Best Gaming PC - By someone who tests hardware 5/18/2026
Check out my build on buildcores.
I have been testing various hardware for a couple years now, and have delt with multiple 5090 systems. What I have found is that brand and cost matter. The "same" GPU and the "same" motherboard from a cheaper brand or product line can significantly effect performance. I have seen 50%+ performance increases from using a top of the line Asus motherboard over a Gigabyte motherboard, increased error rates from using Corsair RAM instead of a higher end G.Skill RAM, and significantly slower load AND runtime speeds due to a lower generation SSD (and god forbid HDD). Some of these issues only present with sustained usage, so classical performance benchmarks which only run for less than 30 min will never catch them. I have built what I believe to be the best system to date. I have selected the parts that from experience I believe will increase performance. There may be more expensive parts out there, but I do not believe they will provide any additional benefit. Testing I have performed on various DDR5 RAM shows no difference for anything over 6000, and I have found anything over 6000 causes increased error rates
It is obvious this build is not affordable for the average buyer. Many of the parts may be found for significantly cheaper from a different retailer than what buildcores provides (the true price is probably off by $2-3k). Many of the parts in this build may be redundant for your use case. The peripherals are what I find to be most durable from experience, as every other peripheral I have dealt with has had significantly worse build quality or utility.
If you would like to significantly reduce the cost of this build (down to around $6k or less), the parts that you can compromise without significant quality reduction are the following:
- Note: Never buy anything from Corsair. From mice to RAM to cases to AIO's, everything I have had the misfortune of using from them has gone defective within under a year, or came already defective out of the box.
CPU - The Ryzen 9950X is 40% cheaper and will lose about 4-5% performance.
GPU - The ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX™ 5090 32GB GDDR7 OC may have limited supply, but any ASUS ROG RTX 5090 will have similar performance within a 1% difference. The TUF and non-OC cards do not have any significant performance loss. I would stick to ASUS for the best reliability and cooling.
RAM - 96GB GB is unnecessary for gaming, but I chose this because it had the best latency profile and power draw. Look for 64GB at CL28 for practically no performance loss, or a higher CL RAM for minimal performance loss. Best Buy usually has good deals on RAM. Never get 4 sticks of RAM, modern AMD CPU's simply can't handle more than 2; you will see significant performance loss and increased error rates.
SSD - 2TB of PCIe 5.0 x4 is unnecessary for gaming. For the average user I would recommend 1TB PCIe 5.0 X2 which will save about 50%.
OS / Windows 11 Pro / Linux - The official pricing of Windows 11 Pro is a scam; get a key from a cheaper reseller which is still a perfectly valid way of obtaining it, and use your own USB, but make sure to get Pro.
- For Linux users, use Ubuntu for the easiest experience with this hardware. Linux may not run on this hardware, the last time I tried to run it on this motherboard it wouldn't function properly because kernel drivers were not supported on Linux, but this has likely changed since. If you want to use Ubuntu for a server or programming, I recommend using the Ubuntu Windows Subsystem for Linux. I have found that in some cases, better driver support on Windows means less tinkering and better performance on WSL; and make sure to open your `.wslconfig` under your user folder and set `networkingMode=mirrored` under [wsl2].
Peripherals - The monitor, headphones, microphone, webcam, mouse, and keyboard may be unnecessary if you already own peripherals, do not need certain peripherals, or can not afford high end peripherals. If you opt for cheaper peripherals, I would target the speaker, headphones, microphone, and webcam. I would not opt for a keyboard cheaper than $175, as cheap hot swappable and non-hot swappable keyboards almost always have low-quality boards that go defective quickly, making it impossible to repair them. Wooting has other great options if you do not like the full size profile.
Mouse - If you do not like the mouse fit for your hand, I would opt for the Logitech Pro X Superlight 2. I would not consider anything else.
Microphone - For gaming and video calls, a cheaper microphone can work in combination with the NVIDIA broadcast app with noise removal and room echo removal set to high. This uses AI to enhance voice quality, but does make a tradeoff by using a portion of the GPU. I would not opt for a low quality camera, as AI video enhancement is not advanced enough.
This build does not include a mousepad as they are highly subjective. The mousepad I use is the G-SR-SE II, which I find to be a good mixture between ease of use, durability, and performance.