The 8 Best Desktop PCs of 2023 for Work, Gaming, and More

We researched and tested some of the top options from well-known brands. Here are the best desktop PCs.

Rather than working on a cramped 15-inch laptop display, desktop PCs allow you to stretch your workload across multiple screens 27 inches across or larger. Additionally, a desktop can be upgraded with relative ease, whereas most portable devices offer very limited upgradeability or lack any customization potential.

Desktop PCs come in a mind-boggling array of shapes and sizes, from streamlined all-in-ones to giant towers. Their functions are as varied as their forms, from the affordable Chrome-based PC built for lightweight productivity to liquid-cooled gaming rigs that can pump out buttery smooth frame rates or fast render times for high-resolution video editing.

Best Overall Alienware Aurora R12 Amazon View On Amazon View On Dell What We Like 11th generation processor

Plenty of customization options

Mature design

Easy to upgrade What We Don't Like Upgrades get expensive

Generates a lot of heat

Loud fans Alienware Aurora R11 Review Dell's Alienware desktop comes from a long legacy of top-quality gaming hardware. Shortly after Intel announced its 11th generation processors, Dell upgraded its Alienware to take advantage of them. We haven't had the chance to go hands-on with the Alienware R12, but we did look at the R11, and we're confident enough in the Alienware brand to conclude the R12 is a beast. The hardware is capable, with an 11th generation Core-i7 processor, a solid NVidia GeForce RTX 3080 Super GPU, 64GB of RAM, and two SSDs for a combined total of 3TB. That means you can store basically anything and access it very quickly. Put all that under a load, and this computer will spit out quite a bit of heat and fan noise, but that's consistent with a lot of gaming PCs. It's important to make sure this PC is in a place with good ventilation and airflow. But overall, this computer will happily take on any demands you care to throw at it. CPU: Intel Core i7-11700F | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | RAM: 64GB | Storage: 1TB SSD, 2TB SSD "The Aurora R11 replaces its predecessor as the best gaming desktop of the year." — Erika Rawes, Product Tester The 4 Best $400 to $1,000 Desktop PCs in 2022 Lifewire / Erika Rawes

Best for Gaming HP Omen 30L Amazon View On Amazon View On HP What We Like Plenty of power

Stylish clear case

Great customization and upgrade options

Good value for money

What We Don't Like Gets expensive quickly

Loud fans Games push the limits of every aspect of PC hardware, making gaming computers ideal for gaming and just about any other task you can imagine. The HP Omen series of gaming PCs offers everything from affordable configurations to high-end VR-capable rigs. Whether you spend a lot or a little, Omen gaming desktops deliver great value for the money. Gamers, in particular, may look to upgrade their machines someday down the road, and fortunately, the HP Omen 30L makes that easy with an accessible case design that’s great to work in. It’s also clear, so you can see all the hardware inside, with built-in LED lights to show it off. Overall, the HP Omen 30L is a top-notch gaming PC. CPU: Intel Core i9-10850K | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | RAM: 32GB | Storage: 1TB SSD, 1TB HDD The 6 Best Gaming PCs of 2022

Best Value ASUS ROG G10CE View On Amazon View On Walmart View On Best Buy What We Like Great price-to-performance ratio

Good-looking

High build quality What We Don't Like Noisy If you want to get the most out of your money, then the ASUS ROG G10CE offers a respectable setup with the latest hardware, including a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU) and plenty of storage capacity. That’s enough to max out settings in the latest games at 1080p or do power-hungry graphic design or video editing tasks. A flashy-looking case contains all this capability. The build quality is a cut above the typical office PC tower. The only downside worth mentioning is that it gets pretty loud when playing particularly demanding games, but overall you’re getting a lot of power in a well-built package at an attractive price point. CPU: Intel Core i7-11700F | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | RAM: 16GB | Storage: 512GB SSD, 2TB HDD

Best Chrome OS HP Chromebase All-in-One 22 Bestbuy View On Best Buy View On HP View On Staples What We Like Slick, attractive design

