Basic Gaming PC – Roblox/Minecraft

My lad has been playing on the (old!) iMac, but has decided he wants to save up and get himself a Gaming PC setup for his room.
At the moment that’s the extent of his gaming interest, but I’m sure it will grown over the next year or two.
I’m after some advise about spec doe what he needs, new or refurb, best places to go online. I know nothing.
TIA

Xbox one would be better- I have both

Cheap(er) way in is to buy a machine without a graphics card, which won’t be needed for Minecraft / Roblox.

Then add the graphics later. Adding the card can be a learning experience too.

AMD Ryzen 5 is a good start for the processor and an SSD for hard drive. But that’s at least £400 with a keyboard and monitor new. Depends on his saving power…

Cyberpower have a good reputation and have value packages as well as custom builds.

I just built a pc for my boy.

From what I can gather you’re not getting much extra, making savings, doing a self-build these days – not for anything generic anyhow. So for us it was more that my 13yo kid is a big gamer and was very into the idea of spec-ing it all out, so it was a nice project to do with him (He’s also had a bad leg break this summer, so it was a timely sort of thing to do with him as a treat).

Despite asking him to rigorously research component choice he managed to order the wrong case for the motherboard, ffs. But still managed to build it no prob – took a bit of watching youtube vids for some connections but it’s not hard.

You’ve mentioned two of the biggest, and two of the simplest, games out there that certainly don’t require anything like a gaming pc – (although minecraft does render nice on a fast machine). We went the console route first which are fantastic for gaming with friends – I agree with ctk above that it’s prob a better starting point.

I wouldn’t point him to a console if he’s used to playing on a PC. Both Roblox and Minecraft behave a lot differently on a console.

I was thinking of doing the same thing for the boy as he watches endless videos on Youtube about Minecraft and they all use the Java version because of all the mods. He doesn’t get any of those because they don’t work on tablet/console or even the standard windows version.

You’ll need a card for Roblox and Minecraft. They may look a little ‘blocky’ but they both need a reasonable card for an enjoyable experience.

Graphics cards are a pain to buy at the moment, and the low end ones are overpriced.

Easier to get a fully built machine, such as:

Dell 8940

and email them for furth discount: discount

(I don’t work for Dell…)

Eldest_oab bought off these guys – seemed good value compared to other companies, his is a proper gaming and programming / CAD/ engineering powerhouse (his as £1500…) https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/category/next-day-pcs/

Middle_oab saved and went to local shop – who sorted a bit of a ‘what have we got mid-pandemic’ machine – that is alsmost as good as the eldest’s machine, but ‘only’ £850…

Youngest_OAB saved paper round money and ended up buying an HP  from John Lewis It was on offer, cheaper than ‘proper’ gaming brands with good spec (incl. graphics card)  and was £500.

You’ll need a card for Roblox and Minecraft

Not really. I ended up building a cheap-ish PC for my eldest after he pestered me enough.
Ryzen 5 3400G motherboard bundle off eBay, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD and an old case I had lying around. The 3400G has integrated graphics that are plenty capable for vanilla Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, etc. It even runs some Minecraft add-ons(?) that give a software ray-tracing effect to everything with a surprisingly playable frame rate, I’m thinking around 20-24 fps off the top of my head. Fortnite is 50-60 fps – pro gamers will shake their head in disgust, but for an 8 year old messing about with mates after school it’s plenty good enough.

I reckon even basic systems today are a huge improvement on whats gone before and for a smaller outlay too.
I’m still using an older alienware system with a 1gb gtx 970 card 8gb ram and it runs all games fine and is enjoyable. Todays cards and systems are a big improvement over my old system, and are considerably cheaper with 16gb being the norm and a 4gb gpu also being pretty much standard.
I wouldnt class roblox or mincraft as being particularly graphically intense that a standard system wouldnt run pretty much maxed out

Does he want a gaming PC, or does he want a PC to play games on? The former will be three times the cost of the latter.

