A gaming keyboard is not necessarily required. The main selling point of gaming keyboards (aside from their looks) is that most of them have programmable keys of some sort, allowing you to program it to push multiple keys/run a command/etc using just one key. If that is something you think you would need, then that could be a reason to get one, otherwise, a regular, non-"gaming" keyboard should still work just fine.Gaming mice, on the other hand, aside from extra/programmable buttons usually have a much faster response time than regular mice, so if you play a lot of games that require a quick response (first person shooters, for example) then that would probably be something to look into.If you are only looking at getting one of the two, a gaming mouse would probably be a much better purchase than a keyboard.