Obvious inventory issues mean the easy option of a ps5 isn't really working out. So wondering instead about building a passive gaming PC.
Feasible with ps5 budget?
Of course avoiding monster towers with Blackpools illuminations and getting something tasteful like the streacom db4 means that significant budget goes on a case.
Any simple solutions out there that are small and half decent for the games my kids will progress into as teenagers?
I have an HP envy aio just now that does ok with the kids playing controller Fortnite and before this I've done probably 5 shuttle xpc's since my first silly large pre 2k era tower builds.
Why passive? I can't see many benefits, if any.
I don't think it's possible, the PS5 is probably equivalent to a £800 PC and any GPU is stock is lacking right now. Passive definitely not, but PCs can be made pretty quiet with a bit of care.
Just wait PS5s will be easier to get soon some people even managed to get one in store at Smyths yesterday. Even rumours of Currys stocking them in store from today.
Short answer, no. You could build a half decent office PC maybe but not a gaming one.
When I built my last PC I thought I needed a small unit which was passive. Turns out small = expensive when you compare similar specs. And you run into cooling and packaging issues too. There is a vastly reduced array of components you can use in the small PCs and they generally don’t include decent graphics cards.
So I asked myself if I really needed a small case and I didn’t - built my PC and I love it but it is by no means a gaming monster. Graphics card is good for decent 1080p FPS but that was £250 on its own. And yes the fans don’t run when on windows apps but get your game going and they soon like to make themselves known. Managed to get my PC quite quiet in the end by using some expensive beQuiet fans and a better case.
How about Stadia on your PC?
Modern graphics cards go into a kind of sleep mode when not being used hard (i.e. playing a game), so helps keep fan noise down.
Not all graphics card fans are equal, you can see noise graphs along with the other performance graphs on the online reviews so needs a bit a reading up.
You can fiddle with the fan profiles in the graphics card software too.
As do PSUs.
A lot of motherboard BIOS also now have fan curve controllers built in too, so you can set how agressive you want your CPU fan to be according to a given CPU temp.
Case fans - more is not always better, you may find having 4 on the go hardly cools any better than just having 2 for example, but is more noisy. You can buy semi decent decent ones for less then a tenner such as the arctic cooling PWM fans.
Unless you case is very expensive,any fans it comes bundled with are likley cheap and noisey.
And then theres the CPU cooler & fan itself, again you need to do a bit of reading up, but tower coolers are an established, well performing form factor that arnt too expensive and will run quieter and perform a bit better than a stock CPU cooler. You won't fit one into a small form factor case though.
Water cooling?
Water cooling?
Depends on budget, cheap water cooling can still be noisy as ther are fans on the external radiators.
Unless spending a lot id say a well thought out air cooled system is better.
I wouldn't get too worried about the passive element, gaming PCs aren't noticeably loud and consoles aren't silent.
Trying to compare PCs and Console performance usually ends up in a fanboi slag-off, they do the same job, but in a different way and trying to compare taraflops, or cuda cores or whatever won't really help you much in the real world.
It's worth giving Stadia or GeForce now a go on your current PC. I'd probably pick GeForce now out of the two, if only I'm interesting in raytracing to see what it's like and supposedly it's near-seamless with a 25Mbps connection. Stadia will give you 4k (if your AIO is 4K). If nothing else, it's a cheap way to dip your toe until stocks of the new consoles return.
Having looked at water an Arctic 240 is over double the price of a Cooler Master 212. I'm still considering it for over clocking but that's well out of this use case.
To actually answer the question its a hard no from me, there's no way you could build something close to comparable for the money. The present gen are going to shit all over PCs in terms of VFM for the next while IMO.
If you're prepared to forego 1080p Ultra detail you can get quite capable cheap PCs - I picked up a Lenovo v55t ex office off EBay for 250, and added 16Gb of 3200 RAM (the MB only runs it at 2666 but it works and its an eye on upograding piecemeal later) - it's got a Ryzen 5 3200G and the integrated Vega 11 runs World of Warcraft at about half detail which is fine, and Fortnite etc. plus cost about 100 more than the processor alone .. you could whack a Radeon in the there for maybe 150 more that'd cope with most everything and not be excessively noisy.
Stadia or GeForce are definitely interesting though. It's latency over raw bandwidth that might kill it, I'm going to give it a go on my rural FTTC connection over the holidays
Im currently building a pc and cant really get equivalent of a ps5 for £800. There are just too many key component shortages so any cpus/gpus that are about are seriously overpriced. For me though I want a PC at the moment and you always get better bang for buck from a console so not worrying about it.
Good stuff. Thanks.
Always looking for the PC upgrade angle but for pure gaming I see the console value.
I do have an external laptop cooler on my aio for when fortnite gets run. The Internal cooler can't keep the cpu and discrete 960a GPU cool so locks up without the additional airflow, but yes, far from quiet at that point.
I managed to get through worldwarZ, CoD , MetroLL, sniper elite etc without though.
I don't think I could go back to a full tower after xpc's and the current aio so as my current PC solution works for my needs, waiting on the ps5 is probably smart.