Son would like one and I have no clue about what specs are needed these days.

Hes after a desktop and if anyone could link to something suitable – or has something used to move on – that would be tops.

Thanks in advance.

Depends on the resolution and game, a 1060 is perfectly capable of playing current gen shooter games maxxed out at 1080p at over 60fps.

However my GTX 1080, starts to choke on Warhammer Total War 2 when settings are set to Ultra and 1080P – and averages about 35 FPS with the odd hiccup.

CPU’s are fairly meh these days, only a few FPS to differentiate them. An 8400k, 8600k or Ryzen 1st or 2nd gen is more that enough.

You probably want 16 gig of 3000mhz DDR4 ram and a cheapish MM2 drive to keep it feeling punchy for general use.

ryzen 2600, rx580, 16gb cl14 3200 ram, b450 tomahawk mobo.

What does he want to play and how much are you looking to spend?

scan.co.uk and novatech.co.uk would be good starting points. Your budget will dictate how highly spec’ed it’ll be.  A little but of reading about what graphics cards are better than others and knowing what sort of size (resolution) monitor you want to be able to play the games on will help.

Advice sought?  Buy a console. (-:

There was a thread on this like a week ago, I’ll see if I can find it.

Here.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/pc-buiding-or-off-the-shelf-ready-to-go/

Your big outlay is the graphics card.  So set a budget.

My son built a system 3 years ago – I7 4.4ghz (fast), GTX 970, 16gb ram and SSD.  The graphics are still outstanding in 1080p but ‘he’ says it struggles some times (also has 3 screens on the go – looks impressive in racing games).

The new RTX 20xx series cards are crazy expensive.

It does depend what sort of games he’s into (e.g. World of Warcraft is a lot less demanding than CoD4). I’d say if he wants to play even reasonably demanding games at 1080p 60fps unless you have a budget of £1000+ I wouldn’t really bother, you’re better off with a console.

If reading £1000 didn’t make you swear out loud then there’s a lot of options and as has been said most of the cost will go on the graphics card. Don’t bother building one up from scratch, you won’t save much (if anything) and potentially end up with a lot of warranty hassles.

As with most things the more money you spend the better a system you’ll get, diminishing returns only really starts around the £2k mark (again assuming he wants to play some fairly demanding games).

Can anyone advise on what sort of rig I’d need to get into some VR games?

I’ve been watching a few videos on YouTube and the VR games scene (finally) seems to be coming along.

e.g.

Are any of the console VR systems any good or is PC the only way to go?

According to the description those videos are on a…

• Intel Core i7-6950X 10-core Extreme Edition Processor OC to 4.4 GHz
• Corsair Hydro Series H110i Liquid CPU Cooler
• ASUS ROG STRIX GeForce GTX 1080
• Patriot Viper Elite 32GB DDR4 3000Mhz RAM
• MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard
• 6TB Western Digital Blue Hard Drive
• Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD
• Corsair RM1000i 1000W Power Supply
• Corsair Carbide Series Clear 400C Mid tower Case

which sounds like a very serious (and pricey) bit of kit.

I don’t know about PC VR but my son has the PS4 VR setup and it is very impressive.

which sounds like a very serious (and pricey) bit of kit.

Yes, incredibly so.

I’m very cynical of Gaming PCs (I refuse to use the word Rig).

If all OPs son wants to do is play games, buy a console. All the top games are console games first. (that’ll cause an argument). They’re cheap enough, tend to go 5 years between generations and will game brilliantly in either 1080 or 4k if you’ve got the TV for it and you buy the posher ones.

If OPs Son wants to play games and have a PC for homework, general use etc – buy a console and a laptop, it’ll still be cheaper.

However, if OPs Son have a genuine desire to learn how PCs work, how to build them and measuring the results, then buy a gaming PC. You have to understand that the hobby is way more than just playing the games. PC gamers are kept awake at night worrying about frame rates and resolution – more than even how detailed the graphics are, and it’s a very valid argument to say that a lot of this is about numbers on a screen rather than actual gaming experience as the differences are almost impossible to see.

Admittedly I’m talking to an audience who’ve likely at least thought about spending £2k on a set of Carbon wheels, the sort of upgrade that buyers need to say “you can actually feel the difference” because it’s entirely likely you actually can’t. PC gaming is like that.

