My Best 2026 Gaming Setup Upgrade Is a £40 Seat Cushion Amid Sky-High PC Prices

The biggest upgrade I've made to my own gaming setup in 2026 is a £40 seat cushion, because RAM, SSD and graphics card prices have made component upgrades hard to justify. My current rig still handles everything I play, and I'm hoping the autumn sales season brings some relief.

I love upgrading my PC, and as a hardware writer I often get my hands on new gear for review. But when it comes to my own money and my own possessions, the most meaningful purchase this year was this cushion.

It isn't for medical reasons. I simply have a bony backside, and modern gaming chairs tend to be rock hard, which leaves me sore after a long day. The cushion has improved my comfort at least ten-fold. The UK listing came with a lumbar support cushion too, which I swapped for one I already owned, and the whole thing cost £40.

That makes it one of the pricier things I've bought this year, which says plenty about the state of the market. 2026 has brought enormous price rises across PC hardware, and I haven't been able to open my wallet wide enough to cover component upgrades. So I've mostly stuck with what I have.

The numbers that keep me from upgrading

I'm lucky to own a good gaming PC already. It doesn't struggle with the games I want to play, and I'm happy to lean on DLSS or frame generation in the most demanding titles. What I wonder is how many people are waiting out this pricing storm like me, and how long they'll hold out before paying up.

My own situation shows why I'm waiting:

• Memory: 64 GB of decent DDR5 costs well north of $800. I paid around $100 for my 32 GB kit three years ago.
• Storage: My 2 TB SSD cost $130 around the same time. A good 4 TB drive now runs upwards of $400, which I can't justify.
• Graphics cards: If I needed one today, I'd buy an RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB or an RX 9070 GRE. They're the last GPUs available for somewhat sensible money relative to their performance, and I recommend both given current pricing. Still, Nvidia's current "mid-range" RTX 5070 costs $779 at the cheapest version we can find.

In a market like this, getting by with what you've got often makes the most sense.

Sales season might help

There's a potential saving grace. October Prime Day and Black Friday are coming into view, and I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that we still see meaningful hardware discounts this year, despite everything going on in the industry. Plenty of rigs that would normally have received new parts by now are still trucking along, because AI server demand has ravaged the consumer market behind so much of this hobby.

There is one upside. Gaming monitors, mice, keyboards and controllers have resisted the wave of price increases this year, and they tend to get big discounts over the big sales period. Even without the GPU or memory kit our hearts desire, a meaningful upgrade should be within reach for many of us.

If you've been holding on to your current hardware for longer than you expected, I don't blame you. I've been doing the same, and a decent cushion has made the wait a lot more comfortable.