About two-thirds of Steam users are playing at 1080p, according to the current, voluntary Steam Hardware Survey. There's nothing shameful about 1080p—I can sort of remember how that screen resolution looks, if I focus very hard on what life was like during the Obama presidency. But if you want to experience more of the richness of PC gaming, we think you should be playing at 1440p in 2021.
Based on our recent poll of 15 PC Gamer editors, making the jump from 1080p to 1440p is one of the best PC upgrades you can make, on par with upgrading your GPU itself. 4K is great, but it makes it much harder to hit the other metric we especially value: playing PC games at high frame rates, at least 90-plus fps.
This is the desktop PC spec we recommend for most people:
- 2560x1440 resolution at a 16:9 aspect ratio
- Or 3440x1440 on an ultrawide 21:9 display
- 144Hz
- IPS or VA panel (more info on monitor panel types)
If you're looking to own a gaming PC for the first time right now, or upgrading for the first time in awhile, a pre-built system is the only way to affordably get your hands on the kind of graphics card you'll need to play at 1440p, unless you follow restock alerts day and night. To hit high frame rates in most games we recommend an Nvidia RTX 3070, but you can also get away with an RTX 3060 Ti, especially if you're okay turning some settings down or mostly play games like League of Legends or Fortnite.
There are tons of gaming PCs on sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but many offer hardware too weak for 1440p 144Hz gaming, or offer even more power than you need and cost a ton as a result. These are the three best deals we've found that deliver exactly the power you need at the best price.
1440p-capable gaming PCs
1440p + 144Hz monitors we recommend
At 2560x1440, you're looking at about 3.6 million pixels, 77% more than 1080p. 1440p is the perfect midpoint between 4K, which is still too detrimental to most games' framerates, and 1080p, which most GPUs can run comfortably in 2021.
