For the first installment of my Wired.com column High/Low, I look at Gaming PCs.

[thumb link=”true”]http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/11/high-low-gaming-pcs[/thumb]

These rigs are built to handle the incredible demands modern games put on them, rendering state-of-the-art graphics quickly and smoothly to create a realistic gaming experience. At least, that’s the theory. The conventional wisdom is that a cheap PC will produce a jerky, low-resolution image that ruins the immersive effect of modern games. However, we found that a $700 computer was more than capable of running one of the most demanding games out there at high resolution, and that most gamers don’t need to spend more than this.