This is an overview of gaming gear: what each part of a setup does, what to check before you buy it, and in what order to decide. It names no products, quotes no prices and ranks nothing. The specialised guides on this site go deeper on each part, and this page does not repeat them. The order of decisions below is our editorial advice, and each step says why. The cover image is an illustration, not a photo of a specific setup and not a Gimaxo test.

An earlier version of this page listed price bands, budget tables and claims about what professionals use. We removed them: prices change, and we found no source for the rest. The page also linked to the individual guides from the body; those links are not needed here, because the related guides appear in the recommendation blocks and the category pages.

The parts of a setup

Mouse. How you hold it and the size of your hand decide what suits you. Corsair describes three grips, fingertip, palm and claw, and advises that players with smaller hands usually start with shorter, narrower mice. Specifications such as weight and dimensions can be compared, but a table cannot tell you whether a shape fits your hand.

Keyboard. Size and switch type are the two choices that show up in every listing. Corsair describes linear switches as a smooth keystroke without tactile feedback, tactile switches as having a bump, and clicky switches as a bump plus an audible click. It describes full-size, tenkeyless, 75%, 65% and 60% layouts by which keys they drop. No layout is best for everyone.

Headset. Makers list frequency response, driver size and surround labels. We did not find a source defining the surround labels, so read what the maker says each one means. Use the maker’s own technical specification page, and treat a launch announcement as the maker’s claim.

Monitor. VESA, the display standards body, writes that several monitors “may claim the same or similar sounding specs and benefits, but use different metrics or measurement methods”. A refresh rate or a response time is not enough to compare two monitors unless you know how each was measured.

Chair and desk. OSHA’s workstation guidance says the seat should be comfortable and allow your feet to rest flat on the floor or a footrest. Posture and fit matter more than the label on the chair, and our desk guide covers them.

Cables, hubs and small accessories. We found no source we could use for general claims about these, so this page makes none.

An order for your decisions

This order is our editorial advice, not a rule, and the reasoning follows each step.

1. Decide what you play and where. PC, console or both changes which parts you need at all. Everything else depends on it.
2. Start with the parts that touch your body. Chair, desk, mouse and keyboard size are about fit, and fit cannot be read from a specification. Getting them wrong costs comfort every session.
3. Then the screen and the sound. These are about what you see and hear, and the figures in listings need the most careful reading, as the VESA quote above shows.
4. Add accessories last. They refine a setup that already works. They rarely fix one that does not.
5. Set a budget per part, not for the whole setup. A single total hides where the money goes. We give no figures, because prices change.

Reading specifications

Specifications come in three kinds: announced by the maker, compared with something else, or measured by a defined test. A footnote often holds the condition behind a headline figure, such as the polling rate or battery conditions behind a mouse claim. Our spec-reading guide goes through examples for mice, keyboards, monitors and controllers. This page does not publish measured results of its own.

What we could not verify

We found no source we could use for the following, so this page does not state them: price ranges for any category, which brand or model is best, what professional players choose, what any given upgrade changes in play, and claims about cables, hubs and accessories. Nothing here was tested.

Sources

Named here as plain text. Pages read in November 2026.

• Corsair, “Mouse Grip Styles: Fingertip vs Palm vs Claw”; “Keyboard Switches: An Introduction”; “Keyboard sizes explained”
• VESA, “VESA is Clearing Up Consumer Confusion on PC Display Performance”
• OSHA, Computer Workstations eTool, Chairs