It’s not hard to imagine laptops as the de-facto computer for students. After all, why not use a computer that you can haul around to all of your classes, right? Well, if you do most of your work at a desk, whether it’s in a dorm or at home, prebuilt PCs offer better performance, and are great for creating a productive environment for you to focus on your schoolwork. Pop a good graphics cards in there, and you can start playing the best PC games the minute you’re done with your homework.
TL;DR – These Are the Best Prebuilt PCs for Students:
For a lot of people, having a computer you can haul around to all of your classes is super important, and could even be required depending on your courseload. But students aren’t a monolith, and with the rise of online coursework, you could be doing a lot of assignments at home. If portability isn’t a concern, a desktop offers huge advantages to performance. Because system manufacturers don’t need to factor in battery life, you get the full performance your components are capable of (at least most of the time).
- Why you may want to consider a gaming laptop for school
It’s definitely a trade-off, but it could be worth it, especially if you’re serious about playing games in your downtime and don’t want to settle for the weaker performance that laptops offer.
1. Dell Tower Plus Desktop
Best Prebuilt PC for Students
Dell Tower Plus Desktop
A solid starter prebuilt PC with a lot of room for customization.
CPU
Intel Core Ultra 5 225 – Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
GPU
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 – Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
Size
14.68 x 16.81 x 6.81 inches (H x D x W)
Plenty of front-facing ports
Base model is not very good
This year, Dell regrettably changed the name of its entire line of laptops and desktops. So while this would have traditionally been known as the XPS Tower, it’s now the Dell Tower Plus Desktop. Despite the terrible name, this is still a solid prebuilt PC. It starts out with just an Intel Core i5 processor, integrated graphics and just 8GB of RAM, which will be fine for light work like word processing. However, you can configure it to come with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, an RTX 5080 GPU and 64GB of RAM, which will be absolutely overkill for the vast majority of students.
Where this PC shines is somewhere in the middle. Picking a Core Ultra 7, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 5060 is going to be the sweet spot for most people, easily able to work through any specialized workloads your professors throw at you. At the time of writing, that exact configuration will set you back $1,199, which can be a high price tag to swallow. But keep in mind that this PC is using standard hardware, which means you can add a graphics card or more RAM when you have the cash for it.
I love how many ports are on the front of the Tower Plus Desktop’s case, though. While it’s true that any desktop PC is going to have a bounty of ports just by virtue of being a desktop, most of the time they’re hidden in the back of the machine. Instead, you’ll find three USB-As, a USB-C, a headphone jack and an SD card reader all on the front, lined elegantly beneath the power button. You can always just plug a device right into the front of the XPS tower, without having to wrestle with the PC to get to its rear I/O.
2. Apple iMac 24 (2024, M4)
Best All-in-One PC for Students
Apple iMac 24 (2024, M4)
All-in-one desktop with a M4 processor and stunning display.
Size
18.1 x 5.8 x 21.5 inches (H x D x W)
macOS is critical if you need it
Apple finally updated the minimum RAM to 16GB
You cannot upgrade this thing after you buy it
The 24-inch iMac was the first time that Apple broke out from gray in the modern era, and as a result, the all-in-one PC comes in blue, green, pink, yellow, orange, purple, and the same boring silver as every other Apple product. That’s cool and all, but these desktops are also packed with the same Apple M4 processor as the MacBook Air, which is powerful enough for most people to get through their workloads. This chip also allows the iMac to be extremely thin for a device that’s both a desktop PC and a monitor.
There is a dark side, though. This is a desktop PC, but it’s using the same chip as Apple’s laptops. While the larger design does allow Apple to funnel more power into the chip, resulting in better performance, it still won’t hold a candle to a Windows PC at a similar price. And because Apple is Apple, you can’t simply open the iMac and add a new SSD if you need more storage, so you need to make sure you know you will only ever need 256GB of storage before you buy the entry-level model.
That being said, if you just need a stationary Mac workstation with a gorgeous display, the iMac delivers. You get a 4.5K Retina, or a 4480×2520 IPS monitor, built into the device, saving precious space on your desk. Let’s be real, you’re not going to have a lot of space for both a tower and a monitor in your dorm room, and this little AIO serves as both a PC and decoration.
The iMac also comes with a Magic Keyboard and a Magic Mouse. The keyboard is absolutely incredible, while the mouse is a bit more divisive – it has a charging port on the bottom, meaning you can’t charge it while you use it. For packaged-in peripherals, these are awesome because you don’t have to shell out extra just to use the computer you just bought.
3. HP Victus 15L
Best Budget Prebuilt PC for Students
HP Victus 15L
Running on an 14th-gen Intel CPU, Intel Arc graphics, and 8GB of DDR4, this affordable PC is ready for esports games.
