When is the Best Time to Buy a Gaming Computer? - Custom Gaming & Enthusiast PC Blog | Velocity Micro (2024)

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When is the Best Time to Buy a Gaming Computer? - Custom Gaming & Enthusiast PC Blog | Velocity Micro? ›

You'll find the best computer deals twice throughout the year, during the Black Friday shopping season and during back-to-school season. If you can afford to wait for either of these seasons, you're bound to save hundreds if not more on your purchase.

You'll find the best computer deals twice throughout the year, during the Black Friday shopping season and during back-to-school season. If you can afford to wait for either of these seasons, you're bound to save hundreds if not more on your purchase.

Your best bet for buying PC parts is December. That's the time retailers and suppliers decrease the price for most PC parts. If you're impatient until the holidays, don't worry! Around August and September prices also go down significantly.

According to a recent IDC forecast, the PC and tablet markets are expected to shrink. Shipments for tablets and PCs will decline almost 12% in 2022, the research firm reported, and are expected to decline further in 2023.

For most desktop PCs, you can expect a minimum three-year lifespan. However, most computers survive five to eight years, depending on the upgrading components. Maintenance is also critical, as dust is very problematic for PC components.

You should replace your gaming PC when you can't reasonably play your favorite games on it, usually every 2–4 years with leaps in hardware requirements, or upwards of 8 years depending on preference.

If you want to play the newest games at the best possible settings all of the time, you'll need to upgrade yearly to keep up. If you're cool with turning things down just a bit and don't have outlandish expectations, your PC will last you 3-5 years, depending on how much you invest upfront.

We recommended waiting to buy a GPU at the beginning of the year, but that's not the case anymore. Now is the best time to buy a new GPU, as cards have mostly returned to list price, and they're in stock at retailers.

Some people who own high-end PCs report that they have owned them for 5 to 10 years without any problems. Others say that their PC has lasted anywhere from 1 to 3 years.

Are Pre-Built Gaming PCs Worth It? Definitely. A pre-built gaming PC is a great way to start playing your favorite games straight away without having to build the system yourself.

Why is PC demand falling? ›

Fears of a recession, global inflation, and higher interest rates all contributed to a precipitous drop in desktop and laptop sales in 2022, with the largest decline coming in the last quarter of the year.

The Global PC market is anticipated to rise at a considerable rate during the forecast period, between 2023 and 2029. In 2021, the market is growing at a steady rate and with the rising adoption of strategies by key players, the market is expected to rise over the projected horizon.

PC Demand Collapses Due to Economic Uncertainty. Worldwide PC shipments totaled 65.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022, a 28.5% decrease from the fourth quarter of 2021, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

Experts generally recommend Dell over HP due to its superior build quality, longer battery life, and better customer support; ultimately, it comes down to personal preferences and needs when choosing between these two companies.

Every situation is different, but you can expect the average desktop PC to last between three and eight years. Desktops tend to kick on longer than laptops due to the extra space inside the box.

Here's how much you should spend on a gaming PC: $300-400 is plenty for basic games in 720p. If you want to game in 1080p, $500-$1,000 is a good range. Gaming in 1440p or higher is going to call for a budget of $1,000-$1,200 for the PC itself and another $400-$600 on peripherals.

You might have to pay around $850 to $1,200 for the average gaming PC. But, if you intend on playing games running at 60 frames per second on maximum settings, you could pay around $2000.

For gamers, it's good to leave your PC on overnight to download large updates or full games. If you've enabled remote access to your PC via the internet, you'll need to leave it on if you want to access it while you're away.

How often should you clean your PC? ›

If you don't want to hurt your PC's performance and lifespan with the added stress and heat, give it a good cleaning at least every six month to a year. While the average user's computer lasts several years, true cleaning of hardware and software could extend your PC's useful life by a few more years.

While the stock situation for last-gen RTX 3000 and RX 6000 graphics cards is largely fine, prices aren't dropping much - barring some reductions by AMD last year, most GPUs are holding steady when it comes to cost.

GPUs can generally last for 5 – 8 years give or take assuming regular use and adequate care. More if the card is barely ever used and well taken care of. Performance-wise, a good mid-level GPU today would only really serve at a mid to high-performance level for 3ish years.

RTX 3080 Ti also moves 20 per cent from $899.99 to $719.99, but it further down the stack where the best bargains lie.

