Gaming PC for sons... HELP!

[phil1979]

Hi PH

I need your help if possible.

My 2 sons, 12 & 14, both have Veno Scorp gaming PC bundles at their mother's home, and I plan to get similar for my new home.

I gather Veno Scorp are ok for budget purchases, and my boys say they work pretty well for their needs, albeit growing increasingly laggy on games like Minecraft (which is mainly what they use the PCs for).

I don't know the specs of their existing PCs, but I gather that they are a few years old and Windows 10.

So, knowing zero about PC specs, I was going to put my trust (and modest budget) with Veno Scorp again.

So, taking into account the main games that they'll be playing are Minecraft/Roblox, would the specs on either of the 2 boxes below be suitable (and hopefully less laggy)?

I've bought screens already... 165hz hdmi 2.1, if that makes any difference when pairing.

Thanks for any pointers here. It's appreciated.

[.:ian:.]

The more expensive one has a moderately faster graphics card, though with less vram. The vram probably won't matter for roblox or Minecraft.

I don't suppose you know the spec of the ones they have already?

[phil1979]

Afraid not, but they were quite a bit cheaper i think, so imagine the specs are way down on the ones above... and I guess the ones above are pretty cheap in PC terms anyway?

[BlueMR2]

This from costco is £549, it seems to have a faster processor and 1TB of storage.

The one you show at £529 is 256/512/1TB so i m not sure which is included in the spec.

You could also check the awd-it website direct to see if they do anything better for the money as these are slightly older systems now.

AWD-IT Defiant 3, AMD Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, Gaming Desktop PC
https://www.costco.co.uk/p/511581

[phil1979]

Thanks. This is great info.

When I select 1tb on the Veno website, the price ups to £569.

Being a costco member, I know their returns/warranty etc are solid, so that's a plus on their offering.

Based on the costco and the veno scorp options being both 1tb, can you give me an equivalent car analogy i.e. if the veno is a Focus ST, what would the Costco one be, if that makes sense? I literally have no reference points with computing power.

[BlueMR2]

Also a company on amazon seems to sell the ones you listed cheaper. If you check by vat number, they are unit 174 and 176 so possibly one builds and one sends out, just make sure you check out warranty differences etc and are happy before buying.

Quite a few different styles to choose from.

https://amzn.eu/d/1w8WBt8

[BlueMR2]

phil1979 said:

Thanks. This is great info.

When I select 1tb on the Veno website, the price ups to £569.

Being a costco member, I know their returns/warranty etc are solid, so that's a plus on their offering.

Based on the costco and the veno scorp options being both 1tb, can you give me an equivalent car analogy i.e. if the veno is a Focus ST, what would the Costco one be, if that makes sense? I literally have no reference points with computing power.

I’ve never heard of Veno Scorp until this thread, however it sounds like your sons were happy with the old one.

It really hard to compare the specs without knowing the actual model, as you don’t know what it is specifically is.


Alot of these computers will be built with what was cheapest at the time provided they haven’t had poor reliability in the past.

Eg sata is limited to 550mb a second however these say they are NVME so should have a performance improvement and could be in the 1-2-3,000+ mb second. But the motherboards are too old to get the most out of 15,000 mb a second drives.

Performance of the ssd when pushed could depend on onboard cache but you won’t know what it is till you buy.


But then you don’t NEED a Ferrari to go get milk, even if you might like one.

[phil1979]

Thanks for all this info. I must admit I feel very out of my depth, but the infonyou have all provided helps a lot.

Currently, if I had to choose, Costco is nudging the lead with better specs and customer care.

[balham123]

My 14 year old bought* all the components and built his own, reckons it's loads better than he could have bought ready built for the same money. He watched a load of YouTube vids on speccing and building before he ordered the parts. Might be worth suggesting if they might be interested.

• Obviously I paid for it. I'm not that lucky

[phil1979]

Thanks. I think the self build might be a bit of a leap for my 2, and me for that matter! I can see the appeal, though.

