Depending on the game you want to pursue prowess in, you might have different system requirements or preferences. While some players want to branch out into MOBA games such as LoL, others might be on the FPS wagon with CS:GO and Valorant, where actual frames win games.
Even if you don’t want to invest all your money, or your friends’ money for that matter, into a monstrous PC build, and I know gear is not everything, you still have to consider the basic requirements of the games, and what it takes to achieve optimal performance. After all, you are training to be an elite esports athlete and have to give yourself the best ‘playground’ to practise on.
For the purpose of simplicity, we’ll take a look at a few of the popular titles, namely LoL, CS:GO and Valorant, but the builds for those apply to similar games too. I will also start with the internals and then talk about externals later on.
The CPU
Let’s start with the CPU. For League of Legends, CPU is king and given that the game is not too intense graphically, if you have a 144hz display, and want to play at 144 fps, you will need a reliable CPU capable of enough that it doesn’t bottleneck your GPU.
The Riot Games website has the Intel Core i5-3300 (about £70 on Amazon) as the recommended CPU for 2023, but we can do one better than that. For about £286 you can get the mid-range Intel Core i7-11700K, which is also way more recent as it came out in 2020, while the i5 dates all the way back to 2012. With its 8 cores and a base speed of 3.6GHz and the boost clock speed of up to 5.0GHz, you might struggle to find a better fit for LoL.
Now if you still want an upgrade over the recommended CPU for League, you could cut some corners and get the AMD Ryzen 5 2600X for £120, which isn’t the end of the world and will still net you frames in the upper 150s if not higher, even on high settings. The i7 will however perform about 40% better across the board.
For CS:GO and Valorant, you really have to worry about FPS, as I said in the beginning, because a few frames can make the difference between seeing your opponent around a corner, and them spotting you first. You can safely go with the Intel i7-11700K from above, or if you would rather save some money you can opt for the £160 Intel Core
i7-8700, which will net you guaranteed 144+ frames at high settings and at least 110 at max settings in both shooter titles.
The GPU
A good graphics card, undebatably will boost your frames and the quality of your game. But for games like League, you don’t have to sell a kidney and buy the latest flagship video card. A decent card like the Nvidia GTX 1070 (about £195) will be perfect for LoL and will not be bottlenecked by the processor. The 1070 is miles better than the 1050-Ti, which many sites recommend for 144+ frames gaming, and is a solid choice in general.
For CS:GO and Valorant, you can opt for the 1070 again, or if you would rather not leave anything up to chance, upgrade to the tad bit more expensive GTX 1080, which will set you back about £250.
RAM
Ah yes, RAM, the thing people like to joke about on the internet, saying you can download more of it.
Nowadays people recommend 16GB of RAM for casual and a bit heavier gaming, which would be sufficient for LoL, but for intense games like Valorant you might want to look into 32 gigs of ram. My pick is 1 stick for LoL and 2 sticks for CS:GO, Valorant and other first-person shooters of the Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 16GB. You can make the argument of going with the higher frequency of 3600, which is fine too, but a bit more expensive. Going above 3600 however runs the risk of instability in the system, which we want to avoid as much as possible.
SSD
This section won’t be too extensive, but I would recommend you go for an SDD of at least 1TB. Here are a few options:
- Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB NVMe SSD
- WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe SSD
- Samsung 870 QVO 1TB SATA SSD
Monitor
Remember those chunky monitors from the early 2000s?
Yeah, you can throw those out of your attic now and make space for the fast refresh rate monitors of this generation.
With the parts above you should have no problem running these major competitive titles at 144 frames with ease.
Here are a few you might like:
- Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQ 27″ QHD IPS (£329)
- LG UltraGear QHD 27″ Gaming Monitor 27GL83A-B (£323)
- Acer Nitro XV272U 27″ Gaming LED Monitor (£330)
- LG UltraGear QHD 27″ Gaming Monitor 27GL83A-B (£299)
Peripherals
For your peripherals, I would recommend you stick with what you find comfortable, but if your mouse is a bit too heavy, you might want to look at lighter options.
The Razer Viper Ultimate Wireless Gaming Mouse or the Logitech G Pro X Superlight Wireless Gaming Mouse are great options which also might force you to have noodles for dinner every day of that month. The Roccat Kone XP is a good choice for about half the cost and if you are into a lot of mouse buttons it might be worth it (don’t forget you have a keyboard folks).
Speaking of keyboards, the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum XT Mechanical Gaming Keyboard and the Razer Cynosa Chroma Gaming Keyboard are both fantastic choices, in high to low price ranges.
What do the Pros use?
Let’s take a look at TenZ’s Valorant setup.
His PC rocks the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor, ASUS GeForce RTX 3090 for a video card, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB SSD and his mouse is the Logitech G PRO X Superlight alongside the Wooting 60 HE keyboard.
Of course, this setup is primarily made for streaming on different platforms and for recording, so it makes sense to max out all possible components to allow for optimal gaming performance even under the heavy loads of broadcasting your game.
Despite recent upsets with TenZ, he is continuing to practise hard and improving his skills and his team will be up against tough competition in the coming months. Currently, esports bookmakers in the UK haven’t set their odds in favour of the Sentinels, but being the underdog is a nice position to be in – all the more reason to be motivated and prove the non-believers wrong.
