You’re looking to buy a new gaming PC, but how much does it cost?
Budgeting for your new gaming PC can be a tricky thing. There is no one set cost for a gaming PC and finding the right one for you can become a mission. We’re here today to try and clear the air a little, offering suitable specs for different needs and the price point they could feature.
Frankly, there is no nice answer to this question. The crux of it is, “it depends”. There are too many factors to give one straight answer. Fluctuating prices, various price to performance points, brand preferences, additional costs for aesthetics, and so on. Even if I could give you a definitive answer today, it would likely be wrong within a few months or a year. Times, they be a-changin’.
What I can do today is showcase ideal specs for various uses and provide ballpark figures with an example PC from Overclockers UK. We’ll be going over PCs for:
That’s nine primary uses, nine PCs, and nine potential matches for your needs! Naturally, even these showcases may not quite fit your needs, but they’ll certainly provide a good starting point!
Before we get into the meat of this article, there is something else to consider. Building your own gaming PC, or even just upgrading parts on your current PC. The latter is definitely the cheapest option of all three, if budget is your biggest constraint. Building your own gaming PC can be cheaper too, if you shop around for good deals, and has the added benefit that you are in full control of every component that goes in.
Both, however, do require skill and additional tools to pull off successfully. Thankfully, we have a couple of blogs that can help with that!
If you’re looking to cut costs on your next computer, there are a few savvy spending tricks you can do to pinch those pennies. Hardware you’d typically find in a budget computer may include:
We have a dedicated category for budget PCs, ranging in price from £800 to £1000*, and one for PCs under £1000. This includes pre-built and configurable gaming PCs, offering more scope to find a PC that fits your needs.
The OcUK Gaming Kestrel is priced at £824.99*. It sports Zen 3 and RDNA 2 hardware as standard, so you can still enjoy high performance gaming without breaking the bank. Plus, with configurable options, you can save on select hardware and splurge on others. Just note, this will affect the overall price.
What you’ll need from an office PC depends on the work you do. Operating on the assumption you’ll need web browsing, word processors, corporate applications such as Slack and Teams, and perhaps the odd bit of specialist software, your hardware demands won’t be much. Which means, an office PC doesn’t have to have a premium price tag. Typically, they’ll have:
The Office PC category is currently populated with one machine, priced at £550*, but the Refract Gaming Crimson (pictured above) would also make an ideal office PC. It features more gaming-focused hardware, however, and comes with a £869.99* price tag.
Sticking with the category, we have the OcUK Gaming Kinetic H6M for £550*. This features an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU, sporting six cores and twelve threads. This processor can expertly handle office workflows, with up to 32GB RAM to keep operations efficient. Once again, this computer can be configured, with additional storage drives or a graphics card for multi-monitor set ups, but this will increase the pricing.
Gaming PC prices wildly differ because there are different tiers of hardware you can install in them. A general rule of thumb for pricing is the higher the performance, the higher the cost. Therefore, casual or entry-level gaming PCs tend to be reasonably priced whilst still featuring all the hardware you need to enjoy your games. A typical casual gaming PC could feature:
Our entry-level gaming PC category has a price range of £749 to £1450*, covering a variety of performance points within the casual and entry level bracket.
The Refract Gaming Amber costs £1,199.99*. Powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 7500F CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, this pre-built PC has been designed for casual gaming at 1080p. Plus, it is fully assembled, tested, and ready to plug in and play!
Following the general rule of thumb, the more performance you want, the more your PC is going to cost. As such, mainstream gaming PCs will carry a bigger price tag than what we’ve listed so far. Still, their mid-tier hardware keeps the pricing accessible for most. They typically include:
The price range for our mainstream gaming PCs is between £1049 and £1700*. The eagle eyed among you will have noticed there is some crossover with the entry-level pricing there. As with every bracket of gaming PC, there is range and scope. Some higher-end entry-level PCs will be well suited for more mainstream gaming but fall at the lower end of the scale for the next bracket up.