I used to build from scratch and could be confident in savings, this is going back 10 years probably.

However last year i presumed that i could replace the old gaming PC with one that would bridge across gaming and photo editing with similar savings.

Very quickly discovered that i was speccing up options that came out the same as buying built so went with a built one from Punch. Might be worth looking at their budget to mid price gaming PCs and seeing if you can spec similar build for less yourself. From memory their website was quite helpful in terms of explaining why they selected various components at the different price levels

You’ll need a card for Roblox and Minecraft. They may look a little ‘blocky’ but they both need a reasonable card for an enjoyable experience.

Not really. Both my kids play both games on £150 office refurb PCs with integrated graphics.

This user, Sarden84 posts various builds on hotukdeals and is always being asked for minecraft systems, I would scan through for what fits the budgets and then read the threads for any suggested upgrades/ changes by other users
https://www.hotukdeals.com/search?q=palicomp

Not really. Both my kids play both games on £150 office refurb PCs with integrated graphics.

Sorry. I was just quoting my son, who was standing over my shoulder reading this when I mentioned Roblox. He tops up his Uni loan by coding Roblox things. You’d have thought he would know this stuff…

I used to build from scratch and could be confident in savings, this is going back 10 years probably.

The last time I did a home system build it wasn’t much of a saving if any, and that was in Pentium III days. These days you’re almost always better off with a branded off-the shelf or a bare-bones bundle. There’s two reasons I can see for a self-build:

1) You have very specific ideas of exactly which components you want.

2) You want to do it for the craic, like building a RC car.

Whatever you do, don’t buy parts on the drip from multiple sources. Because when you put it all together and it doesn’t work, you’re humped. There’s value to be had in a decent warranty.

+1 for the 3400G recommendation above. It’ll work fine as a PC to play games on, just not cyberpunk.

Even a 3 generation old, bottom of the range 1660 will set you back more than the MSRP of a 3070 right now. In bike terms that would be like recommending someone buy a 3rd hand 2010 Specialized Allez for new 2021 Tarmac Pro prices because the Tarmac is selling for Venge S-Works money.

You can then buy a graphics card in a couple of years (or a few months if crypto mining continues to nose dive) when they’re not absolutely mental.

Whatever you do, don’t buy parts on the drip from multiple sources. Because when you put it all together and it doesn’t work, you’re humped. There’s value to be had in a decent warranty.

Unless it really won’t POST at all then it should be possible to figure out which component isn’t working and get it swapped.

it should be possible to figure out which component isn’t working

For your average consumer?

For your average consumer?

Unless the motherboard itself is DOA, it should at least post and give you a code to tell you what isn’t connected if not.

Or if the PSU isn’t working it should be relatively obvious.

I’m not saying anyone could manage it, but if you can contemplate building a PC and know what each component is/does I’d say the risk of a part not working in such a way that it’s impossible to deduce which isnt working isn’t a big enough reason not to try.

Even if you bought everything from one shop that doesn’t really help you anyway. You’re still relying on them taking back all the other open boxes as well as the unknown DOA part (or you’ve just not plugged the right cable in).

Sorry. I was just quoting my son, who was standing over my shoulder reading this when I mentioned Roblox. He tops up his Uni loan by coding Roblox things. You’d have thought he would know this stuff…

Fact remains my kids enjoy Roblox on i5s with integrated graphics. Your son may demand more from his experience, I don’t know.

This has come up on the local FB listings for £250. Would it do to get him started?

I5 2400 cpu, 4gb RAM, GeForce GT710 2gb graphics card, 120gb SSD and 3Tb hard drive, dvd writer, windows 10 pro. Dell 24” Full HD G-sync monitor, mouse, keyboard and cables.

Yes, would do fine, all other things being equal.

Seems almost too cheap though. As it’s FB Marketplace do whatever you can to kick the tyres very hard before buying. Ask if you can see it start up and run a game for a few minutes, no just pictures of the home screen.

Good luck!