In 2020, Jasmine Bailey declared her laptop unfit for World of Warcraft. It rendered her elf avatar’s hair as pixelated mounds. In elegant environments such as the flower-filled Dreamgrove, the laptop’s temperature rose precipitously. Sometimes, the screen just turned black.

Bailey was between two unrelated milestones: leaving college and the release of Nvidia’s 3000 series graphics cards. The new component was capable of distinguishing each digital follicle from the others; she just needed a better computer to put it in. Browsing the internet, Bailey was indifferent to the big grey rectangles from computer-manufacturing mainstays such as HP. Instead, she ordered the Nvidia component and looked up YouTube walkthroughs for building a custom PC.

During pandemic lockdowns, three billion people turned to video games to pass the time. Now, under desks around the world, there are millions of gaming PCs — high-end machines optimised to lend an edge in Call of Duty firefights or display grass swaying in Red Dead Redemption 2’s desert wind. 

Gamers can purchase those one-and-done or build their own as part of a US$23 billion  ($30.62 billion) market, according to Jon Peddie Research in Tiburon, California. The machines have even become fashion statements.

Bailey, who is 26 and goes by Celeste, looks like an anime character in real life. She is rarely photographed without a pastel sweater or heart-shaped accessory. And she wanted her custom computer to match her aesthetic. “I’d Google ‘PC parts’ plus the word ‘pink’, ” she recalls. 

In the end, she bought a case and spray-painted it candy pink. Inside, pink fans, lit by pink LEDs, cooled her central processing unit. In all, the whole setup cost US$2,000. When it was done — and thankfully, she says, it never caught fire — Bailey posted her build online, where it received three million views on TikTok.

Her next, she says, will have a cooling system that is half-pink and half-blue, the same colours as her hair, and shaped as a heart.

On the rise

A US$42 billion industry, PC games are now the fastest-growing segment of video games, according to an April 2024 report from NewZoo. 

Every year, Nvidia, Corsair Gaming, Advanced Micro Devices and Asustek Computer make billions of components for specialised gaming PCs. Almost every PC maker today operates an arm that builds entire units bespoke, with the high-end average hovering around US$3,400 each, according to Jon Peddie. That is up 20% from 10 years earlier, with advances in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency hype squeezing the graphics card supply.

Executives have realised lately that gamers do not just want powerful computers that run technically demanding games; they also want to customise them with colourful lighting and non-Euclidean case shapes. 

Andy Paul, CEO of Corsair Gaming, likens gaming PCs to today’s hot rods.

“When I grew up, the most expensive thing you would own is a car,” he says. But in the past 20 or 30 years, cars have become harder to afford, much less to customise. “So, then, what do you personalise? The most expensive asset young people own today is a gaming PC.” Some cost as much as US$20,000.

Gamers in the 1990s bought high-end computers to compete in Doom, the early multiplayer shoot-’em-up game. Many realised that landing surer kill shots meant buying better components.

Thriftier consumers turned to “modding”, or modifying parts for better performance. Sticking a lead pencil in a 400‑megahertz CPU, for example, could juice it to 600MHz by bridging connections and increasing voltage. “This is people hanging out in the parking lot of a Fry’s,” Paul says.

Corsair, in Milpitas, California, started as a small company selling computer memory solutions. Around the 2000s, the demand for overclocked memory — that is, faster than a unit’s default settings — spiked along with the release of more technically demanding games. 

To get the energy-hungry machines going, computers needed beefier power supplies. Corsair rushed to fabricate them. “Over the years, we started to make every piece we could to help this community of hot-rod PC builders,” Paul says.

Corsair made US$1.4 billion in revenue in 2023 selling everything from cooling fans to glass-panelled PC cases, a trend that Paul says came from modders sawing holes into cases to show off the insides, “like a Ferrari 488 that’s got glass over the engine”.

Zooming in on aesthetics

This was all a long way from the box under the desk in the den. The aesthetic side of PC building took off alongside gaming tournaments in the early 2000s. Modders packed their rigs into their cars for networked Quake or Counter-Strike competitions, where onlookers could admire their creations.

For a while, there was one gamer aesthetic: bright green or red lights inside a black case with black parts. Manufacturers were uninterested in cable feng shui. 

Over the past five years, those PCs became viewed as outdated and hypermasculine. Now, in online stores, corporations including Corsair, Logitech Europe and Razer are producing white, purple and, yes, pink components and peripherals like mice, keyboards, headsets. It is hard to find gaming PCs without RGB, or rainbow, lights. On TikTok, computers appear under hashtags for aesthetic trends, such as #cottagecore, and are viewed millions of times.

“Computers are symbols of rationality, but we’re seeing videos in which half the time is spent putting little leaves, mushrooms and flowers inside them,” says Stephanie Harkin, a professor in the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s gaming programme. These aesthetics are “completely driven by social media”, she says, where video game influencers from Twitch or YouTube post their builds. Viewers in the millions watch sped-up tutorials for assembling PCs like Bailey’s.

Off the shelf

For non-DIYers, dozens of specialised companies have cropped up to sell gaming rigs with unique, hand-fabricated parts and unlikely design flourishes. 

Ironside Computers, which started in a Las Vegas garage, recently went viral for making a gaming PC with a Gothic cathedral stained-glass window. Its “Masterworks” website tab showcases computers as expensive as used cars with names such as “Kaiju” and “Moonvein”. They come with their own hype trailers. Inside them, glowing tubes of liquid coolant flow through state-of-the-art components for a science-fiction effect.

Customers of gaming PC builder iBuypower spend an average of about US$2,400 for a custom-built PC and US$1,600 for a pre-built one. Generally they are men, aged 18 to 35. But according to Jeffrey Cheng, the company’s senior director of sales and marketing, the “clean aesthetic builds” are appealing to more women. Recently, iBuypower collaborated with the popular Instagram influencer Momodokii for a US$3,000 gaming PC full of pink roses.

Experts say gamers replace PC components every four years, and each can cost hundreds of dollars. Gamers who purchased their machines during Covid are now ready for a refresh. 

At tech retail chain Micro Center, whose 28 brick-and-mortar stores have seen aggressive growth in PC gaming sales, enthusiasts line up before opening when Nvidia releases its latest graphics cards — its 5000 series came out on Jan 30. 

“When there is significant innovation in the technology of components,” says Brad Kramer, the retailer’s CFO and COO, “enthusiasts re-engage with us to upgrade.”

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