Sitting firmly in the middle of our mainstream price range is the OcUK Gaming Hawk, costing £1,349.99*. This pairs a 14th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU with an AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT GPU, powering your gaming with the innovative advanced hybrid core and RDNA 3 architectures.
If you’re looking to compete in esports, especially professionally, then you’re going to want some power behind your gaming. Anything for that competitive edge over the other players! As a lot of popular esports titles have very accessible requirements, even entry-level gaming PCs will serve you well. Esports gaming PCs tend to include:
Our Esports Gaming PC category sports a spicy range of computers to suit a variety of budgets, priced between £749 and £1825*. As always, the higher the price, the higher the performance.
The OcUK Gaming Rapier is £1,624.99* on its standard spec. This configurable PC boasts a choice of AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs, NVIDIA RTX 40 Series GPUs, up to 64GB DDR5 RAM, and the option of up to three high-speed SSDs. Once again, any adjustments will affect the overall price.
Streaming PCs can come with a big price tag, as you need hardware that is capable of running your game and live streaming it to your audience. All without screen tearing, lag, or other performance issues that will ruin the show. Streaming PCs typically have:
As the star of your show, streaming PCs can truly be a statement piece. As such, the price range of our streaming PC category is between £1,349 and £10,500*. This is a little skewed by 8Pack and Infin8 PCs, which are overclocked extreme gaming PCs with custom water-cooling loops. Omitting them, the upper limit drops down to £4,000*.
The OcUK Gaming Khopesh is priced at £2,149.99*. With an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU, you have all the processing power you need for multi-threaded loads like streaming. Plus, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super GPU will render your games in stunning detail for all to enjoy!
VR has gone from a sci-fi pipe dream to a staple of gaming in recent years. A VR gaming PC needs to support your chosen VR headset, and the spec requirements for the games vary greatly. As the technology has developed and become more readily available, game specs are more reasonable but there are some which require high-end tech! Therefore, anything from a mainstream to high-end PC is well suited for VR gaming. Typically, they’ll need:
Our VR gaming PC range is priced between £1,349 and £12,000*, with 8Pack and Infin8 PCs once more bolstering that top end. Without them, the upper limit is around £3,900*.
For elite-tier VR gaming, we love the OcUK Gaming Zirconium, priced at £3,299.99*. Equipped with an Intel Core i7-14700KF CPU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super GPU, there is little this gaming PC can’t handle in the virtual reality and beyond!
The cost of a content creation PC depends on what sort of content you’re creating. Complex digital 3D rendering will require an AMD Ryzen Threadripper or Intel Xeon CPU, which is more in the workstation territory (which we’ll get to soon). For creating online content, a high-performance gaming PC is more suited to the job and comes with a much more accessible price tag. Content creation PCs typically need:
Using the OcUK Gaming PC Configurator, you can craft yourself the perfect PC for content creation. With both Intel and AMD models, the configurator lets you choose every component from a pre-selected list of hardware. From processor to power supply, you have full control over the specification. Prices start from between £1,279 and £2100*, but will be affected as you customise.
Alternatively, you can opt for the pre-built Refract Gaming Ultraviolet, priced at £3,799.99*. This gaming PC has been engineered for 4K gaming, VR, content creation, streaming, and more! With its AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU with 3D V-Cache and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, the Ultraviolet is primed to handle anything you throw its way.
Workstation PCs are expensive, there are no two ways around it. They feature specialist hardware, multi-GPU configurations, and high-capacity everything. But it is needful, as these machines are designed to handle CUDA heavy applications, complex workloads, and the sort of processes that would grind our regular PCs to a halt. Typically, they feature:
We have a range of professional PCs, our RENDA systems. These are priced between £1,600 and £11,000*, with each PC designed for different workflows. Alternatively, you can seek out the intense power of 8Pack PCs, ranging between £6,888 and £33,000*. Some of these PCs are more suited to gaming than workstation, but even those have been fine-tuned to squeeze every drop of performance from the hardware.
The 8Pack Domin8 is currently the most expensive PC on our website, at £32,299.99*. It is a beast and we proudly showed it off at Computex 2023. From its powerhouse performance to custom-developed hardware, there are no holds barred with the Domin8.
