There are plenty of reasons to choose a desktop over a laptop, despite the latter's greater popularity. What you sacrifice in portability with a desktop you gain in other areas, including greater performance and value plus a greater ability to upgrade. Desktops come in all shapes and sizes, from small-form-factor (SFF) and all-in-one PCs to full-tower, high-powered gaming rigs. At CNET, we test and review all varieties of desktop computers and have been doing so for decades. Here are the best desktop PCs you can buy right now, starting with Apple's excellent iMac and also including our favorite gaming PCs in three budget classes.
What is the best desktop computer overall?
The best desktop for most people is Apple's new M4-based iMac. It integrates the display and offers everything you could want in an all-in-one. For a reasonable sum, the iMac provides a fantastic design centered on a high-resolution, 24-inch display powered by Apple's new M4 processor. Performance from Apple's latest silicon is, without a doubt, impressive on all counts. If you need more screen space than you'd get with a laptop, the 24-inch iMac gives you added room on which to work and play. Yet, with its compact design and power cable that magnetically pops into place, the iMac is easy to relocate from room to room. The computer is also available in seven fun colors with accessories to match.
If you're looking for a traditional tower desktop or a small-form-factor PC instead of an all-in-one like the iMac, then keep reading because we also have recommendations for those. We like a pair of Lenovo Legion Towers as lower-cost gaming PCs and an HP Omen system at the higher-end. HP also makes our favorite Windows-based all-in-one PC and two other Macs made the list.
Best desktop computers of 2025
Recent additions
The most recent addition to our best desktops list is Apple's latest Mac Studio. The new M4 Max model takes the place of the previous M2 Max model. Maxed out, the Mac Studio is likely the most powerful Mac you can get at the moment, at least until Apple upgrades the Mac Pro. Now it supports Thunderbolt 5 but it's mostly unchanged from the model that shipped in 2023 , which was mostly unchanged from the original. It remains a well-designed compact desktop for Mac upgrades and one of the best desktops in general.
Other desktops we've tested
Lenovo LOQ Tower Gaming Desktop : The LOQ Tower 17IRR9 borrows a lot from the Legion Tower 5i and packs it into a cheaper package but with some sacrifices.
Alienware Aurora R16 Desktop : It offers good performance, but you should probably wait for Nvidia's next-gen GPUs.
Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 27 : This budget all-in-one PC is a good budget-friendly home office option and its extra screen space is welcomed but the low-resolution panel makes it much less attractive.
Dell Inspiron 24 All-in-One 5430 : It costs hundreds less than the cheapest iMac but its design and build quality are also miles away from what you get with Apple's all-in-one.
How we test desktops
The review process for desktops consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our reviewers. This includes evaluating a device's aesthetics, ergonomics and features with respect to price. A final review verdict is a combination of objective and subjective judgments.
We test all desktops with a core set of benchmarks, including Primate Labs Geekbench 6 , Cinebench R23 , PCMark 10 , a variety of 3DMark benchmarks (whichever can run on the desktop), UL Procyon Photo and Video (where supported), and our own battery life test. If a desktop is intended for gaming, we'll also run benchmarks from Guardians of the Galaxy , The Rift Breaker (CPU and GPU) and Shadow of the Tomb Raider .
Dan Ackerman/CNET
For the hands-on, the reviewer uses it for their work during the review period, evaluating how well the design, features (such as the screen, camera and speakers) and manufacturer-supplied software operate as a cohesive whole. We also place importance on how well they work given their cost and where the manufacturer has potentially made upgrades or tradeoffs for its price.
The list of benchmarking software and comparison criteria we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. You can find a more detailed description of our test methodology on our page on how we test computers .
Factors to consider when buying a desktop computer
Price
You can find a good PC tower from brands like Acer, Asus, Dell or HP for between $500 and $600 that will prove useful for years for general use. The specs we'd suggest for a basic Windows 11 machine:
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Intel Core i5 (13th- or 14th-gen) or AMD Ryzen 5 (7000 or 8000 series)
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Default integrated graphics (such as Intel Iris or Arc or baseline AMD Radeon)
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16GB of RAM or more
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512GB or larger NVMe SSD drive
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Four or more USB 3.2 or 4.0 ports with USB-C and USB-A formats (at least one or two on the front)
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Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless
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At least one PCI-E (x16) expansion slot (for adding a video card)
Do you want to do some PC gaming, or do you spend time editing photos or videos? You'll want to level up the configuration with more RAM and better graphics options. Expect price points to be between $800 and $1,200 (or even more) if you go for a more bleeding-edge video card.
