What game encouraged you to make your new PC, or upgrade?

For me, it was Cyberpunk 2077. I wanted to run around Night City with ultra graphics and raytracing. Too bad it launched in such a badly optimized state.

God of War for single player games and Apex Legends for multiplayer.

I had never been a playstation guy but really wanted to play the new God of War and knew for a fact that my computer was not good enough. I used to be into Apex for a good couple years and could barely run it. Had to turn everything all the way down just to hid a semi decent FPS.

Now I don't even play Apex but I'm glad I got to play God of War on the highest settings and enjoy the game to the fullest. Still one of my favorite games and I'm definitely gonna get Ragnarok when it comes out on PC

I assembled my current workstation with an RTX 3080 to coincide with Cyberpunk 2077 release.

Now I was lucky I bought it right before prices got gouged by scalpers, and to this day its considered a high end PC. 2 years with 0 issues and easy customization.

In hindsight that piece of trash scam of a game was a blessing in disguise.

Do not buy parts for Starfield until it releases and reviewers report in.

I most recently upgraded due to no mans sky constantly struggling. But upgraded enough to get cyberpunk and path tracing. With it being out for iver 2 years when i upgraded, those hardware targets were known.
This machine should cover me for starfield though.

Starfield is unknown.

Sekiro - This was January 2020 so the timing was perfect just before covid hit (in my country). Back then I just had the opportunity to build one so I didn't think twice cuz I wanted a gaming pc since forever.

I had at the time so many games in mind for years and also in my backlog, so it was incredible to finally build one and play all of them during the lockdowns lmao

Half Life Alyx convinced me to finally build a PC. Street Fighter 6's minimum specs convinced me to upgrade.

Skyrim back in 2011, and Cyberpunk 2077 more recently.

The game that fully got me into this PC madness was the glorious Battlefield 3 in 2011-2012.
Before that I had dabbled somewhat into PC gaming, even changing a graphics card and what not, but I was still rather clueless about it... Until EA and Dice dropped this fucking megaton into the unsuspecting world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FktL2pu2wE

Nowadays, that gameplay above? It merely looks decent. But back in the dying days of the PS360 generation? That shit looked BANANAS, let me tell you. It was, legitimately, like a generation and a half of visual improvement. We couldn't believe it, it was fucking insane. And that, combined with the start of the golden era of PC and the disastrous aging of PS360, meant that I HAD to get a PC, like a decently built from scratch, purpose-built-for-gaming PC. So I started getting informed and saving for the components all throughout 2011 so that I could be there for BF3 day one on the ground floor.

I ended up saving around 450 euros, and this was back in the day when 500 bucks got you an pretty good computer. I got a Radeon HD 6850 and a Phenom 955, and the latter is still working to this day back in my family's house. Every buck and minute of research was worth it, and it even led me down the road of getting into IT as a profession. I have so much to thank to whoever were the people that made that reveal look so sick lol.

Control got me to build a new PC. I had an average laptop before, but sold the laptop and built a PC with a 3080 in it for the sweet raytracing. Managed to pick the 3080 up at RRP before all the Crypto boom started, so I was stoked! Still going very strong after almost 3 years.

Back in the day, Cube World... RIP...

For me, it was Cities:Skylines. My old PC couldnt play it (first game i wanted to play that it couldnt run), so i upgraded.

Now that Cities:Skylines2 is coming out in a few months, i anticipate needing to upgrade again lol.

Star Citizen. Later refunded as it is a hot mess.

I tend to build a new PC every time a new Diablo game drops

Cyberpunk 2077, bought it on sale and my 125 gb SSD, FX8350 and rx580 weren't terribly happy. Grabbed a used ryzen 3600 and used 2080 super for $200. Board, ram, and m.2 drive for about the same new. Now I'm debating the 5600xcd or just hold off till I want the AM5 chips, that'll depend on how Starfield runs.

While I just needed an upgrade in general ( Went from a 1060ti/i7 8gen to a 3070ti/i7 12gen), I was in the middle of God of War and the improvement was incredible. Didn't realize how much better games could run. 😅

While I just needed an upgrade in general ( Went from a 1060ti/i7 8gen to a 3070ti/i7 12gen), I was in the middle of God of War and the improvement was incredible. Didn't realize how much better games could run. 😅

Dwarf Fortress

Alyx.

