offering at a very decent budget price point.
This RTX 3050 Gaming PC packs a great punch with 8GB of dedicated GDDR6 VGA memory. This card is well known for its value, and many other picks around the $1,000 mark don’t compete with it.
You’ll get great performance in today’s popular titles (from Apex Legends to the latest Call of Duty), especially at 1080p and you can expect that to last for many future titles too.
Taking Cyberpunk 2077 as an example, in high settings the Shadow will manage a high frame rate on 1080p. You will even undoubtedly be able to get some decent rates on 1440p and even 4k if you play with some graphics settings.
The Core i5 10400F is a good CPU for gaming and general usage needs. It’s not one of the latest processors and I would have liked to see something a little better, but it’s clear the pre-built was intended to focus more of the budget on the RTX 3050. This is certainly a better tactic for a gaming PC than going overkill on the processor and offering a disappointing GPU (as is unfortunately common in a lot of pre-builds).
The 8GB RAM is enough to get the build up and running, but we would definitely recommend adding a second stick of 8GB RAM when your budget allows. It’s a quick, easy, and cheap upgrade that will not only give you a decent gaming boost but also make your workstation/browsing needs quick and more future-proofed.
Working alongside the CPU and RAM for a fast browsing experience is a 1TB SSD (with Windows 10 included). I was really pleased with this spec as it would’ve been super easy for Skytech to include a 512GB drive and still be considered decent amongst its similarly-priced competitors.
If for whatever reason you want more space in the future too, you’ll have room to add in another HDD or SSD.
The whole setup is stylishly housed in a decent chassis. You’ll have a good amount of USB ports within the case and alongside the 3 RGB fans and decent space for airflow, the setup looks great and has decent cooling.
The unit adds more value by including a free gaming keyboard and mouse. They’re perfectly serviceable for gaming use (but as you can expect with freebies, you may want to upgrade if you are into competitive gaming/esports).
Overall, I really like the package Skytech has put together here.
Yes, you can do better with a higher budget. But for $1,000? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with just how great the Shadow is at this price point.
Most Powerful Gaming PC on Amazon: Velztorm Praetix CTO
Now, for those looking for the most powerful setup you can possibly achieve, this is the best choice I’ve found.
There are some even more expensive options on Amazon, sure.
But I looked through these, and their spec choices add unnecessary extra bells and whistles for $100s (even $1000s) extra.
If your budget is large, then the Velztorm Praetix CTO is easily my choice for the best gaming PC on Amazon available today.
Leading its power is the monstrous RTX 4090 graphics card, the best on the market right now, which will simply crush anything you throw at it (and likely will for a very long time).
And what’s more, the benchmarking that has been achieved on 4K gaming with the RTX 4090 is very impressive. You can expect to still achieve great framerates in 2160p (even 8K gaming should you be so inclined!).
Alongside this top-range GPU is the fantastic Intel i9-13900KF 32G DDR5 RAM & a Gen4 1TB NVMe SSD.
These specs will handle anything you can expect to throw at them and will be excellent for high-scale production work on top of your gaming (I appreciate the 1000W power supply that is comfortably over the 850W minimum recommended by Nvidia for the 4090).
You’ll notice that the Amazon page includes a bunch of different options for RAM and Drive sizes. I’ve chosen the one that I’d consider the best choice for those after something extra powerful, without simply wasting money. More RAM than 32GB is overkill for gaming, and while you could get a large SSD/HDD combo, there is more than enough here for a decent gaming library (you can easily upgrade in the future if you need to).
You may notice that there are some cheaper 4090 setups floating around. Beware that many pre-built PCs use significantly outdated hardware elsewhere in the machine to justify the low cost of the GPU. Usually, this is the CPU, which is often several generations behind and will bottleneck your gaming performance. I like the CTO because the GPU still has had the most attention, but the 13900KF is a powerful CPU that accompanies it nicely.
Powering the CPU is a 360mm liquid cooler, which not only looks fantastic alongside included RGB fans but will give you great overclocking potential should you desire it in the future. I’ve not really come across many PCs (pre-built or custom) that boast this much thermal management.
The case itself is a gorgeous offering too, with a single long tempered glass window running down the full length of the front and left side. Photos don’t do it justice, this machine looks incredible.
You’re then of course getting the other extras you would expect plenty of USB ports, decent Wi-Fi capability and Windows 11.
What else is there to say about the CTO, other than to reiterate how powerful the RTX 4090 graphics card is that leads its system.
This is the best pre-built 4K gaming PC on Amazon today.
If you have the budget for this, you’re going to love it.
2023 update: This pick updates our previous 3090 desktop choice. It’s a great time to buy this setup as the 4090 is fresh on the market and unmatched in performance.
Best Budget Gaming PC on Amazon: Skytech Archangel GTX 1050 Ti
As much as we’d recommend our above picks for a future-proofed setup, I wanted to include some more options that further consider tight-budget users.
