From left: Starforge, Optimist and Ironside gaming PCs.
Photographer: Sarah Natsumi Moore for Bloomberg Businessweek; Prop styling by Sarah KarneyGamers Are Turning PCs Into Fantasy Worlds of Their Own
Not just a gray box that hides under the desk anymore, many gaming PCs are designed and modified to be shown off.
In 2020, Jasmine Bailey declared her laptop unfit for World of Warcraft. It rendered her elf avatar’s hair as pixelated mounds. In elegant environments such as the flower-filled Dreamgrove, the laptop’s temperature rose precipitously. Sometimes the screen just turned black.
Bailey was between two unrelated milestones: leaving college and the release of Nvidia Corp.’s 3000 series graphics cards. The new component was capable of distinguishing each digital follicle from the others; she just needed a better computer to put it in. Browsing the internet, Bailey was indifferent to the big gray rectangles from computer-manufacturing mainstays such as HP Inc. Instead she ordered the Nvidia component and looked up YouTube walk-throughs for building a custom PC.