All-in-one design saves space

Good value for money What We Don't Like Limitations of Chrome OS

Small selection of ports The HP Chromebase All-in-one 22 is one of the slickest-looking desktops you can buy on a shoestring budget, so long as Chrome OS works for you. Though the processor is slow and there’s not a lot of RAM, it’s good enough to run Chrome OS. The limited nature of this operating system isn’t for everyone, but if you just need a PC for browsing the web, watching shows, or basic productivity tasks, then this HP Chromebase offers a lot of bang for your buck. This affordable PC also looks fantastic with a spacious, built-in 21.5-inch screen that offers a wide range of potential adjustments. One downside is that it only features about as many ports as you’d expect to find on a laptop. Considering the scope of Chrome OS and what you’re likely to use it for, this isn’t so much a problem. CPU: Intel Pentium Gold G6405U | GPU: Integrated | RAM: 4GB | Storage: 64GB SSD

Best Apple Apple Mac Mini 4.7 Best Buy View On Best Buy View On Apple View On B&H Photo Video What We Like Relatively low price

Small size

Minimalist design What We Don't Like Small selection of ports

Not upgradeable Apple Mac mini (M1, 2020) Review In late 2020, Apple introduced the M1 Chip, its first ARM-based processor built specifically for Apple hardware. That hardware included the Mac mini, making it a formidable little machine. However, the design of the Mac mini is a little disappointing, given that it's less upgradeable and has fewer available ports than the previous generation of this PC. The Mac mini is a great minimalist PC if you prefer Apple's operating system. It'll fit just about anywhere and isn't huge and intrusive like so many desktop machines. It's also relatively affordable for a Mac, but it's worth spending more at the outset for a more capable configuration because you won't be able to upgrade it down the road. CPU: Apple M1 | GPU: Integrated 8-core GPU | RAM: 8GB | Storage: 256GB SSD "The Apple Mac mini with M1 is a tremendously impressive piece of hardware, offering staggering performance at an affordable price. The only real catch here is that in leaving Intel behind, Apple may have left you in the lurch. If you can live and work in a world that’s entirely free of Windows, then the M1 Mac mini is ready to welcome you home." — Jeremy Laukkonen, Product Tester Lifewire / Jeremy Laukkonen

Best for Students HP Pavilion TG01-1120 View On Amazon View On Best Buy What We Like Affordable price

Dedicated GPU

Great looking design What We Don't Like Not much storage capacity

Students don’t typically need the most powerful PC on the market, and affordability is significant when choosing a device. However, for many, the ability to handle demanding digital content creation is a must. The HP Pavilion TG01-1120 hits the sweet spot for price and power with its competent set of components at a price point that won’t break the bank. With it, you get reasonably powerful components that can handle graphic design or other demanding tasks you may encounter during your education. On the downside, this PC doesn’t come with a ton of storage. However, its solid-state storage offers a serious speed boost over a hard drive. Plus, adding an internal or external hard drive won’t set you back that much if you need extra storage. CPU: Intel Core i5-10400F | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 | RAM: 8GB | Storage: 256GB SSD

Best for Creatives HP 34" ENVY 34-c0050 All-in-One Desktop Computer B&H Photo View On B&H Photo Video View On Microsoft What We Like Ultra-wide high-resolution display

Powerful components

High-quality magnetic webcam

What We Don't Like Expensive

No touchscreen Two things digital content creators need, whether artists, Youtubers, or video game creators, is a big screen and plenty of power behind it. The 34-inch HP ENVY 34-c0050 All-in-One Desktop Computer has both in one convenient, space-saving, and attractive package. Its huge, high-resolution display is perfect for working on fine details, and it's big enough that you can fit multiple documents or programs on it at the same time. Under the hood is a powerful, modern processor and a reasonably powerful graphics card, as well as plenty of RAM. This combination is the perfect recipe for a content creation machine. However, it is a little pricey, and it, unfortunately, does not have a touchscreen. However, considering how much a high-resolution display on its own will set you back, this HP all-in-one is an ideal desktop PC for creating amazing things. CPU: Intel Core i7-11700 | GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 | RAM: 32GB | Storage: 1TB SSD

Building the Best PC for 3D Animation [2023 Guide]

Building the best Computer for Animation requires some specific Hardware Components and just a tiny bit of insight into the inner workings of 2D & 3D Animation Software and how they use your PC’s hardware.