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Nvidia RTX or AMD Radeon RX graphics card (GPU)
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16GB of RAM or more
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450-watt (or more) power supply
Operating system
Microsoft Windows and Apple's MacOS do basically the same things but they do them differently. Unless there's an OS-specific application you need, go with the one you feel most comfortable using. Most desktops run Microsoft Windows while Apple's iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro desktops feature Apple's MacOS. There is also the odd Chromebox offering based on Google's ChromeOS. A Chromebox is easier to use and usually cheaper than a Windows PC or Mac but can't run Windows or Mac software.
Processor
The processor, aka the CPU, is the brain of a desktop. Intel and AMD are the main CPU makers for Windows desktops. Both offer a staggering selection of processors. You can head to Intel's or AMD's sites for explanations so you get the performance you want. Intel's current lineup is its 13th generation of Core chips, with 14th-gen processors expected in early 2024. AMD's current desktop processor is its Ryzen 7000 series. Generally speaking, though, the faster the processor speed and the more cores it has, the better the performance will be.
Apple makes its own chips for Macs, which makes things slightly more straightforward. The iMac and Mac Mini feature Apple's latest M4 processor. The Mac Studio features either an M2 Max or M2 Ultra, while the Mac Pro is based on the M2 Ultra. Again, generally speaking, the more cores it has, the better the performance.
Graphics
The graphics processor (GPU) handles all the work of driving the screen and generating what gets displayed, as well as speeding up a lot of graphics-related (and increasingly, AI-related) operations. For Macs, Apple's M series processors integrate the GPU. For Windows desktops, there are two types of GPUs: integrated (iGPU) or discrete (dGPU). As the names imply, an iGPU is part of the CPU package, while a dGPU is a separate chip with dedicated memory (VRAM) that it communicates with directly, making it faster than sharing memory with the CPU.
Because the iGPU splits space, memory and power with the CPU, it's constrained by the limits of those. It allows for smaller desktops such as an all-in-one or SFF PC but doesn't perform nearly as well as a dGPU. In fact, there are some games and creative software that won't run unless they detect a dGPU or sufficient VRAM. Most productivity software, video streaming, web browsing and other nonspecialized apps will run fine on an iGPU.
For power-hungry graphics needs, like video editing, gaming and streaming, design and so on, you'll need a dGPU. Only two real companies make them: Nvidia and AMD, although Intel offers some based on the Xe-branded (or the older UHD Graphics branding) iGPU technology in its CPUs.
Memory
For memory, we highly recommend a minimum of 16GB of RAM. RAM is where the operating system stores all the data for currently running applications, and it can fill up fast. After that, it starts swapping between RAM and SSD, which is slower. Some lower-end models supply only 8GB, which, in conjunction with a slower disk, can make for a frustratingly slow Windows experience.
Tower PCs will usually have free internal slots for adding more sticks of RAM, but all-in-ones and SFF PCs may not. Even if they do, those DIMM slots could be difficult to access.
Storage
You may still find a cheaper hard drive in a budget desktop and larger hard drives in gaming PCs, but faster solid-state drives (SSDs) have all but replaced hard drives. They can make a big difference in performance. Not all SSDs are equally speedy, and cheaper desktops typically have slower drives. If your PC has only 8GB of RAM, it may end up switching to that drive and the system may slow down quickly while you're working.
Get what you can afford, but we recommend a minimum of 512GB for a desktop for most users. For storing large media or game libraries, we suggest 1TB or more. If you need to go with a smaller drive, you can usually add a second internal drive to a tower PC. For all-in-ones and SFF PCs, an external drive or cloud storage is usually the easier choice to bolster a small internal drive.
Display
An all-in-one integrates the display with the computer's components placed not in a tower or small-form-factor enclosure but behind the display or in its base. The trade-off for this space-saving, streamlined design is fewer options for upgrades. For the display, you'll want a large screen with good resolution. The sweet spots we'd suggest are:
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24 inches at 1,920x1,080 pixels (aka 2K or 1080p)
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27 inches at 2,560x1,440 pixels (aka 1440p)
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32 inches at 3,840x2,160 pixels (aka 4K)
Desktop computer FAQs
When is the best time to buy a desktop?
