When you’re shaping up to buy a new desktop, there’s not a lot to go on. Big companies aren’t competing for your attention – they’re too busy spending their money pushing the latest and greatest tablets and smart phones. There is hardly any emphasis on which desktop PCs are the best anymore. Buying the best desktop simply boils down to how much you want to pay and how much power you need. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Because technology is constantly evolving, you can easily find cheap desktops so long as you don’t need all the bells and whistles that come with the latest iMac.

It used to be the case that laptops and tablets were not nearly powerful enough to be your primary personal computing system, but those days are long gone. Nowadays, laptops can be powerful enough to run video games, edit videos, and program. Again, this trend of increasing power in technology means that you can easily buy inexpensive desktop PCs with all your basic needs. A cheap desktop under $200 will be able to browse the internet, check email, and word process. It will even be able to play older games that don’t demand a dedicated graphics card.

If your computing needs exceed the basics, you can still find cheap prebuilt desktops under $500 with the capacity for programming and video editing. However, in order to have a truly respectable gaming PC, you’ll have to splurge a little on a system with a dedicated graphics card. On the low end, this will run you around $700.

Despite their lack of portability, desktop PCs are much more reliable and sturdy when compared to laptops. Not to mention, they’re much more inexpensive. When you’re about to buy computer, really evaluate what you’ll be using it for.