When looking at a gaming PC in 2022, it is important to be aware of new advancements in technology, plan for the future, do not over-buy, and strive for balance.
Be aware of new advancements in PC hardware
Technology always evolves and 2021 going into 2022 is no different. 2021 saw new releases from both Intel and AMD, NVIDIA, and major breakthroughs in memory like DDR5 DRAM. 2022 will start off with a bang at CES in Las Vegas where Adata will showcase it’s PCIe 5 for SSD. PCIe 5 will double the speed of M.2 NVMe drives from PCIe 4.
Planning advice for a custom gaming PC
When you’re buying PC hardware, it’s always important to plan for the future. You may want to wait to build your PC until advancements in technology have been released and are available to purchase. It would be a shame to buy a top-of-the-line graphics card for your new PC a month before its successor is released.
You don’t want to start out building your PC with antiquated technology. For example, there are graphics cards available for purchase today that were released four years ago. Technology like Graphics cards that were released four-five years ago is ancient in computer years, especially given technology like ray tracing and 8K resolutions.
That being said, you also have to consider your goals. Do you only play a game from four years ago? Do you want to plan for new game releases in 2022, 2023 and beyond? Do you care if your computer is at the bleeding edge? Do you want 4K, 8K resolution, multiple monitors, the ability to stream your game, while still having other applications run in the background? You should answer these questions and come up with questions of your own about how you want to use technology.
Do not over-buy
New game releases can push the limits of technology, but there also comes a point where you waste money by buying too much. You buy too much when you don’t come close to maximizing the utility of your hardware. For example, you don’t want to buy 32GB of RAM when you won’t ever need more than 12GB at any given point. That’s a basic example but there are much more complex examples when you look at motherboards, processors, and graphics cards.
Strive for balance
When building a gaming PC, it’s important that components are not causing bottlenecks or being under-utilized. You want to pair technology that aligns well with each other. Bottlenecks occur when one component is operating at a faster speed than another component can handle. A game can be choppy if it is waiting for game data to load from a slow spinning hard disk drive. The hard disk drive is the bottle neck. If you don’t have enough RAM, memory will be offloaded to an SSD and performance will be degraded. RAM is the bottleneck.
An advanced graphics card with a mid-tier or low-end processor can result in the graphics card waiting for the processor to finish processing instructions. The graphics card is being under-utilized. Having a high-end processor and a low end graphics card could also be an example of under-utilization.
A good strategy for striving for balance is to decide which type of PC build you want: High-end, middle-of-the-road, or low end PC build. For most people, it will come down to how much money can you spend.
Pre-built gaming PCs are a great way to get balance and alignment of components. PC builders research components and align them in builds for you so you don’t have to worry about a mismatch. They tend to offer a warranty and because they buy in bulk, have competitive pricing. The other advantage to buying pre-built gaming PC is that they do all of the work making the PC to less likely have a configuration issue. Imagine putting your PC together only to find out there is an issue somewhere. That would lead you to taking everything apart, troubleshoot, and reassemble. Pre-built gaming PCs come ready to work.
The gaming PCs in these articles are examples of pre-built gaming PCs that will work well in 2022: