Weighing in my options for Audio for the purpose of PC gaming

depends on your preferences and budget really.

unpowered/passive speakers require an amp in between pc and speakers. powered speakers do not. honestly its not complex.. and is very simple.

mackie cr3 ($99) cr4 ($150), micca pb42x ($120) are decent powered speakers to look at. yes there are many more brands but i know these ones and they are decent.

you could always go passives with an amplifier as well. micca mb42 ($90), pioneer bs22 ($110) are good. dayton b652 ($46) used to be good, then not, then good again so not sure how they currently are. of course there are other brands as well. you could make do with a cheap amp like a lepai 2020 ($25) but if you wanted a nicer experience and better speakers it is worth going with something like the dta-120 ($99).

prices for the speakers are per pair, not each. i'm using a dta-120 in the other room. certainly more powerful than i first thought it would be. he is using some larger bookshelf speakers.

if you dont care about quality as much but do care about price... just grab yourself some logitech z-series speakers or some from creative. certainly good value for your money though not as much quality. most of us people with high end audio migrated from pc speakers years ago (i used to have a x530 logitech set) and while they are certainly good value and i enjoyed them at the time.. once stepping up to better audio i would find it hard to go back.

tldr: for $50-100 you could certainly go hifi and its not complex. for on the cheap, pc speakers work but lack the quality