[BlueMR2]

phil1979 said:

When I select 1tb on the Veno website, the price ups to £569.

Being a costco member, I know their returns/warranty etc are solid, so that's a plus on their offering.

Based on the costco and the veno scorp options being both 1tb, can you give me an equivalent car analogy i.e. if the veno is a Focus ST, what would the Costco one be, if that makes sense? I literally have no reference points with computing power.

If you buy the same processor ram and graphics card then the may very well be the same, if they were bulk made, you can get a similar spec with the 5600 processor on amazon.

From a look at a couple of reviews it seems the 55 is zen 3 and the 45 zen 2, the zen 3 is newer and has more cache so that may help in the games they are playing, in some reviews the 55 was upto 20% faster, but they were headline figures, I didn’t look to deep.

Just search google for” ryzen 5 4500 vs 5500 vs 5600 “ to see loads of reviews/ discussion of when they came out.


Costco do have good returns so thats a plus.

[BlueMR2]

phil1979 said:

Thanks. I think the self build might be a bit of a leap for my 2, and me for that matter! I can see the appeal, though.

You can get windows for about £10 which can help save money if you want to buy individual parts, however from your posts I feel you would rather not be tech support if your kids have a problem.

Depending on how soon you need it, you could always keep a watch out for discounts at Costco.

I’d self build myself where possible, however I understand some people don’t have the time/inclination to do that.

[phil1979]

Thanks again. I'm slowly getting my head around things. 5500 seems to be the best option at my price point, and the costco option is taking the lead currently. Will certainly keep an eye out for deals.

Re being tech support for my kids... ha! I'm more mechanical minded than electronics, sadly.

[phil1979]

said:

Moving home again and divorce is bad enough. Building 2 pcs with a hatred of electronics would send me under.

[Digger]

I think I managed to delete my reply just in time

Edited by Digger on Tuesday 16th September 19:53

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

The Costco pc is the best of the 3, my only concern is the 3050 graphics card isn't the best, but that depends on what games they like to play.

What is the cheapest pc with a 3060 in, that is a decent leap over the 3050.

[NaePasaran]

Could you not trick them into running a system scanner like something from CPUID, tell them a colleague/neighbour/guy from the pub wants a gaming PC and asked for the specs of their ones.

Post the specs here and I'm sure someone could help out. I'd imagine they'll soon be morthing from Roblox and Minecraft to FIFA and Call of Duty which may require more computing resources, so might want to future proof it a little as much as cash allows.

[phil1979]

NaePasaran said:

Could you not trick them into running a system scanner like something from CPUID, tell them a colleague/neighbour/guy from the pub wants a gaming PC and asked for the specs of their ones.

Post the specs here and I'm sure someone could help out. I'd imagine they'll soon be morthing from Roblox and Minecraft to FIFA and Call of Duty which may require more computing resources, so might want to future proof it a little as much as cash allows.

The futureproofing thing does weigh on my mind.

Would the Costco one struggle with something like Call of Duty, as an example?

Thanks

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

phil1979 said:

The futureproofing thing does weigh on my mind.

Would the Costco one struggle with something like Call of Duty, as an example?

Thanks

Depends at what resolution, detail level and frame rate you are expecting. I would say it would 100% struggle if you wanted to run any of the recent Call of Duty games at a decent resolution and detail.

The 3050 isn't really a powerful graphics card, but a graphics card will be the most expensive part of the system. I have no idea what the power supply is like, but it may struggle if you want to upgrade to a more powerful graphics card in future.

A 3060 is going to be about 40% faster than a 3050. Even a 3060 is a four or five year old graphics card.

[BlueMR2]

CyberPower, AMD Ryzen 5, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060, Gaming Desktop PC
https://www.costco.co.uk/p/576945

This one is £150 more, it seems similar processor but a 5060 gpu instead of a 3050

Edited by BlueMR2 on Tuesday 30th September 14:20