Browsing for new Computer Parts is always a lot of fun and in this article, you will find a few things that will make that process easier and let you optimize your workloads.

Now, this Article “Best Computer for Animation” is structured into three parts:

How Animation Software utilizes your PC’s Hardware. Insight and recommendations on what Hardware Parts are important and best for a Computer for Animation. Finished Desktop Computer Builds in different Price Tiers that lets you see how a completed Computer Build for Animation would look like within your budget.

How do Animation Tasks use your PC’s Hardware?

Before we take a look at what hardware we should put in our best Computer for Animation let’s see how Animation Tasks actually use the Hardware.

Now, independent from the 3D-Software, when I animate I usually do some of the following:

I pose rigged characters, set Keyframes, adjust Animation Curves, Move objects around for Keying on new Frames, move my view and cameras around a lot, or play back the animations to be able to check and revise them.

All of these processes have one thing in common: I am actively tweaking things inside my Software and expect immediate visual feedback.

I don’t push a button and wait for 2 minutes while walking around the office, no, I expect the Viewport or Menus or other User Interface Elements in my Software to update right away.

This seems obvious, but there are lots of other tasks in a Production Pipeline of an Animated Film that work very differently.

Think of Rendering, Simulation, Texture Baking, or Encoding to name a few. These are Processes where you don’t actively interact with the Computer, but mainly let it run its tasks on its own until it is finished.

Why is this important?

Because we can now already say one very important thing and that is “Single-Core Performance“.

Here’s what this means:

Single-Core Performance dependent tasks are tasks that can’t be parallelized.

Modern Processors (CPUs) that are responsible for calculating almost everything you do on the Computer usually have more than one, so-called, Core.

Below is an image of the Windows Taskmanager, showing a CPU with 4 Cores.

Cores are individual parts of a CPU that can calculate a given task.

In a Computer for Animation, we will want a CPU with extremely fast Cores, as the tasks we are dealing with most of the time, are tasks that can only be calculated by one Core at a time.

So having a high Core-Count wouldn’t benefit us as much as most Cores would just be doing nothing.

The main reason why Animation tasks can’t be parallelized that well is that the underlying Objects that are being animated usually are rigged, deformed, driven by scripts, or otherwise dependent on a hierarchical order that has to be processed one after another, without being able to outsource some steps to others Cores.

Let’s make an example:

The 3D Character that you are animating usually consists of a Mesh. This Mesh is deformed by a Rig.

The Rig is driven by Control Objects. The deformed/animated Mesh might also have Face Controls and some kind of soft body simulation for the jiggly parts such as the belly.

And this is a pretty ordinary Character. I haven’t even gotten into Hair Collisions, Dynamic IK Chains, Muscle Collisions, and so on yet.

All of these Deformers and Rigs all have to be stepped through in a predefined order until the resulting final Mesh can be correctly displayed for that Frame.

I can’t tell some of my CPU cores to already calculate the Textures or Shading or Hair Collisions, if I haven’t yet calculated the basic body Animation Parts, such as the animation and movement of the extremities.

This is why only a single Core has to painstakingly calculate all of these hierarchical steps one after another.

And this can only be accelerated if this CPU Core, which at this moment does all the work, is as fast as possible, has as high a clock as possible.

After all, it has to do this process for everything in your Scene, usually 25 times per second (or what your desired Framerate is) for you to have a fluid playback experience.

This can be applied to 2D animation as well. Even if the underlying rigs or object complexity might be somewhat lower.