Yes, absolutely. Gaming PCs basically are regular PCs, but with more robust hardware inside like specialized GPUs and CPUs. Also, they sometimes contain more RAM (memory) as well. This hardware is what enables it to handle very demanding video games and work tasks.

One of the biggest casualties due to hot components is your FPS in games. Cleaning the components inside of your gaming rig is not as simple as cleaning your fans and dust filters due to the hardware being installed inside of the case itself. But fear not, it is still very simple to keep things nice and clean.

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$1,500 is the perfect budget to build a high-end gaming PC with. It will allow you to get a high-end processor and a graphics card that is capable of running games on a 1440P 144Hz+ display, or games at 60 FPS on a 4K display.

Unfortunately, a lot of pre-built PCs are difficult — if not impossible — to upgrade down the road. Sure, you might be able to slip in another stick of RAM or a faster solid-state drive (SSD) depending on the PC, but overall you won't have the freedom to do as much as with something you build yourself.

In most cases, building your own PC has typically been cheaper than buying a prebuilt gaming PC with similar hardware. However, you can sometimes find prebuilt PCs on sale at prices that may be cheaper than what it would cost to build that same system.

Why not to buy a prebuilt PC? ›

Bad because they usually can't be upgraded easily or at all (proprietary power connectors, soldered chips, cpu fans screwed directly on case, custom psu's that miss standard connectors and can only be used with the supplied motherboard, no place in case to install second fan, no extra fan connectors etc etc).

Just 260.8 million PCs will ship in 2023, down 10.7 per cent, while tablets will drop 12 per cent to 142.3 million. IDC do, however, see the market slightly picking up in 2024, predicting a modest 3.6 per cent leap, to 417.7 million units.

The common reasons for computers keep crashing are but are not limited to: The display, power supply, or CPU is overheating. The internal hardware of the computer is loose. Software and hardware are incompatible.

In 2021, global PC sales shot to 348.8 million sold. It was up 14.8% over 2020 and was the highest since 2012.

Worldwide shipments of total devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) are projected to decline 4.4% in 2023, to total 1.7 billion units, according to Gartner, Inc. In 2022, the devices shipment market declined 11.9%. “The depressed economic market will continue to dampen demand for devices throughout 2023.

“Since many consumers already have relatively new PCs that were purchased during the pandemic, a lack of affordability is superseding any motivation to buy, causing consumer PC demand to drop to its lowest level in years,” Kitgawa added.

PC vendor market share 2006-2022

The overall market leader in the global personal computer market in 2022 was Lenovo with a market share of 24.1 percent with HP a close second with a 19.4 percent share.

The news: Apple's PC shipments declined 40.5% from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023, reflecting that the mounting malaise in the PC sector has finally caught up with Cupertino, per Bloomberg. Apple stock was down by as much as 3.12% to $161.65 Monday on the news of decreased shipments.

The producer price index for computer and peripheral manufacturing decreased from December 2019 to December 2021, declining 2.5 percent. Both in 2019 and 2020, prices fell 2.9 percent and producer prices advanced 3.4 percent in 2021.

First of all, the most obvious factor is the soaring demand for electronics products. Being under social distancing restrictions, most people are resorting to their TVs, phones, consoles, and computers for entertainment and socializing. Hence, the demand for consumer electronics has gone high.

What is better Dell or Asus? ›

It's hard to go wrong with either high-end manufacturer, but in terms of both pure performance and cost-effectiveness, Asus very often has the edge. However, if you can find a good deal on a Dell gaming laptop, you shouldn't pass it up.

HP offers a better value than Dell with its 2-in-1 laptops, though the price difference decreases if you choose a higher-res screen, more memory, and a faster Intel CPU. The Spectre x360 is the more premium version of the Envy x360 and is a better competitor to the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 in terms of price and performance.

HP doesn't make the best gaming laptops, but its offerings are still a fair bit more varied and, more often than not, affordable compared to those from Dell. They're also a bit more visually appealing, although that can, at times, be quite subjective.

It can be as likely you'll get a better price at another time of the year as you will during Black Friday. The more niche it is, the rougher your odds. But if all you care about is price and are semi-flexible on features for your components, you can chain together Black Friday deals for ultimate savings.

So long as you reboot at least once a week, it's okay to always keep it powered on. Conversely, you should turn your PC off if you rarely use it (once a week or less), because you'll get smaller electric bills and a bit more life out of your machine.