The Archangel is a capable gaming desktop with its GTX 1050 Ti at the helm.
This 4GB VRAM graphics card is a little older than our top pick’s; but for the price range, still packs an impressive punch.
That includes running popular titles like Fortnite Chapter 2, Overwatch, and GTA V at excellent framerates on high settings @ 1080p.
With it, you’ll be able to play today’s major eSports & MMORPGs comfortably.
For newer titles, you’ll still have some capacity here in the lower settings/720p (occasionally 1080p), but of course, at this price-point, you won’t be as future-proofed as our top pick.
Working alongside its GPU is a Ryzen 3 1200, 1TB HDD, and 8GB DDR4 2400 Mhz RAM.
These specs are good to run alongside a decent gaming PC, and you’ll still be able to have a smooth workstation experience (web browsing, watching a high-quality video, etc).
In terms of advanced computing work (things like video editing, intensive programming, etc.) you may want to consider one of the more expensive picks if possible.
The unit looks striking with its sleek, blue LED fans and white case, with appropriate cooling for the setup.
We like that despite the lower price-point, Skytech still includes a gaming keyboard/mouse that will be serviceable for budget gamers.
But all in all, at its price point, the Archangel can still get an impressive amount done.
If this is as far as your wallet can take you, know that it’s the best cheap gaming PC on Amazon today.
2023 update: The Archangel is still a decent budget choice, but if you have just a little more to spend, I’d recommend picking up the Chronos 1650 edition. Many of the specs are similarly understated, but the GPU is an RTX 1650 which performs around 50% better, so is a huge upgrade if your budget can stretch.
Cheapest Gaming PC on Amazon: Alarco GTX 650
Now while I’ll be clear that the options above will serve you much better for gaming, I appreciate that some of you may be looking for the best beginner gaming PC, or simply the cheapest unit that still has some gaming capability.
And if that’s the case, the Alarco GTX 650 is the optimal choice.
You’ll have a setup designed for “light” gaming.
Don’t expect to run all of the newer titles, but with PC gaming where it is now, so many popular titles are older and well optimized.
With its Intel i5 3.10GHz CPU, 8GB RAM & GTX 650 GPU, you’ll have a good time running games like Fortnite, Minecraft, CS: GO, and other popular less-demanding titles (with some framerate/setting compromises).
Ideally, how we’d look at this choice is that it makes a great base setup; i.e. it will do for getting your feet on the ground for gaming (say, if it’s for a beginner/younger person), but ideally, you would be looking to upgrade the GPU at a later time when budget allows if you’re serious about performance.
For work/web-browsing/video watching, this unit will still perform well (just don’t expect to do any intensive tasks like video editing/rendering).
We appreciate also that the unit comes with a 1TB HDD; at this price, we’d almost expect Alarco to have included a 256GB or 512GB HDD.
That being said, if you upgrade anything other than the GPU, we’d make it a small SSD to run the operating system and your popular apps (in 2022, this makes a big difference for general use/loading)
We also like that despite it being the cheapest viable gaming PC, it still comes with a decent allotment of RGB fans and an aesthetically pleasing case that may not win any awards for cooing, but is more than capable for a budget build.
Perhaps our favorite thing about this gaming bundle is, despite how cheap it is, it isn’t skimping on any of the smaller inclusions.
You’re still getting Windows 10, a Wi-Fi-ready motherboard, and decent USB port availability (no keyboard & mouse included, but cheap bundles are available if needed).
Overall, while this isn’t the most future-proofed machine around, it’s the best gaming computer on Amazon available if you’re on a very tight budget (we wouldn’t recommend anything cheaper than this).
Best Amazon Gaming PC Under $800: Skytech Shadow GTX 1660
We’re back to Skytech one last time, who seem to dominate many of the price brackets on Amazon with excellent specs compared to their other pre-built competitors.
The Shadow would be the ideal choice for someone who can’t quite afford our top pick but is still looking for something more powerful than our budget choices.
You can certainly get a lot done with the Shadow’s setup too.
With a decent GTX 1660 graphics card, you’ll run most of today’s titles at very high settings, full HD with 60+ frame rates (even for 1440p on certain titles).
Alongside this beefy GPU is a decent Ryzen 3 3100 & 16GB of DDR 4 3000Mhz RAM.
These will serve you nicely in general computer tasks and although it’s not a professional work PC for editing/rendering and other production, you’ll certainly be able to get some mileage from it if required.
The setup is included in a beautiful full-length tempered glass case with a decent allotment of RGB fans, you’ll have all the cooling and airflow needed for the spec.
You’re once again getting Windows, a great number of USB ports, a free gaming keyboard/mouse, and a wi-fi capable motherboard.
Overall, if you’re in the $800 dollar price range, this is a fantastic choice and meets a respectable balance between budget and performance.
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