Having a slightly lower complexity in 2D usually just means you add more effects to your processing chain such as Motion Blur, and still want to have a real-time experience as much as possible, even with all the layer dependencies that are slowing the CPU down.

Now, lots of other tasks can be highly parallelized, such as Rendering.

Rendering Images can be perfectly parallelized and you can make full use of all of your CPU Cores. More CPU Cores will almost always let you render faster.

For CPU Rendering, for example, you would need a CPU that has as many Cores as possible because a Render task can be split into smaller parallelizable tasks almost indefinitely.

That was quite some theory behind it all.

Best Hardware for Animation explained

As the CPU seems to be the most important part of the best Computer for Animation, let’s take a look at what Processors there are that we can choose from and what other kinds of Hardware Components can speed up our Computer:

The Best CPU (Processor) for Animation

As we now know, for animation we will need a very high clocking CPU and not necessarily a CPU that has many Cores (Unless we also do lots of Rendering).

Or couldn’t we just get a CPU that has a very high clock AND lots and lots of Cores?

That way we could work fast actively AND render fast?

Unfortunately, this is not how it works. There is a trade-off between core-clocks and core-counts.

Meaning, if you want a very high clocking CPU you will only get a few cores and if you want lots of cores, these cores will most certainly be clocked fairly low.

Why?

This is because a CPU has specific thermal-limits and power-limits that it can not exceed. And since every core and every extra clock-increase needs more power and makes the CPU run hotter, it makes sense that there is a trade-off.

Fortunately, Intel and AMD have thought of a way to compensate for this, at least to a certain degree.

Both CPU Brands build a feature into their CPUs, called Turbo-Boost or Turbo-Core.

This feature automatically overclocks the cores that are being used as long as the power draw and thermal limitations are not exceeded.

For Animation this means, you might have a CPU with 6 Cores but while animating you only need 1-2 Cores. The CPU now automatically overclocks these 1-2 Cores that are in use but downclocks or stops all other cores.

This happens so fast, that you won’t notice it at all. But you will notice that the Cores you are using (if you are using only a few) are faster.

So here they are, the CPU recommendations for our Best Computer for Animation:

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X – 12 Cores, 3.7GHz Base Clock, 4.8GHz Turbo Clock

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X – 8 Cores, 3.8GHz Base Clock, 4.7GHz Turbo Clock

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X – 6 Cores, 3.7GHz Base Clock, 4.6GHz Turbo Clock

Intel i9 12900K – 16 Cores, 3.2GHz Base Clock, Turbo Boost 5.2GHz

Intel i7 12700K – 12 Cores, 3.6GHz Base Clock, Turbo Boost 5GHz

These CPUs are all excellent for Animation. They have a high Boost-Clock and will give you a snappy active work experience.

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is the Performance / $Dollar winner in this case, as many of the higher-end CPUs are still unproportionally more expensive – or have a lot of cores that don’t speed up Animation workloads per se (they do help in rendering of course).

To get an impression of how these CPUs perform in different workloads, especially in Rendering, go take a look at some of the Benchmark Comparisons such as Cinebench or VRAY Bench.

Best Graphics Card (GPU) for Animation

One would expect the Graphics Card to play a larger role in giving a smooth Viewport and Software Experience, but in the Animation stage, this is usually not the case.

This doesn’t mean the GPU can be ignored but it is seldom the bottleneck and usually has lots of headroom left over while waiting for the CPU to do its calculations before it displays the output.

This can change when you depend on certain features, that only the GPU can calculate. This includes OpenGL features such as Anti-Aliasing, Anisotropic Filtering, SSAO, Realtime-Shadows, and many more.

These types of features are also found in the Maya Viewport 2.0 or in Blender’s Eevee Real-Time Engine and you will benefit from a strong GPU here.

If you don’t rely on a realistic Viewport, but animate mostly in shaded low-quality wireframe preview modes without any fancy effects, then you can make ends meet with a lower-tier Graphics Card such as the Nvidia GTX 1660 Super.