During the pandemic I had a power surge that torched my motherboard and power supply. I didn’t want to have to spend the inflated costs to replace my PC so I just sold my GPU and bought a NUC for a couple hundred dollars.

I used GeForceNow to play PC games on my phone or TV now. Works out for me. I have a PS5 for games that I want a local experience or aren’t available for GeForceNow. Pretty much any game that doesn’t fall into those two categories such OOTP can run on the NUC. Not a bad setup if you have the connection for it

The last time I upgraded my PC was to play the Tomb Raider reboot and Bioshock Infinite.

Machine still runs everything great... Except games.

I just switched over to my PS4, and the PS5 for gaming.

Honestly I just got tired of every time I updated my video card driver to make one game work, it broke another game.

YMMV, but I've been a happier gamer since I went back to consoles.

For me I originally built my PC 6-7 years ago because of Rainbow Six Siege and the leaning without ads and to be more competitive. Only upgrade I have done is the GPU and honestly should've waited but here we are.

Funny you should mention Starfield, my previous rig (up until 2020) I built specifically for Fallout 4, anticipating that I'd need something reasonably beefy for all the mods (4790k, R9 390). Didn't really gel with F4 but enjoyed Witcher 3 a lot at the time.

When I wanted 3 monitors for my sim racing addiction. Definitely needed a beefy gpu, especially at 1440p for each screen.

guild wars 2. it's always guild wars 2 I come back to...

Total war games have historically pushed both my GPU and CPU upgrades. I'm still amazed how poorly their engines are optimized, how I can run into the high 200 FPS+ range on some demanding games with my 4090 but playing Warhammer 3 on ultra quality at ultrawide 1440p pushes it to almost 100% GPU usage at around 100 FPS.

Really great game when when your can have massive battles without lag, but still amazed that even with a 4090 / 12900k the campaign map and battles aren't perfect

Quake 1 - though not quite at launch, it was the game that pushed me to get a Voodoo 1 card. Half-Life 2 - due to the delay I ended upgrading my video card twice, ending on an ATI Radeon 9800

Skull and bones! Thought and set my own deadline to last autumn, but it still isnt out

When the demo for RE4 Remake came out and it was just a total slideshow, I uninstalled it and began my journey. My i7 lasted well over 10 years, it got the full 10 gun salute

Gonna date myself a bit but Diablo 2 was the first time I really needed to upgrade our computer. Needed more space.

Then games like Crysis (shoutout 5970) and most recently cyberpunk

My old system was already 10 years old. When Hogwarts Legacy came out, I was able to set a goal for my future system. Being able to play the game on ultra settings on a 1440p Monitor with 144 FPS.

My old PC was able to reach about 33 FPS on the lowest Settings possible. Next week I should have the last part for my new PC.

My old system was already 10 years old. When Hogwarts Legacy came out, I was able to set a goal for my future system. Being able to play the game on ultra settings on a 1440p Monitor with 144 FPS.

My old PC was able to reach about 33 FPS on the lowest Settings possible. Next week I should have the last part for my new PC.

It was Battlefield 3! The moment I got in a helicopter with under 20fps I knew it was a need and not a want anymore. I had to get a gtx 480 and a new power supply to support it. Followed by a pci slot fan to help it out a little more

Permanently Deleted

Never had a gaming PC before so I bought due to pandemic boredom and New Vegas running like crap on my Surface Pro.

I had an i3 3240 paired with GT640 before since 2013 until 2020, it was good for 720p... hehe, yes that was enough for me.

But then Bannerlord came out and had me really excited, I loved Warband so I really wanted to play it, in my old PC Bannerlord barely ran at 20fps with heavy stutters and looooooooong loading times.

Then I did the unthinkable, heresy in the PC community... I bought an affordable pre-built and then I added more ram and an SSD.

Anyway, I still don't play Bannerlord, I got sidetracked with other games lmao

My old system was already 10 years old. When Hogwarts Legacy came out, I was able to set a goal for my future system. Being able to play the game on ultra settings on a 1440p Monitor with 144 FPS.