Outside of Prime Day and Black Friday sales, there are certain times of the year when you are more likely to find a good desktop deal, or the latest tech -- sometimes both.
January is a good time to find a post-holiday deal and is also the month when new models with new components are usually announced at CES. There is generally a lead time before those new models are released. Most often they become available in the spring. In the spring months, you will not only find the latest desktops with the latest CPUs from Intel and AMD and the latest GPUs from Nvidia and AMD but you can also find discounts on older models that are suddenly relegated to previous-gen status but are still far from being classified as outdated.
The next month to keep an eye out for desktop deals is July, when retailers begin to offer back-to-school sales. Those sales will run through August and into September.
This is not to say you can't lock in a solid desktop deal on any given day of the year. The large manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Lenovo constantly rotate sales on their sites, and retailers including Amazon, Best Buy and Newegg offer discounts weekly.
Are Mini PCs still a thing?
Following the debut of the Mac Mini in 2005, Windows PC makers experimented with similarly tiny designs. In the wake of likable small models like the Acer Revo One and HP Pavilion Mini, we even saw (woefully underpowered) " PC on a stick " offerings starting in 2015. Today's mini PCs offer performance enough for most home office tasks and some allow for more demanding gaming and video production, yet most are small enough to actually fit almost anywhere. They also consume a lot less power than a full-size desktop.
Outside of specialty vendors like Beelink and Geekom, the best choices in this mini PC size are probably the Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing), most of which are sold as hobbyist options, requiring some BYO additions like user-supplied storage, RAM and other components -- including the operating system. Apple continues to update the Mac Mini and it requires no DIY know-how to set up and use.
There's also the Raspberry Pi, a small computer that's no bigger than a paperback book and can be purchased for less than $150. It's great if you're a hobbyist looking to build your own Lego-style computer and install custom Linux operating systems. We just wouldn't recommend it as a primary computer if you're looking to run mainstream software. See the Raspberry Pi 4 kit at Amazon .
Should I consider a Chromebox?
Colloquially known as "Chromeboxes" (versus a "Chromebook" laptop), these systems don't have beefy CPUs, RAM or storage requirements. If you're looking for basic computing (browsing the web, email, social media, YouTube and the like), the Chrome operating system is the most affordable route for home computing. This Google operating system effectively is little more than the Chrome web browser. That makes it easy for multiple users (only a Gmail address is needed to log in), and -- because there's no heavy operating system beyond the browser -- viruses aren't really an issue.
And now with Google adding Gemini AI features to ChromeOS, the platform is more useful than ever. There are three new AI features: Help Me Read, Live Translate and Live Transcribe.
Help Me Read uses Gemini AI to summarize written content, whether that's a website, a presentation or a PDF. More important, you can use Gemini for natural language follow-up questions about the content, letting you drill down to find the info you're after.
Live Translate generates Google AI-translated captions for audio and video but it does it at the OS level. That means it'll work with any service or app or website, so you can translate a Zoom conversation just as easily as a YouTube video. You can also record a conversation in Zoom and it will transcribe on the fly. It can detect different speakers in a conversation and the transcription is searchable.
What about Linux?
No, Windows, Mac and ChromeOS aren't your only operating system options. Linux has a range of operating systems, many of which are effectively free. You can get PCs with Linux preinstalled but the better, more affordable option is probably installing it (or dual-booting) on a used Windows PC. Linux is best for PC enthusiasts -- hobbyists, developers, IT professionals and students -- who like to tinker.
How much memory and storage do I need?
We recommend a minimum of 16GB of RAM and 512GB of solid-state storage. Content creators and gamers would benefit from doubling the RAM to 32GB and the SSD to 1TB. Demanding graphics apps and 3D games will run more smoothly with the added RAM and the added storage capacity will allow you to store large graphics files and game files.
On larger desktops, you usually have room to add more memory and additional storage drives, but that expansion room is less likely on an SFF PC or all-in-one.
Can I upgrade my desktop computer later?
You can but upgrading a tower system is easier and offers more options. An all-in-one or small-form-factor PC does not have as many expansion slots as a tower system. And it's easier to access the internal components on a tower PC where you can slide off a side panel to get to the motherboard.
