Entry level gaming pc - advice on what's current etc

[pooley]

The lad (13) wants a pc for Xmas. Now this will be for homework and steam (mainly steam I imagine).

 

I'm not a gamer and haven't a clue about gfx cards etc.

 

I can put a nice machine together that'll be fast for every day use but for gaming I need advise.

 

I'm hoping to get away with spending around £400-£500 for the pc.

 

Will that be enough £ to get him started?

 

Cheers all

 

Si

[jmcdermott]

I would say for about £500 you could throw together an i5 9400 with 16gb ram + nivida 1650 + case + psu + small ssd but you would probably not be able to include a monitor.

[Omega_NL]

If you're looking for a budget gaming PC, I would probably recommend a AMD processor. Ryzen 5 3400G or around that price range. Use pcpartpicker to spec a PC around this CPU. This should leave you around £150 for a GPU. Recommend a GTX 1650 or 1660 if you have the budget.

[synaesthesia]

Without monitor, that budget should be enough for a ryzen 3600, B450 mainboard (dont recommend the B550) & 16g RAM with SSD and Im sure you can find a hard drive for general storage, 650w PSU and case and indeed a 1650 graphics card. If you hold on a couple of weeks then with the release of the 3000 series graphics cards which are bringing high end prices right down, it should drop the prices of the 1000 series too.

[HTCPCP]

It kind of depends on what game they are wanting to play really, for that price you are looking at 1080p gaming, but what option you should go for will depend on what games you go for within the budget

 

For the main kit, look at what CPU is going to fit the bill, for many users something like the Ryzen 3 3300X will be fine, and its quite a good little chip - if you can get it and its priced sensibly. If not a 2600 will equally work fine. While Intel is technically a faster CPU, unless you can get a good deal, you are probably going to overspend. The cheaper (within reason) you can get the processor and motherboard without going super bargain basement, then the more money to spend on what is going to really improve performance - the more you can spend on graphics. If you do see a 1600AF at a good price, jump on it!

For storage - 240GB SSD for boot, but get a spinning rust disk in there too for the games library - more and more games are over 100GB each. A new 1TB drive isn't that expensive, and doesn't affect load times too much for games

Power supply - get a decent one - reputable brand etc etc. Just a word of warning though - reccomended PSUs for the RTX3090 is 750w, the 3070 is 650w. Getting a 650w now should see you through 2 PCs at least if you get a decent one. 80+ bronze is really a minimum here, but if you can get gold within budget, go for it. However at the moment, supply is quite eratic at the moment, so shop around

Case - look for one with airflow. If in doubt, GamersNexus has

RAM - 16GB ideally 3200mhz, but be willing to drop down to 3000mhz.

 

Now, for the graphics card - we are in a fair bit of flux. nVidia have just announced the high end RTX 30 series cards, and Big Navi is set to be launched in a few weeks, there is already an increase in the used supply of the nvidia 10 and 20 series cards on the market, so expect there to be some price drops in there coming up if performance is as good as nVidia say their 30 series cards are. As for how Big Navi is going to perform - who knows - hopefully it won't just be another Radeon 7 kind of card...

[bald_pig]

The next generation graphics cards are about to release, and the new AMD processors are due soon, so pricing may have changed a lot by Christmas! Hold out a bit and you will probably get a better machine for your money.

[pooley]

Good advice, gives me something to look out for and to monitor price drops

[George76]

Maybe wait a bit for the CPU and GPU since the new parts are coming out soon. Definitely check a Ryzen 3000 series, 16gb RAM and Nvidia GTX or Radeon 5600/5700 when they get cheaper