For me, it was Cyberpunk 2077. I wanted to run around Night City with ultra graphics and raytracing. Too bad it launched in such a badly optimized state.

God of War for single player games and Apex Legends for multiplayer.

I had never been a playstation guy but really wanted to play the new God of War and knew for a fact that my computer was not good enough. I used to be into Apex for a good couple years and could barely run it. Had to turn everything all the way down just to hid a semi decent FPS.

Now I don’t even play Apex but I’m glad I got to play God of War on the highest settings and enjoy the game to the fullest. Still one of my favorite games and I’m definitely gonna get Ragnarok when it comes out on PC

Sekiro - This was January 2020 so the timing was perfect just before covid hit (in my country). Back then I just had the opportunity to build one so I didn’t think twice cuz I wanted a gaming pc since forever.

I had at the time so many games in mind for years and also in my backlog, so it was incredible to finally build one and play all of them during the lockdowns lmao

I assembled my current workstation with an RTX 3080 to coincide with Cyberpunk 2077 release.

Now I was lucky I bought it right before prices got gouged by scalpers, and to this day its considered a high end PC. 2 years with 0 issues and easy customization.

In hindsight that piece of trash scam of a game was a blessing in disguise.

Do not buy parts for Starfield until it releases and reviewers report in.

I most recently upgraded due to no mans sky constantly struggling. But upgraded enough to get cyberpunk and path tracing. With it being out for iver 2 years when i upgraded, those hardware targets were known.
This machine should cover me for starfield though.

Starfield is unknown.

Half Life Alyx convinced me to finally build a PC. Street Fighter 6’s minimum specs convinced me to upgrade.

The game that fully got me into this PC madness was the glorious Battlefield 3 in 2011-2012.
Before that I had dabbled somewhat into PC gaming, even changing a graphics card and what not, but I was still rather clueless about it… Until EA and Dice dropped this fucking megaton into the unsuspecting world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FktL2pu2wE

Nowadays, that gameplay above? It merely looks decent. But back in the dying days of the PS360 generation? That shit looked BANANAS, let me tell you. It was, legitimately, like a generation and a half of visual improvement. We couldn’t believe it, it was fucking insane. And that, combined with the start of the golden era of PC and the disastrous aging of PS360, meant that I HAD to get a PC, like a decently built from scratch, purpose-built-for-gaming PC. So I started getting informed and saving for the components all throughout 2011 so that I could be there for BF3 day one on the ground floor.

I ended up saving around 450 euros, and this was back in the day when 500 bucks got you an pretty good computer. I got a Radeon HD 6850 and a Phenom 955, and the latter is still working to this day back in my family’s house. Every buck and minute of research was worth it, and it even led me down the road of getting into IT as a profession. I have so much to thank to whoever were the people that made that reveal look so sick lol.

Skyrim back in 2011, and Cyberpunk 2077 more recently.

Control got me to build a new PC. I had an average laptop before, but sold the laptop and built a PC with a 3080 in it for the sweet raytracing. Managed to pick the 3080 up at RRP before all the Crypto boom started, so I was stoked! Still going very strong after almost 3 years.

For me, it was Cities:Skylines. My old PC couldnt play it (first game i wanted to play that it couldnt run), so i upgraded.

Now that Cities:Skylines2 is coming out in a few months, i anticipate needing to upgrade again lol.

While I just needed an upgrade in general ( Went from a 1060ti/i7 8gen to a 3070ti/i7 12gen), I was in the middle of God of War and the improvement was incredible. Didn’t realize how much better games could run. 😅

Dwarf Fortress

While I just needed an upgrade in general ( Went from a 1060ti/i7 8gen to a 3070ti/i7 12gen), I was in the middle of God of War and the improvement was incredible. Didn’t realize how much better games could run. 😅

Alyx.

Cyberpunk 2077, bought it on sale and my 125 gb SSD, FX8350 and rx580 weren’t terribly happy. Grabbed a used ryzen 3600 and used 2080 super for $200. Board, ram, and m.2 drive for about the same new. Now I’m debating the 5600xcd or just hold off till I want the AM5 chips, that’ll depend on how Starfield runs.