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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Star Citizen. Later refunded as it is a hot mess.

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. 😅

I tend to build a new PC every time a new Diablo game drops

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.

Dwarf Fortress

During the pandemic I had a power surge that torched my motherboard and power supply. I didn’t want to have to spend the inflated costs to replace my PC so I just sold my GPU and bought a NUC for a couple hundred dollars.

I used GeForceNow to play PC games on my phone or TV now. Works out for me. I have a PS5 for games that I want a local experience or aren’t available for GeForceNow. Pretty much any game that doesn’t fall into those two categories such OOTP can run on the NUC. Not a bad setup if you have the connection for it

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. 😅

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.

My old system was already 10 years old. When Hogwarts Legacy came out, I was able to set a goal for my future system. Being able to play the game on ultra settings on a 1440p Monitor with 144 FPS.

My old PC was able to reach about 33 FPS on the lowest Settings possible. Next week I should have the last part for my new PC.

guild wars 2. it's always guild wars 2 I come back to...

Quake 1 - though not quite at launch, it was the game that pushed me to get a Voodoo 1 card. Half-Life 2 - due to the delay I ended upgrading my video card twice, ending on an ATI Radeon 9800

no games in particular, really. just that steam threatened to stop working next year on windows 7. so I bought some parts and built a new PC with windows 10 installed on it. I also dual booted linux for good measure

I had an i3 3240 paired with GT640 before since 2013 until 2020, it was good for 720p... hehe, yes that was enough for me.

But then Bannerlord came out and had me really excited, I loved Warband so I really wanted to play it, in my old PC Bannerlord barely ran at 20fps with heavy stutters and looooooooong loading times.

Then I did the unthinkable, heresy in the PC community... I bought an affordable pre-built and then I added more ram and an SSD.

Anyway, I still don't play Bannerlord, I got sidetracked with other games lmao

Total war games have historically pushed both my GPU and CPU upgrades. I'm still amazed how poorly their engines are optimized, how I can run into the high 200 FPS+ range on some demanding games with my 4090 but playing Warhammer 3 on ultra quality at ultrawide 1440p pushes it to almost 100% GPU usage at around 100 FPS.

Really great game when when your can have massive battles without lag, but still amazed that even with a 4090 / 12900k the campaign map and battles aren't perfect

While this wasn’t the sole reason (I was just kinda due for an upgrade anyway), I was interested in playing Half-life Alyx and Star Wars Squadrons in VR.

The last time I upgraded my PC was to play the Tomb Raider reboot and Bioshock Infinite.

Machine still runs everything great... Except games.

I just switched over to my PS4, and the PS5 for gaming.

Honestly I just got tired of every time I updated my video card driver to make one game work, it broke another game.

YMMV, but I've been a happier gamer since I went back to consoles.

When I wanted 3 monitors for my sim racing addiction. Definitely needed a beefy gpu, especially at 1440p for each screen.

Skull and bones! Thought and set my own deadline to last autumn, but it still isnt out

Path of Exile lol.

Gonna date myself a bit but Diablo 2 was the first time I really needed to upgrade our computer. Needed more space.

Then games like Crysis (shoutout 5970) and most recently cyberpunk

Funny you should mention Starfield, my previous rig (up until 2020) I built specifically for Fallout 4, anticipating that I'd need something reasonably beefy for all the mods (4790k, R9 390). Didn't really gel with F4 but enjoyed Witcher 3 a lot at the time.

It was Battlefield 3! The moment I got in a helicopter with under 20fps I knew it was a need and not a want anymore. I had to get a gtx 480 and a new power supply to support it. Followed by a pci slot fan to help it out a little more

When the demo for RE4 Remake came out and it was just a total slideshow, I uninstalled it and began my journey. My i7 lasted well over 10 years, it got the full 10 gun salute

My old system was already 10 years old. When Hogwarts Legacy came out, I was able to set a goal for my future system. Being able to play the game on ultra settings on a 1440p Monitor with 144 FPS.

My old PC was able to reach about 33 FPS on the lowest Settings possible. Next week I should have the last part for my new PC.

I upgraded because my previous PC was a dead end. It was a retrofitted XPS workstation I got from my father - I had slotted a SATA SSD and a somewhat improved GPU, but I couldn't push it much further due to the proprietary PSU form factor. There weren't even extra PCIe slots, which became a huge issue when I switched off Windows and wanted to get an Intel Wifi/BT card.

Never had a gaming PC before so I bought due to pandemic boredom and New Vegas running like crap on my Surface Pro.

Csgo then valorant. Lucky for me these games are very budget friendly.

Just wanted to mention that I've had the 6800XT for a little while now, and I am very happy with it. Runs the majority of games great at 1440p/144FPS, and I've never had any issues with temperatures or drivers. I will mention, however, that the 6800Xt is a big, big SOB and barely fit in my case, so make sure you measure your case a bunch.

Even though the game was already a decade old at the time, Skyrim. I realized that mods could bring it up to modern game graphics and gameplay, then built a gaming PC to support that. And in a few months, it'll be used for Starfield.

My old system was already 10 years old. When Hogwarts Legacy came out, I was able to set a goal for my future system. Being able to play the game on ultra settings on a 1440p Monitor with 144 FPS.

My old PC was able to reach about 33 FPS on the lowest Settings possible. Next week I should have the last part for my new PC. 🤩

For me I originally built my PC 6-7 years ago because of Rainbow Six Siege and the leaning without ads and to be more competitive. Only upgrade I have done is the GPU and honestly should've waited but here we are.

I kept crashing out of my Heroes of the Storm games because of a shitty GPU in my laptop. This was in 2016. Bought a regular PC and I haven't felt the need to upgrade since then... stopped playing that game a few weeks after that too.

I always build a new PC whnen there is a new Diablo game

My first PC ever was built because I really wanted to play modded Skyrim, Minecraft, and Metro 2033. i3 3225 and a 7750, later upgraded to a 2500k with a 7950. That machine was insanely badass. When the i5 and 7950 were overclocked, they outperformed my brother's 4th gen i5 with a 970.