My old PC was able to reach about 33 FPS on the lowest Settings possible. Next week I should have the last part for my new PC. 🤩

I upgraded because my previous PC was a dead end. It was a retrofitted XPS workstation I got from my father - I had slotted a SATA SSD and a somewhat improved GPU, but I couldn't push it much further due to the proprietary PSU form factor. There weren't even extra PCIe slots, which became a huge issue when I switched off Windows and wanted to get an Intel Wifi/BT card.

no games in particular, really. just that steam threatened to stop working next year on windows 7. so I bought some parts and built a new PC with windows 10 installed on it. I also dual booted linux for good measure

Path of Exile lol.

While this wasn’t the sole reason (I was just kinda due for an upgrade anyway), I was interested in playing Half-life Alyx and Star Wars Squadrons in VR.

Just wanted to mention that I've had the 6800XT for a little while now, and I am very happy with it. Runs the majority of games great at 1440p/144FPS, and I've never had any issues with temperatures or drivers. I will mention, however, that the 6800Xt is a big, big SOB and barely fit in my case, so make sure you measure your case a bunch.

Even though the game was already a decade old at the time, Skyrim. I realized that mods could bring it up to modern game graphics and gameplay, then built a gaming PC to support that. And in a few months, it'll be used for Starfield.

Nier Automata made me do my first upgrade since I got my PC back around 2010. I was very excited to play it, loaded it, and slugged below 10 fps in the opening scene of the game. I was incredibly sad, but undeterred in playing what became one of my favorite games of all time. Got a 1070, came home, and forgot about power usage. So I had to go out again and get a new power supply. Then it became smooth sailing. Nowadays I'm looking to upgrade my whole PC since my I7 is probably slower than today's i3 maybe ( I know it's worse than an i5 now) but no game has given me issue right now (except D4 making my computer into an airplane.)

Csgo then valorant. Lucky for me these games are very budget friendly.

PC builder simulator.

(actually the witcher 3)

For me it was PUBG. I had been away from pc gaming for a while, and my friends wanted me to join them in PUBG. I had an old laptop with dedicated graphics, but the game was so horribly optimized that it was unplayable. I built my current rig then.

New World. Friend at work recommended it, so I bought it. Couldn't get it to run. This was during the GPU shortage a few years ago. Spent weeks on a wait list and finally got something close to 2x MSRP bundled with a motherboard. At that point I figured I should just go all in and do a full upgrade. Finally got things running and lost interest in the game 2 hours later - haven't touched it since. Now I mostly just play RimWorld.

My brother brought me Tiny Tina for us to play online together and my video card couldn't play it so I had to upgrade...

Weirdly, Fallout 76. Some friends bought it for me for my birthday so we could all play together and I was struggling, so I updated my system and honestly had a lot of fun, as janky as the game was around launch. Lots of good times with my friends.

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades (H3VR) sold me on Vive (then later Index) as well as an upgraded second PC just for VR gaming. I've certainly enjoyed other VR titles but H3VR is by far my favorite and alone was worth the "investment."

Cyberpunk 2077 at launch....at least I got myself an awesome computer!

Hell Let Loose. Not because its terribly hard to run, but my OC'd 590 happened to die while I was playing it.

Do not buy parts for Starfield until it releases and reviewers report in.

I most recently upgraded due to no mans sky constantly struggling. But upgraded enough to get cyberpunk and path tracing. With it being out for iver 2 years when i upgraded, those hardware targets were known.
This machine should cover me for starfield though.

Starfield is unknown.

Three main phases.

1. A long time ago was EverQuest. Some online friends figured out you could take the beta exe file testers got and distribute it to others, who could run and get the updates. So I tried it out and got to see the world of Norrath. At one frame every five seconds. Turns out the integrated graphics wasn't going to cut it, so I got my first ever graphics card, a lovely Riva TNT. Wow, the difference.

2. It was time for a new PC anyway, so along with getting the best I could afford, I had to have a new game to test it with, right? That was back when you could get a free Halo CE along with a Windows purchase, and I had been following the Halo development videos so it was a natural choice. My computer's first sounds were the opening menu soundtrack.

3. Current PC, again it was time for a new one since the last was #2, and if you know the dates for Halo that was "ancient", although it had done well for most things I had thrown at it. The game that I already had been playing but wanted an extra boost was Elite Dangerous. Not only did I get an upgrade in graphic card, CPU, memory, etc., but I obtained several used 24 inch monitors in order to have three screens, something I couldn't manage with the previous PC/card.