Let’s take a look at some of the currently most popular GPUs:

Nvidia GPUs for Animation

AMD GPUs for Animation

Both Lists in order of Performance – highest performance at the top.

Both GPU Manufacturers, AMD and Nvidia, have some excellent Cards for Animation, although Nvidia Cards usually do better in most 3D Applications and should be your first choice, especially if you also plan on GPU Rendering with these.

The process of GPU Rendering, of course, is much more demanding than Viewport Animation, but this topic is so complex, that I covered it in another article for you to read here: Best Graphics Cards for GPU Rendering.

As a minimum for Animation, I recommend an Nvidia GTX 1650 Super that already gives excellent performance in most 3D and 2D Animation Applications.

An RTX 3060 Ti is the sweet spot between great active work performance and Rendering performance, and if you do lots of GPU-Rendering you should consider buying a higher-tier GPU such as the RTX 3080 or even RTX 3090.

If you need certain professional Features such as 10bit Color support for Monitors you should consider either an Nvidia RTX Series GPU or an AMD GPU, as these come with 10bit color support.

The Nvidia GTX and RTX Cards have an excellent Performance / Price Ratio, especially compared to the Nvidia Quadro Cards and you can GPU-Render on them extremely fast.

AMD’s GPUs can perform well too, though many Software-vendors optimize for Nvidia Cards, and many GPU Render Engines support Nvidia GPUs only (CUDA Support), that is why you very rarely see an AMD GPU be recommended for a Computer or Workstation in Animation.

AMD manufactures excellent GPUs, but the Software support unfortunately just isn’t on the same level yet as it is with Nvidia.

How much and what type of RAM for a Desktop Computer for Animation

This is discussed often and is true: RAM doesn’t impact Performance all that much (if at all) unless you have too little.

Yes, there might be a 2% Speed gain in certain types of workloads, but buying extremely expensive or high-clocked Ram with great Timings, just isn’t worth it for a marginal performance increase.

For Animation, it’s much better to get “normal” RAM Speeds for a normal price and spend the extra bucks on additional RAM capacity.

This will help you a lot more in the long run.

RAM (or Memory) is essentially just a storage component, that the CPU uses to cache data, so it can access it very quickly. If your RAM is full, there is nowhere else to go but the Mass Storage Devices such as the Hard Disk, or Solid State Drives.

These, though, are a multitude slower than RAM, and you will notice your System crawl to a halt if your RAM is full.

So you should make sure you have enough RAM, as full RAM is also a reason why Systems often crash or freeze.

That said, the baseline amount of RAM for Animation should be:

16GB of RAM

32GB though is much better already and 64GB will last you a long time unless you are working on very large projects with lots of Polygons, Displacements, High-resolution Textures, or large Particle-Caches.

Having more RAM also benefits you when you have more than one Software open at the same time. And that happens all the time.

If you are in Cinema 4D or Maya or 3ds Max, chances are you also have Photoshop, maybe After Effects, Google Chrome, and an Email Program opened in the background, and of course, all of these Applications need their own share of RAM.

Good brands to look out for are Corsair and G.Skill. Some particular RAM Kits I can recommend are the Corsair 16GB LPX and the Corsair 32GB LPX Vengeance Kit.

One Important thing here: Buy your final RAM Size in a KIT (Bundle). If you want 32 Gbytes of RAM, buy 4*8GB in a KIT or 2*16GB in a KIT.

Don’t buy two or more individual RAM KITs that you will mix.

Why?

Because bundled RAM modules are pre-tested in the Factory and will work well together.

If you buy RAM Sticks individually, these might not work well together (even if they are of the exact same specifications and Brand) and can cause crashes and blue-screens.

If you do like to optimize even your RAM as much as possible and have some more cash to spare, the general rule is to buy high Clocks and low CL Timings for best performance.