Size
13.27 x 6.1 x 11.71 inches (H x D x W)
Small chassis will fit into almost any space
Still using 14th-gen processors
There are a lot of cheap desktop PCs out there, but unfortunately most of them suck in one way or another. Some artificially push the price down by shoving in older hardware that simply won’t last you as long. The HP Victus 15L defies this by just being a solid gaming PC that’s also very affordable.
Starting at $899, the HP Victus 15L provides an Intel Core i5-14400F, 16GB of RAM and an Intel Arc A380 graphics card – not bad for a beginning configuration. Without making any changes to the hardware, this PC can handle video editing, light AI workloads and even PC games, provided you’re comfortable sticking to 1080p gaming. It’s rare that I see an entry-level config that I actually approve of, but this little gaming PC will take you a long way.
Of course, you can upgrade it with more serious hardware. You can bump the CPU up to an Intel Core i7-14700F, which will make it much better at multitasking, and you can configure it with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, which makes this a serious contender at 1440p. However, because of the small size of the PC case, you can’t configure it with a more powerful graphics card. More powerful graphics cards that could fit in this chassis are out there, but then you’ll run into problems with the 350W power supply HP includes.
On the front of the HP Victus 15L is a wealth of ports, with four USB-As and a USB-C among them. There are even more on the back of the PC, but having so many ports on the front panel makes connecting accessories easy, especially if it’s something you don’t always want plugged in, like a thumb drive.
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i – Photos
4. Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
Best Prebuilt Gaming PC for Students
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
The Lenovo Legion Tower 5i is a mid-range gaming PC, packed with up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super and an Intel Core i7-14400F
CPU
Intel Core i5-14400F – Intel Core i7-14700F
GPU
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 – Nvidia Geforce RTX 4070 Super
Size
16.77 x 15.63 x 8.07 inches (H x D x W)
Limited to RTX 4070 Super
The Lenovo Legion Tower 5i is a mid-range gaming PC, packed with up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super and an Intel Core i7-14400F. That’s a totally fine spec, but what makes this PC special is how affordable it is across all of its specs. Its top-end spec is expensive, setting you back $2,299, but if you dial your expectations back a bit, you can get an extremely solid RTX 4070 spec for just $1,400 at the time of writing.
With that RTX 4070, the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i is still an awesome 1440p gaming machine, without going overboard. At 1440p, you’ll be able to get a solid 81fps in Cyberpunk 2077 with all the ray tracing goodness enabled. In fact, compared to the RTX 4070 Super, you’re only really losing 12% performance.
The Legion Tower 5i spec with the RTX 4070 Super is equipped with 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB, but because the Legion Tower is so easy to open up, you can easily upgrade the memory later
As for the chassis, it’s a standard mid-tower case with a unique mesh design on the front that makes the RGB lighting on the front case fans look incredible. On the side, you get a tempered glass side panel that lets you peek in on the innards. For prebuilt gaming PCs around this price, having a solid tempered glass panel is rare, with many having a flimsy plastic window instead.
How to Choose a Prebuilt PC for Students
If you’re in school, it’s unlikely that you have thousands of dollars to spend on meaningless fluff, so when setting out to buy a prebuilt PC, you need to make sure you get what you pay for. A lot of features like RGB lighting and liquid cooling, while nice to have, don’t really make the computer any better at actually getting work done. You need to have a budget set ahead of time, but what’s perhaps most important is knowing where that money is going to go.
For most people an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 (or the AMD Ryzen equivalent) is going to be more than enough. Some folks in STEM fields might be able to use the extra power you can squeeze out of a Ryzen 9 or Core i9 chip, but even then, the Core i7 is going to save you hundreds of dollars, which may be more important.
Picking the right amount of RAM is crucial, though. Because of how heavy Windows 11 has grown in recent years, 16GB of memory is the minimum you should aim for. That way, your computer won’t lock up when you open 50 Chrome tabs in a mad studying session. Again, if you’re a STEM student, or you’re doing something involving a lot of video editing, 32GB of RAM should be your target.
In 2025, you need an SSD, period. The days of spinning drives as system drives are over. As for the capacity, though, it really depends on how you use your computer. If you’re saving most of your work in the cloud, you can probably get away with a 512GB system drive and be fine. However, if you need to store most of your data locally, a 1TB drive isn’t going to break the bank.
As for your graphics card, it’s a luxury when you’re in school. Unless you’re working with large data models or working in video production, you can probably get away with integrated graphics or a low-end discrete GPU. Though, if you want to use your computer to play PC games in your downtime – you are reading IGN, after all – figure out what resolution you want to play games at and then go from there. If you’re using a 1080p monitor an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT or Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 will be more than enough.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been writing about gaming PCs for almost a decade and has been building them even longer. You can follow her @Jackiecobra.
Originally posted:
Jul 30, 2025 10:00 pm