I wanted the most extreme sff pc I could afford at that time. I really didn't need an upgrade, but I was at the end of the am4 platform with my 5800x3d, so am5 with all it's quirks was it.

Originally built my PC because I heard reputable rumours of Destiny 2 releasing on PC. Already had an ok laptop that was showing it's age, but built a PC with an i3-4170, 8GB of RAM, and a GTX 1060 3GB. A year after that I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 1600 because dual core in 2017 lul.

MMOs were a big driver for me back then. GW2, WoW made me upgrade my GPU a few times.

Company of Heroes made me upgrade my RAM from 6GB to 12GB.

Most recently, Elite: Dangerous with the Odyssey expansion persuaded me to upgrade from my GTX 1070 to a RX 6700 XT.

PUBG

During covid I got bored and upgraded my system, not for any particular game but justified it by mining crypto when I wasnt using my PC

My next computer is being built for Cities: Skylines 2 for sure.

DCS World is the biggest reason that my most recent build had 64Gb of RAM.

Treated myself to an ultrawide and rtx 3070 during the pandemic for Cyberpunk and Battlefield 2042... and for work and study, of course. Cyberpunk was a bit choppy, but I got used to it--thankfully only ever crashed a few times during my playthrough. Played Horizon: Zero Dawn, Apex Legends, Star Wars: Fallen Order, Titanfall 2, and some other games, mostly FPS/shooters (NMS, hunting games)... then it became a glorified Fall Guys machine for a bit until I got a PS5... next upgrade may be when the 4090s come down in price, or whenever 24 GB of video ram is more affordable (I actually could use the extra ram for work-related experiments). Maybe a sidegrade to the steam deck?

iRacing has driven (heh) the vast majority of my PC upgrades over the past few years. Changing from monitors to an Oculus had me upgrading GPUs back in 2017, I got a 3080 two years ago which let me upgrade to a Reverb G2, then realized I was getting CPU-bound fps drops so I ended up with a 5800X, all in the interest of higher settings and more cars on track at once. Unless someone comes out with a worthy upgrade to the Reverb, I think I'm set for a bit.

No game. GPU-accelerated rendering engines. Faster cards with more memory mean I can make much more complex scenes and shaders

Jedi Survivor, it was a buggy release.

I always build a new PC whnen there is a new Diablo game

My first PC ever was built because I really wanted to play modded Skyrim, Minecraft, and Metro 2033. i3 3225 and a 7750, later upgraded to a 2500k with a 7950. That machine was insanely badass. When the i5 and 7950 were overclocked, they outperformed my brother's 4th gen i5 with a 970.

A few games have gotten me to do that over the years.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition was what finally convinced me to fit a 1TB SSD, and Control was what convinced me it was finally time to get a ray-tracing card.

BeamNG.drive and Teardown both have some intensive physics my old PC barely handled BeamNG with horrible graphics at 18fps and teardown fine until I got to quilez security map where stutter started.

Starfield is my current 'need' to build a new PC - What i have, i built in 2017 because my PC at the time was a cobbled-together mess and i wanted to treat myself, so i built all-new with a 7700k, 32GB, and a fresh 1080ti - It's been great all this time, but really is showing its age. So next up i'll be building something to last me at least 4 years and it may well be: 7900xtx (but waiting until towards the end of the year in case something better comes out, or waiting a little longer is justified), 7800X3D, 64GB DDR5, PCIE5 mobo and a 2TB M.2, a 2TB SSD and a 1200w PSU.

If that doesn't last me 4 years.....

And i at least know i can slam any game to max at 4k 120hz (bar RT) without worry, and perhaps with FSR.

Ideally i'd like to wait for a card after the 7900XTX, maybe this supposed RDNA 3.5, or maybe the 8000 series if it's soon enough. All rumours right now, so i will at least wait until maybe November or early December and then cash in on the included Starfield with the CPU. Bonus!

Rdr2. Was using a i5-3570 + 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz. Jumped to a Ryzen 5 5600+16GB DDR4 3600. My RX570 still holding.

No single game has gotten me to upgrade my PC, however if RDR2 released on PC at the same time as consoles, I would have upgraded for it. I ended up buying a PS4 to play at launch, and bought it again once it came to Steam (didn't need to upgrade to run it by that point).