So a 32GB DDR4 3200MHz CL15 would be slightly better than a 32GB DDR4 2666MHz CL17.

Here’s our RAM Guide for Ryzen CPUs that will give you some more RAM recommendations.

Best Motherboard for Animation

As with RAM, the Motherboard, too, is not something that will speed up your Computer at all, but there are some things to consider before buying just any Motherboard.

The Motherboard basically is the central HUB that connects all of your other hardware components.

It serves as a switchboard between these Hardware Components and any external devices you might want to plug into the Computer.

The CPU plugs into the Motherboard and requires the right Socket.

An Intel i9 10900K, for example, would need an LGA 1200 Socket and it only fits into this socket. An AMD Ryzen CPU needs a Motherboard that has an AM4 Socket.

Motherboards have PCI-Express Slots, where the GPU(s) are plugged into. Depending on how many GPUs you would like to get or are planning on upgrading to in the future, be sure to get a Motherboard that has enough PCI-Express Slots.

PCI-E Slots and PCI-E Lanes though are topics for themselves and therefore have an Article for themselves.

Head over there if GPU Rendering in Redshift, VRAY-RT, or Octane on Multi-GPU Setups is something you are planning on doing.

In addition, you should make sure the Motherboard supports the amount of RAM you will be installing. Modern Motherboards usually support up to 64GB of RAM.

External USB Sticks, external Hard-Drives, Input Devices, Mouse, Keyboard and Tablet, and many others are also plugged into the Motherboard.

If you have a lot of external devices that you want to be able to use with this Computer for Animation, be sure the Motherboard has enough connectors to handle them all.

Good Motherboard Brands to look out for include ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte & ASROCK .

If you find all of this a bit overwhelming, I have some finished Computer Builds that I put together for you down below with Hardware Components that work well together.

Best Storage Devices in a Computer for Animation

Storage is an easy one. There are basically just 3 types of Storage Devices that you can get and I’ll list the benefits and use cases very briefly:

HDD or Hard Disc Drive

Kind of an old Storage Device that has been overtaken in terms of performance and speed

Good for archiving and backing up lots of Data, not as good for an active-work Drive

Recommendations: Seagate Barracuda or Western Digital Blue in your desired capacity (e.g. 4TB)

(Sata) SSD or Solid State Drive

About 5x faster than an HDD

Good for Application and OS Drive

Recommendations: Samsung 870 QVO in your desired capacity (e.g. 1TB)

M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD

5x – 10x faster than even SSDs

Great Drive for Active Projects and OS /Applications

More Expensive than SATA SSDs but worth it

Recommendations: Seagate FireCuda 530 in your desired capacity (e.g. 1TB)

I highly recommend getting an NVMe SSD for Animation and other Content Creation Workloads. The Performance is just unbeatable. Do hop over to our NVMe Article to learn more about what NVMe Drive you’ll need exactly.

Highly recommended!

Best Power Supply for your Animation PC Build

Both the Power Supply and the Case, of course, won’t influence the performance of your animation PC, but here are some things to be aware of before choosing:

It is best to get a PSU with a bit more Wattage than necessary, so you have some headroom in case you upgrade to more or more power-hungry components in the future.

This way you can keep your PSU when you upgrade your other components.

Good PSU Brands are Corsair, Seasonic & BeQuiet but you might already have a PSU in your current/old computer that you can continue using if it is strong enough.

If you’d like to have fewer cables inside your PC, I recommend buying a Modular Power Supply.

Check this wattage calculator here to determine how much Watts your PSU should have, depending on the Hardware Components that you are planning on having in your Computer for Animation.

Best Case for a PC targeted at Animation

The Case is what will be on display in your office or room. That is pretty much the only thing people or you get to see. (Unless you have a Case with a glass panel)

Apart from having it fit all of the Hardware Components, this is one of the parts of Building a Computer for Animation where you can let your personal taste decide.

There are so many different Case styles, Colors, Materials, with or without glass panels and various forms and sizes out there, you can browse for days on end