My son's asked for a gaming PC for a birthday prezzie. Neither of us knows owt about them. It's to replace a 6-year old laptop which is slowly dying and doesn't run games well.
What should I be looking to spend, what do I need to look for? Can anyone recommend anything, new or secondhand?
Suspect anything will be an improvement on a 6 year old laptop. But you can pay 300 - 3k, what's the budget? There will be best choices based on that.
For best performance / value £100 on graphics card and £100 on CPU. If you're not building it all yourself see how the off-the-shelf systems compare for those two items if bought separately.
This one is about that spec plus good motherboard, hdd & lots of ram:
Windows included but no monitor.
Try scan.co.uk for a decent gaming system at a not too outrageous cost.
Whats your budget? i'll point you in the direction of a good build.
Thanks, all. It's difficult to know the budget - say £500 including monitor & keyboard? Something that won't be too outdated in 2-3 years.
I feel like a non-cyclist trying to buy a bike, wondering whether a £99 Tesco special is OK, or if I need £2000 of carbon loveliness. So, reckoning that £300 is a minimal laptop cost, does £500 seem reasonable for a gaming machine?
I built a gaming rig for my 70 year old mother about a year ago. I think it came it at about £550 just for the PC but she did insist on an i7 processor and a £170 graphics card 🙂 She plays 3d RPGs.
I got my lad one at Xmas for £330 from Vibox, they have an Ebay shop too. Think it was this one, or very similar.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VIBOX-GA-FAST-WINDOWS-8-AMD-DUAL-CORE-8GB-RAM-1TB-DESKTOP-GAMING-PC-COMPUTER-/360501748255?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs
Seems to be pretty good according to him, He's happy then I'm happy! 😀
I didn't really fancy an Ebay job, but we researched the spec and it seems pretty good. He has more clue than me @ 13yo though! 😆
£500 on a birthday present so he can piss about on games?
:-O
Check out the value systems at Scan. That machine from ebay has a £20 graphics card in it and the processor is about £30, you can do much better from the proper computer shops than ebay in the case of PC's
Really depends what types of games your son wants to play.
If he's planning on playing Battlefield 3 or World of Warcraft or any cutting edge FPS games then the examples given so far will struggle a lot.
If he's more into less demanding things e.g Eve Online, Runescape and Minecraft though, as teenagers often are, then a £300-500 job will probably be fine.
If he already has a TV in his room with an HDMI input then you don't necessarily even need to budget for a monitor.
World of Warcarft isn't exactly cutting edge. My steam-powered laptop throws it around (or did about two years ago, last time I played). However,
Really depends what types of games your son wants to play.
What gaming is favoured by your average six-year old? I can't imagine Resident Evil 6 being too high on the list. A "gaming PC" and a "PC to play games on" isn't necessarily the same thing.
EDIT - sorry, ignore that, misread the OP.
He's adult but in a crap job when employed, so it's "proper" games he plays. Skyrim, Call of Duty, WoW. Not that I know what those are cos I'm a old codger and prefer a bike.
Many thanks for all suggestions & comments so far. Keep them coming, please
The amount of power you need's largely dependant on screen... I play on a 24 inch screen so my antique Q6600 processor and adequate 560 graphics card are more than up to the task, if I was to put that on a big screen it'd start to need some big settings cuts for high-demand games
I think some people are maybe applying the wrong mindset to this, playing the latest games on high settings needs a pretty powerful PC but just knocking down a couple of the highest demand settings will get most things running well without a massive impact on looks. Quite a common theme from enthusiasts- "That system won't run <game X> with 16x AA". So what?