We gathered all the chunky competition entry data and presented it in a very fancy Flourish "bar chart race", which may be familiar if you lurk around Reddit's r/dataisbeautiful subreddit.
We used Gleam.io for our competition, and the prize was 3x £50 Steam gifts vouchers, which were won by three lucky gamers at the end of September. The competition ran over 5 days, and we had a great response on social media and via the website.
Not everyone upgraded their PC for a game, however. There were a few people who upgraded because their rig was slowing down, or they were just due an upgrade. We also saw that people were preparing for the huge gaming months coming up in 2021, with October and November releases featuring in the results.
If you love data, and you enjoy gaming, then you’re going to love this…
What Was The Last Game You Upgraded Your PC For?
Without further ado, here is the Flourish bar chart race for the competition!
Below you will find a little more information on the Top 3 games people upgraded their PC for. We show the recommended specifications from the developers, popular sources and the recommended CCL gaming PC build for each game to see how it all stacks up.
#1 Cyberpunk 2077
We absolutely knew Cyberpunk 2077 would feature on the list. 67 entrants upgraded their PC specifically for this game. Here are some of the actual comments we received during the giveaway…
“Bought a new PC to play Cyberpunk, that ended well.”
“Cyberpunk 2077, and I don't regret it”
“I've upgraded to Ryzen 9 5900x / RTX 3080 just to play Cyberpunk 2077; its worth the upgrade!”
Cyberpunk had so much hype and required the highest possible graphical requirements of a PC in recent years, so it was fitting that CD Projekt Red’s blockbuster was the most popular game entrants upgraded their PC for.
Best PC Spec For Cyberpunk 2077
Tom’s Hardware benchmarked this whopper of a release and updated it back in December 2020. Their findings were slightly different from CDPR’s recommended specs, too.
CDPR: Cyberpunk 2077 Recommended Specs
Tom’s Hardware - Cyberpunk 2077 Recommended Specs
Quality: 1080p HIGH
- Core i7-4790 or Ryzen 3 3200G
- GTX 1060 6GB, GTX 1660 Super (or R9 Fury)
- 12GB RAM
- 6GB VRAM
- 70GB SSD storage
- Windows 10 64-bit
CCL - Cyberpunk 2077 Recommended Specs
CCL’s Horizon 3 AMD GTX 1660 Ti Gaming PC has most of this spec in the bag, though you could opt for extra memory to get the most out of Cyberpunk 2077, adding* 2x Patriot Viper Steel RGB 8GB for a total of 16GB at 3200MHz, costing just £14 extra.
*To upgrade the specification, simply click the “Customise this PC” tab on the product page.
However, Tom's Hardware recommended a specification like this for 4K Ultra Ray Tracing, which still leaves room for improvement in our opinion: -
Quality: 4K Ultra Ray Tracing
- Core i7-4790 or Ryzen 3 3200G
- RTX 3080 or RTX 3090
- 16GB RAM
- 10GB VRAM
- 70GB SSD storage
- Windows 10 64-bit
The Horizon 5 gaming PC, however, takes you to ray tracing heaven, with 16GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM, a powerful AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor, and an RTX 3060 12GB GPU. With this specification you will see around 48 FPS – 60 FPS, with RTX on and DLSS Quality.
Taking the specification to the next level for Cybperpunk 2077 requires a little more firepower. The Horizon 5 AMD RTX 3080 hits the ideal specs for playing Cyberpunk 2077 with Ultra settings, RTX on and DLSS Quality. Expect excellent framerates around Night City from this juggernaut.
In second place, the incredible Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 had 13 mentions. Huge on the Xbox console with Game Pass, and ever popular with PC gamers, MSFS2020 soared into the charts in August 2020 and is still cruising at a seriously high altitude, with a Metascore of 91.
Best PC Spec For Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
The recommended specs from Xbox Game Studio are not too demanding, considering they recommend a seven-year-old graphics card. To see the game in all its glory, this specification is going to fall short of the landing strip, unfortunately. Hardcore fans of the franchise will tell you that MSFS2020 is in fact a resource hungry game, and to get the best experience, you will need a powerhouse of a rig to use as your cockpit. Xbox Game Studios does have an “Ideal Spec”, which is a bit more in line with what we’d expect, yet specialist gaming magazines still think it is far too conservative. As PCGamer.com said in a recent benchmark, where the RTX 2080 performed at a paltry 26FPS - “The gaming hardware doesn't yet exist to make Microsoft Flight Simulator really shine”.
Xbox Game Studios Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Recommended Specs
- Intel i5-8400 or Ryzen 5 1500X
- Radeon RX 590 or Nvidia GTX 970
- 16 GB RAM
- 4 GB VRAM
- 150 GB Storage
- Windows 10 64-bit
The Flight Channel Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Recommended Specs
The Flight Channel is a YouTube channel dedicated to all things aviation, and they recently made a video showing MSFS2020 performing incredibly well with 4K HDR Ultra settings, though the spec was a monster build.
- Intel Core i9-9900K or Intel Core i7-8700K
- GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AMP 11GB GDDR6 or GeForce RTX 2080 O8G ROG STRIX OC Edition
- 16 GB DDR4 3000 MHz
- 500GB - M.2 NVMe SSD Storage
CCL - Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Recommended Specs
The Nazare 9134 is capable of handling just about anything Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 can throw at it, with particular attention to the CPU being able to handle things like real-time weather and insanely accurate physics simulations, and the a fast SSD storage to load up the beautiful photorealistic textures in the game.
#3 Red Dead Redemption 2
Yeehaw! We’re really pleased that this game made the list and actually beat Grand Theft Auto V with 11 entrants choosing to upgrade their PC for this Wild West open-world blockbuster. A truly stunning and engrossing game, RDR 2 is one of Rockstar’s best works, with over 175 game awards to date since launching on the PC back in November 2019 it has gone on to rack up tens of millions of sales on PC. While the minimum specs are not going to enable you to see the dilation of Arthur’s eyes, as some gamers reported, you would be much better served with a higher specification as Rockstar and YouTube creator “MK” recommend.
Rockstar Red Dead Redemption 2 Recommended Specs
- Intel® Core™ i7-4770K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
- 12GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB
- HDD Space: 150GB
- Windows 10 64-bit
MK (YouTube) Red Dead Redemption 2 Recommended Specs
These specifications accompanied an insanely high quality 4K Ultra playthrough of RDR 2, on the YouTube channel MK. From the water reflections to the fibres of Arthur’s jacket, the graphics quality is enough to leave you spellbound.
- Intel® Core™ i7-4770K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
- 12GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB
- HDD Space: 150GB
- Windows 10 64-bit
These specifications accompanied an insanely high quality 4K Ultra playthrough of RDR 2, on the YouTube channel MK. From the water reflections to the fibres of Arthur’s jacket, the graphics quality is enough to leave you spellbound.
CCL - Red Dead Redemption 2 Recommended Specs
Yet again, the Nazare 9134 comes out on top in the shootout, with more than enough inside the stunningly chilled Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB case to take on RDR 2 at high noon on Ultra settings.
The Last Word
Congratulations to our three winners, who each walked away with £50 to spend on Steam, and with some of the incredible titles heading our way over the next month or so, they will be spoiled for choice!
