looking for a Gaming PC - advice needed.

[texaxile]

Hi Fellas,

My daughter (like many kids I expect) has had an utterly crap year, missing friends, losing her Nana (my Mum), stressing about C-19 when her mum works as a Nurse (who then managed to get it) and generally not meeting up with her mates at Dance class etc. All in all she's coped with it very well, along with the hormones that go hand in hand with being a teenage girl.

She's allowed to play on her laptop a few times a week, but it's struggling with her favourite game "Roblox", specifically getting very laggy on one or two of the more demanding games. Odd because the graphics demand of roblox doesn't seem to be that much, I mean it's not exactly hardcore "Cyberpunk" level of graphic demands, and the laptop (which was mine) is only a few years old now so I'm a bit surprised.

The upshot is that I'm going to get her a half decent gaming PC for her birthday, so any advice appreciated. Basically I need something with a decent graphics card which can handle Roblox maxxed out and is good enough to handle some other games like MS Flight Sim and Elite for instance. We will be sharing it, but it will only be used for games and email stuff.

I need a pre installed OS, pref Win10, storage isn't a biggie as we have 2 x 2TB externals kicking around.

Budget is about £1k but if possible I'd like a 21 inch monitor in that, but not essential. Am I in the ball park or am I expecting too much?.

Thanks in advance, along with a virtual, covid free Beer of your choice.

[grumbledoak]

You don’t need much to play Roblox games. What’s your network like?

£1000 including a monitor should be more than adequate.

ETA a quick Dell Outlet candidate -
https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInven...

Edited by grumbledoak on Thursday 11th March 20:41

[texaxile]

Thanks for the reply grumbledoak,the network is good, typical house set up, router in the mian socket, SKY with the boxes in the kids bedrooms which apparently act as WiFi boosters, so hopefully no issues there, it's the machine that seems to struggle (fan always going full pelt as well) and to be fair, I purchased it in 2016 and even then it wasn't that special.

The Dell looks pretty good, that's below budget and I'm pleased that I'm in the right ball park. Can the Dell handle stuff like MS Flight Sim though?.

[grumbledoak]

Requirements look to be here -
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-flight-si...
You would be well above the minimum, a little under the ‘balanced’ spec.

Or use that spec as a guide and help your daughter build her own!

[anonymous-user]

grumbledoak said:

You don’t need much to play Roblox games. What’s your network like?

£1000 including a monitor should be more than adequate.

ETA a quick Dell Outlet candidate -
https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInven...

Edited by grumbledoak on Thursday 11th March 20:41

Genius!! I hope they have a few. My niece is into gaming. I might get her one for her home schooling / her birthday.

[paulrockliffe]

Super_G said:

Genius!! I hope they have a few. My niece is into gaming. I might get her one for her home schooling / her birthday.

I think you could make decent money if you bought them all and put the graphics cards on eBay before selling the rest as an office PC the way the market is at the moment.

[jjones]

paulrockliffe said:

I think you could make decent money if you bought them all and put the graphics cards on eBay before selling the rest as an office PC the way the market is at the moment.

I sold a 440gt for £20 a few weeks back!!

[paulrockliffe]

jjones said:

paulrockliffe said:

I think you could make decent money if you bought them all and put the graphics cards on eBay before selling the rest as an office PC the way the market is at the moment.

I sold a 440gt for £20 a few weeks back!!

That PC has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB, which are selling in the £200-300 range on eBay at the moment.

The thing to watch with Dell is whether they're still doing that thing they did 20 years ago where they used random sized Dell only bits of kit to stop you getting spares and upgrades anywhere else.

[mmm-five]

grumbledoak said:

Requirements look to be here -
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-flight-si...
You would be well above the minimum, a little under the ‘balanced’ spec.

Or use that spec as a guide and help your daughter build her own!

Those MSFS system requirements seem to be well under what people are experiencing...unless you're happy to run it at 720/1080p and low-medium settings.

People are reporting that even a new RTX3080 GPU with a 5600X CPU cannot handle max settings at 1440p.

Here's a bit more info on the real requirements from Tom's Hardware.

1080p performance chart for info - using only a last gen GPU and CPU (RTX2060FE + i9-9900K)...


But that's just one 'game' that needs such a powerful system...nothing else other than Crysis Remastered or Control will need that much oomph for 1080p 60fps.

Edited by mmm-five on Friday 12th March 11:43

[mmm-five]

paulrockliffe said:

That PC has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB, which are selling in the £200-300 range on eBay at the moment.

The thing to watch with Dell is whether they're still doing that thing they did 20 years ago where they used random sized Dell only bits of kit to stop you getting spares and upgrades anywhere else.

They are...even in the Alienware systems.

• chopped down motherboard to fit the case
• OEM GPUs with custom power connectors/fans
• very basic GPUs, running close to their maximums
• plus poor ventilation

But for the price of some of their machines, corners have to be cut.

Are you a Costco member? If so, this '1080p gaming bundle' seems okay @ £850



Similar 6-core/6-thread CPU to the Dell, but:

• 16GB RAM
• 460GB SSD
• GTX1660 Super CPU
• 23.6" 1080p monitor (although only 60hz)
• 'Gaming' keyboard, mouse, headset, mouse pad

Edited by mmm-five on Friday 12th March 11:56