A ‘cheap’ set-up is £1500 by the time you factor in monitor, gaming keyboard and all that, and in a year or two the next gen of GPU, CPU and whatnot will come along and they’ll want those. Even though, it’s actually more than possible to have a decent gaming ‘experience’ on 5 year old hardware.

If all OPs son wants to do is play games, buy a console. All the top games are console games first. (that’ll cause an argument). They’re cheap enough, tend to go 5 years between generations and will game brilliantly in either 1080 or 4k if you’ve got the TV for it and you buy the posher ones.
If OPs Son wants to play games and have a PC for homework, general use etc – buy a console and a laptop, it’ll still be cheaper.
However, if OPs Son have a genuine desire to learn how PCs work, how to build them and measuring the results, then buy a gaming PC. You have to understand that the hobby is way more than just playing the games. PC gamers are kept awake at night worrying about frame rates and resolution – more than even how detailed the graphics are, and it’s a very valid argument to say that a lot of this is about numbers on a screen rather than actual gaming experience as the differences are almost impossible to see.

Depends, if you’re an RTS/4X/Grand Strategy/Simulation fan – PC is the way to go by a country mile.

Gaming experience is improved on PC’s as well, as you can tailor the settings to give you good frame rates in games. It’s often the case that console games have choppy frame rates and that is noticeable, Forza Horizon 4 is almost unplayable for me in the 4K setting. And on a big TV, 4K looks significantly better – 1440P is fine on PC.

If all OPs son wants to do is play games, buy a console. All the top games are console games first. (that’ll cause an argument).

Well you’re wrong because if absolutely depends on the games the OP’s son wants to play. Some games are better on a console, some games are console-only but there’s still entire genres of games that are far better on a PC as well as many games that aren’t available (or are vastly inferior) on console.

I’ve got nothing against consoles (even though I don’t own one as having bought a PS4 I couldn’t get on with the controller so gave it to a nephew). My gaming PC is expensive (similar to the VR one posted) but for the games I wanted to play a console wasn’t an option. If a console is an option for the games the OP’s son wants to play then go that route every time.

The grey area is stuff like Fortnite, COD4 and PUBG (FPS/BR games). As long as you’re OK with the console limitation they’re fine – you play against people putting up with those same limitations. However it’s generally a better experience on PC (better graphics, better frame rate, better control method) but you need to spend £1k+ for the privilege so it’s a very individual decision.

he grey area is stuff like Fortnite, COD4 and PUBG (FPS/BR games). As long as you’re OK with the console limitation they’re fine – you play against people putting up with those same limitations. However it’s generally a better experience on PC (better graphics, better frame rate, better control method) but you need to spend £1k+ for the privilege so it’s a very individual decision.

Actually, multiplayer FPS is better on a console. Cheating in COD4, PUBG and BF1 is off the charts.

Actually, multiplayer FPS is better on a console. Cheating in COD4, PUBG and BF1 is off the charts.

Less cheating doesn’t really mean it’s better though but could be a consideration I guess (is there no cheating in console multiplayer?). I play PUBG a fair bit and although it’s supposedly rife with cheaters I rarely actually come across blatant cheating (and most cheaters seem to just do it blatantly to cause as much grief per match and get their enjoyment from that rather than just to boost their leader board stats).

IME reports of cheating in big games are usually exaggerated. It does happen and it’s probably easier on PC, but there’s cheaters on console too. It’s very rare to see someone flying around or instantly shooting everyone through walls, and I suspect the ones that do get banned quickly. There are subtler cheats that don’t make it obvious to anyone watching though.

I have a friend who’s perpetually convinced that anyone who seems good at the game is cheating – maybe some are but there’s also a lot of people who’ve played for thousands of hours and are simply good at it.

It’s definitely harder on consoles, I come across cheating a lot more these days – especially in BF1. It’s quite easy to spot, you and your squadmates getting headshotted within seconds of each other from across the map by the same guy, whilst all of you are running through cover etc.

Console matches feel more tactical as well, as you just don’t have the quick reactions that you do on a PC, so it feels like people use cover more and make more deliberate movements towards objectives – instead of relying on twitch skills as much.

The grey area is stuff like Fortnite..

I play Fortnite on my phone! 😆