With many gaming PC brands on the market, it’s hard to determine which one is reliable. For a beginner with no experience in buying a gaming computer, there are higher chances of wasting your hard money on a decade-old machine.
I have been buying and building gaming PCs for over a decade now. It would help if you didn’t make mistakes that I have made in going after cheaper or shady gaming PC brands.
This guide includes all of those gaming PC brands that charge too much money or make a lot of promises they don’t keep up with.
Quick Tip: It’s not always the brand that matters when selecting a pre-built gaming PC brand. The overall performance of your gaming PC depends upon the compatibility of parts (like GPU, CPU, RAM, etc). The only two factors to differentiate a bad gaming PC brand from a good one are the “Customer Service” and “Value“.
Worst Gaming PC Brands
I’m unbiased against the brands that I’ll mention below. These are the opinions based on my own experiences and complaints I have read from gamers in communities like Discord and Reddit.
1: Apex Gaming PCs
Apex advertises its gaming machines with fancy RGB lights and aesthetical side panels. Most gamers buy a gaming PC because of these cool-looking features. The looks do matter only if they are not “AI-generated“.
When you visit the Official website of Apex Gaming PC, you’ll see that all gaming PC images are generated using AI. Thanks to Braethorn’s video on YouTube who has highlighted this issue.
Who knows they are just getting money from you, building a PC out of it, and then shipping that back to you.
Going through Apex Gaming PC’s product catalogue, you’ll find “Product Titles” that don’t make sense with the hardware packed inside that machine.
For example, the Apex RTS Streamer mentions that it’s a PC meant for streamers. But when you dig inside the specs, you’ll find AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU (six core) installed on this machine.
Apex RTS Streamer costs around $2000, too much for a PC with a Ryzen 5 5600 CPU with a stock cooler.
You will not pay a hefty amount for a PC with a mid-range processor. But this is when the “Discount” kicks in, Apex Gaming PC trick the customer by saying that they will give you a discount of 25% on each product.
So, a $2000 product now costs you $1500. Just ask yourself, is it worth buying for even $1500? Not at all. So there’s no value for the money in an Apex Gaming PC machine, this is my final opinion.
Lastly, there are a lot of complaints from buyers who have bought a gaming PC from the Apex Gaming PC brand. I’m attaching the pictures below:
2: Skytech
With thousands of positive reviews on Amazon, Skytech has made its way among pre-built gaming PC brands in a short time. However, there’s a lot that I have to share with you after going through the different gaming builds that Skytech has to offer.
“Skytech gaming PCs are overpriced, and this the fact”.
Let’s start by taking an example of the Skytech Arcangel Gaming Computer with Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, RTX 2070 8GB GPU, 500GB SSD storage, 16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM, RGB stuff, and Windows 10 Home 64-bit costing around $1,149 on Amazon.
Go to a website like PCPartPicker and select the same hardware (the one used by Skytech in their machine) to build a gaming rig, you can easily get one under $1000.
You can see the image below where I went to PCPartPicker and instead of opting for RTX 2070, I went for RTX 4070 which is way more powerful than the older RTX 2070 card. The total price I got to build such a PC was just $903 (without Windows 10 operating system).
This shows us that the people behind the Skytech brand are inexperienced just like the Apex Gaming PC.
On Amazon, you’ll find mixed reviews about the performance of Skytech gaming machines.
What I’ve experienced so far with the Skytech PCs is the worst airflow management. Skytech puts all of its efforts into building the aesthetics and you’ll hardly find enough intake fans on the chassis. A bad airflow design could result in frequent crashes or errors like the one reported below.
Moving on, there are a lot of complaints about Skytech regarding the Customer Support they offer.
3: Dell Gaming OptiPlex
I’m not talking about the Dell as a whole, rather I’m only focusing on the “OptiPlex” Series here. Let’s say you searched for a “cheap gaming PC” on Amazon or Walmart, chances are that you’ll end up with computers from Dell OptiPlex.
Of course, Dell has a premium gaming line-up called the “Alienware”. And there’s no doubt that Dell’s Alienware gaming PCs are the best even if they are costly. At least, the Alienware machines yield the performance for the price you pay.
The Dell Gaming OptiPlex, however, comes with gaming machines with entry-level hardware and a higher price tag.
As you can see in the image above, this Dell OptiPlex Desktop Gaming PC is sold for $343 with a Core i7 3rd generation CPU and a GT 1030 2GB graphics card. Yes, it’s low-budget, but it’s not meant for gaming.
One of the common issues I’ve experienced with the Dell Gaming PCs is no room for upgrade. The Dell OptiPlex gaming machines are even worse and the hardware is cramped, making it difficult for fresh air to circulate. Even the latest Alienware machines have limited room for upgradability.
Bottom Line
As said earlier, there’s a thin line between a good gaming PC brand and the worst one. An easy way to avoid crappy gaming PC brands is to find out the individual prices of the hardware they offer and then add an extra $100 to $150 to that amount (as a surcharge for assembling the PC). Worst gaming PC brands would not provide technical assistance once the product is sold.
Mosaab Jamal Ahmed is a seasoned technology enthusiast with a passion for gaming and PC upgrades. His journey began in 1998 with a Pentium 1 PC, igniting his lifelong fascination with computer hardware.
Over the years, Mosaab has honed his skills in upgrading and optimizing PCs with the latest components, ensuring peak performance for gaming and other demanding applications.
Through his insightful articles, Mosaab shares his extensive knowledge on building and enhancing gaming PCs.