With so many businesses and companies implementing work from home policies, many people have decided to pick up a new PC for work. Many of these people also love gaming. So, why not combine your passion with your work life and just pick up a gaming PC?

We would all love to have an excuse for buying a gaming PC, but is a gaming PC really the right choice for a work computer?

Can A Gaming PC Be Used For Work?

A gaming PC can be used for work most of the time, but it will depend a lot on what kind of work you do. If your work is very light weight, and doesn’t require hardcore rendering or processing power, then there’s absolutely no reason your gaming PC can’t be used for work as well.

There are not a lot of jobs out there that a gaming PC wouldn’t be able to handle. A gaming PC may even be the perfect tool for the job if you work in 3D animation or something that requires rendering extremely detailed frames.

The only time you wouldn’t be able to use a gaming PC for work would be if your boss or company had it strictly against the terms of your contract. With that being said, there are a couple of disadvantages to go over:

• Your gaming PC will have many files unrelated to work, which could get messy and unorganized

• Working on your gaming PC can make it extremely tempting to take long breaks from work

• If you’re self employed and use your gaming PC for work and gaming, you cannot count it as a tax write off

Luckily for you, I have a solution for most of these problems! I work on my gaming PC, and what I do is create a new profile specifically for work. When I log into that profile, there are no games trying to tempt me and everything on my desktop and in my browser is strictly work-related.

Best Gaming PCs For Gaming And Work

The best gaming PCs for work are going to have enough storage space for work related material, an SSD so that all your work related files load quickly, and enough RAM / DDR4 to handle multi-tasking or whatever work-related task you will find yourself doing. Of course, it should also handle games.

I’m going to go over a few of the best gaming PCs that I found on Amazon that will also work great for work. This list is going to go from cheapest to most expensive, and the budget will range from $650 – 1,500 so that there’s something for everyone.

I want these PCs to be ready for gaming and work right out of the box, with no upgrades necessary, so I focused on having solid storage, SSDs, and RAM while making sure the graphics card and processor are good enough for gaming.

HP Pavilion Gaming PC

At the time of this article, this PC is only $650 and has a few things going for it. First of all, it has wi-fi, bluetooth, and Windows 11 straight out of the box, which is fantastic for work depending on how your office is set up and which peripherals you want to use.

Looking at hardware, this PC has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, which isn’t absolutely amazing but it’s good enough to get the job done for most games, especially on lower settings. The processor also isn’t bad, a 10th Gen Intel Core i3-10105 should satisfy all of your work and gaming needs.

This PC has 8 GB of RAM, which is the absolute minimum you should consider for gaming. 4 GB might be good enough for work alone, but it just doesn’t cut it for gaming. I’d also much rather have the 8 GB for work just in case, because slow downs due to RAM usage can be extremely frustrating.

My only problem with this gaming PC is the 256 GB SSD. This SSD is perfect if your work files are stored online and you only want a couple of large games on your PC. However, if you have to store heavy work files, like in Graphic Design, animation, etc, you’ll need to invest in an external drive or add an HDD hard drive to this build to be satisfactory.

CYBERPOWERPC Gamer Xtreme VR Gaming PC

Now, this PC has all of the bells and whistles that you could ever ask for. Just as before, it has wi-fi and Windows 11 pre-installed, so it’ll work for work right out of the box. However, this PC is working with some very heavy duty hardware.

This CyberPower PC comes with a GeForce RTX 2060 6GB graphics card, which will be able to handle any game you throw at it. It also has an Intel Core i5-11400F 2.6GHz processor and 8GB of DDR4. DDR4 is faster and more reliable than typical RAM, so you will have absolutely no worries working on this bad boy.

This PC even upgrades the innate storage to a 500GB NVMe SSD. 500 GB, again, may be low for some people, depending on how large their work files are and if they need to be stored on their PC instead of the cloud. However, for most people, 500GB is going to be plenty for working and for gaming.

I, myself, have about 500GB SSD storage space and can make do with it between work files and gaming files. Although, I do have to uninstall and reinstall games semi-often.

2022 HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop PC (with Geforce RTX 3060)

This is the absolute best PC you’re going to find for work. There are a few reasons that I love this PC, especially for working. It is future proof since it is built with state of the art  hardware, and it’ll overperform on just about any task you throw at it.

First of all, let’s talk about the graphics card and the processor. It does not get better than a Geforce RTX 3060 graphics card. This will be able to run literally anything you need it to, and at whatever graphics you want. The Intel i5-10400F is also state of the art and will ensure you can process whatever you need.

Next up, the RAM. 32 GB RAM is the gold standard, and will be more than enough RAM for gaming for the next decade. As far as work goes, 32 GB of RAM coupled with the Intel i5 processor will allow you to open as many browser tabs and run as many programs as you need without any slowdowns.

This PC also sports a 1 TB SSD, which is absolutely insane. With a whole TB of data storage available, you will be able to store as many games and work files as you need. The advantage of being able to store your files on an SSD is that they will load extremely fast, which will streamline your work.

If 1 TB of data isn’t enough for you, this also comes with a 2 TB HDD. So, for any old files you won’t be opening but still need to keep, you have an insane amount of storage available to keep them safe.

Can You Use A Gaming PC All Day?

You can use a gaming PC all day without any issues. However, this will increase the build up of dust inside of the PC, so if you leave the PC on all day it is a good idea to air dust the inside more often. Shutting the PC down at night is also a good idea in order to prevent memory leaks and other issues.

Modern gaming PCs are designed to run 24/7 but that doesn’t always mean they should be. Leaving your computer on during the day and shutting it off at night is a very good practice to give it a break and fix any memory leaks that may have occurred from programs or even Windows itself.

Leaving your PC on will also build up dust and put more pressure on the fans. So just make sure to monitor the temperature of your hardware, and dust your PC out monthly or bi-monthly.

Does A Gaming PC Increase Your Electricity Bill?

A gaming PC will increase your electricity bill, but usually not be by a huge amount. It depends on the hardware that your PC is running, which games you are playing, and how often you’re playing them. Most people will see a max of about $10 – 15 per month extra on their electricity bill.

The extra increase on your electricity bill will also depend on where you live and how much electricity costs. As a general rule of thumb for the USA, though, you probably will not see more than $15 extra per month with your PC running at 70% capacity 24/7 (also unlikely).

Is A Gaming PC Worth It For Work?

A gaming PC is worth it for work if you play a lot of games and have work that requires a lot of processing or rendering power. If you’re self employed and your work doesn’t require strong hardware, it may be better to just buy a cheaper computer for work and write it off as a business expense on taxes.

Whether a gaming PC is worth it will depend on your situation, but if you’re a gamer and work from home, then you might as well grab a gaming PC. A gaming PC will have all of the RAM and processing power you need to run multiple browser tabs and work software at the same time, so you won’t have to worry about a crash causing data loss on an important project.