The past six months or so have been a difficult time to upgrade your gaming PC for a reasonable price, especially if it involved any kind of RAM replacement. For those trying to move on from the AM4 platform (which will involve a new motherboard, CPU, and memory), AM5 bundles like those at Micro Center have been helpful to soften the blow, at least.

In light of the industry shortages right now, we polled our readers on what they want to upgrade next in their PC. For many PC builders, it seems easy to expect that the graphics card is usually the point of focus. The results show that it indeed is, earning 23% of the votes at the time of writing. However, just as many people are looking forward to a full system upgrade.

Upgrading your gaming PC in 2026

We’ll keep the poll up and running if you still want to have your say, but right now, 24% of respondents say they plan to upgrade their entire system as their next jump, rather than just replacing a part. Just 13% of people plan to upgrade their monitor, despite AOC recently suggesting an OLED monitor as the best hardware upgrade right now. Likewise, 13% of our readers plan to upgrade their CPU next, despite this being a component less affected by recent price hikes.

These stats seem to suggest that many people are still waiting to pull the trigger on jumping an entire platform or architecture (like AM4 to AM5), or, in the case of Intel, maybe moving on to Nova Lake, expected later this year. AMD users can expect to continue enjoying AM5 longevity with the next desktop CPU series.

RAM prices remain inflated, and GPUs have also been dragged into the picture. That’s because video memory is also affected by the industry shortages, which continue to be the result of high demand from AI data centers. On the bright side, we have seen a bunch of nice GPU deals lately, which at the very least bring high-memory models back down towards MSRP.

RTX 50 series gaming PCs have also been enjoying some price drops in early May, with popular U.S. retailer B&H advertising a long list of discounted models up for grabs. If you’re looking to upgrade your whole system without any of the hassle of building an entire PC from scratch, then opting for a prebuilt is the easiest way to do it.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.