Entry Gaming PC, CPU & Graphics card?

[vetrof]

Teenage son is after a PC soon for Basic school work and gaming. No heavy video editing or image processing.
What should I be looking for in terms of CPU/motherboard and graphics card. Don't need 4k, will look to upgrade whenever supply/prices calm down a bit. I'm happy enough looking for stuff like RAM, power supplies and drives.

He plays mostly WOT, fortnight, minecraft at the moment and PS4 games via PS remote play.

Budget is up to about 700 pounds for the whole machine, I guess 4-500 for mobo/cpu/gc?

Cheers

[Paddymcc]

If your competant enough to do some work yourself look out for the Dell Precision workstations or the Lenovo Thinkstation workstations on ebay.

They have beefy power supplies as they typically have 2 x GPUs installed. You can get the equivalent I7 processor in a Xeon variant with 4, 6 or 8 cores in them too.

Then its just a case of adding an SSD and blowing the budget on your RTX GPU of choice.

[vetrof]

Thanks Paddy, but I'm more after advice on what level of, or specific cards will do the job. Then look to build (or buy) a system based from there.

[grumbledoak]

The entry level gaming build at https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ would run those -
i3, 16GB, 480GB SSD, and a 1050 Ti

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/X9nhVc

[bazza white]

over budget but seems graphics cards are non existent at the moment this may be an option

https://www.ebuyer.com/1258446-acer-nitro-5-ryzen-...

[FourWheelDrift]

How about a reasonable APU, CPU with integrated graphics for normal Windows stuff and if you have good internet a GeForce Now subscription so he can play the games he owns streamed by Nvidia at high settings? For now at least until GPUs are available.

This is the list of games it supports - https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/geforce-exper...

WOT, Minecraft and Fortnite are all on there.

You also get a free limited use service so it can be tested out.

Obviously other builds can be done but this one with streamed GeForce Now will do what he wants and could have a GPU added later for just £432 - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/6f4tcT

^^^ There are some Black Friday deals in there, such as the case. Chose that one as it comes with 3 fans already. You can go cheaper but there's a limit to price/quality.

[LukeBrown66]

Can anyone explain why the cost of an average machine has skyrocketed so much in recent years.

I last bought a half decent gaming machine about 5 years ago and managed to get a decent spec at the time for about 500 quid.

To achieve that now you are looking at over a grand, what has forced the prices up does anyone know?

I have heard crypto mining and graphics cards have forced the issue?

Am looking now at a budget of about a grand, and still feel most deals leave you with a limp area in the build. UI dont want to build my own, neither the knowledge nor patience!!

[grumbledoak]

LukeBrown66 said:

Can anyone explain why the cost of an average machine has skyrocketed so much in recent years.

There is something of a global chip shortage squeezing supply, but for PCs it is graphics cards that have really shot up because of high demand for crypto currency mining.

You can still build one with onboard graphics for £500. They will play most games, just not in high resolution or frame rates.

[S6PNJ]

vetrof said:

Teenage son is after a PC soon for Basic school work and gaming. No heavy video editing or image processing.
What should I be looking for in terms of CPU/motherboard and graphics card. Don't need 4k, will look to upgrade whenever supply/prices calm down a bit. I'm happy enough looking for stuff like RAM, power supplies and drives.

He plays mostly WOT, fortnight, minecraft at the moment and PS4 games via PS remote play.

Budget is up to about 700 pounds for the whole machine, I guess 4-500 for mobo/cpu/gc?

Cheers

I'm in the process of building one for my (elderly) father for gaming (he's 78!!). Have based it on a B550 chipset MB, Ryzen 5700G processor and 16Gb RAM. With a 'basic' case and a 650w PSU (he already has a spare 256Gb NVME card which I'll use for the OS / storage), it comes in at less than £500 - parts bought via Amazon and ebuyer. As and when GPUs come down in price or become available, it will get one of those thrown in. From what I can work out, the processor is the fastest AMD with on board graphics - I'm not sure what the Intel equivalent would be though.

grumbledoak said:

You can still build one with onboard graphics for £500. They will play most games, just not in high resolution or frame rates.

Yup, totally agree!!

[Whoozit]

I'm still bemused the now 7 year old GTX970 in my machine is coping even gaming with an ultrawide screen. The processor is even older, an i5-2300. Overclocked but nevertheless.

Whenever I price up a new machine, I'm shocked at the prices. And a new build is *only* 40% or so better on most benchmarks. Not bad for a system I first built in 2012

[FourWheelDrift]

A lot more than 40%.

[Whoozit]

FourWheelDrift said:

A lot more than 40%.

Sorry - for the price point, I should have said.

[vetrof]

Thanks for the input, will do some more reading.

[anonymous-user]

bazza white said:

over budget but seems graphics cards are non existent at the moment this may be an option

https://www.ebuyer.com/1258446-acer-nitro-5-ryzen-...

I was going to suggest a laptop, didn't think you would be able to get a 3060 for £800. I have a Legion Pro 3060 that I quite happily game on, although I am not playing the latest, latest games I can play everything at Ultra with the CPU set to Whisper.

Would recommend upgrading the Ram to 16GB though

[vetrof]

Just to bring this back round, managed to source the following. Adding Windows brings it in just about on budget.
I'm in Czech Republic, so prices are not indicative of what's available in the UK.

Component	Price
Case "PC Case EVOLVEO R04 Black Blue "	32,04
MoBo MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max	63,85
Processor Ryzen 5 5600G	213,52
Memory Crucial 16GB KIT DDR4 3200MHz CL16 Ballistix Black	49,75
SSD Verbatim VI550 S3 2.5" SSD 512GB	43,40
Power Supply Corsair CV550	40,06
Monitor Asus 23,8" VP249QGR IPS LED	135,46
Keyboard Kensington Pro Fit® Washable USB Keyboard	20,02
Total	598,11

[grumbledoak]

[vetrof]

Remember, it is for my teenage son. Also it has 2 fans already installed and a slot for dvd drive, which is nice.;)

[S6PNJ]

vetrof said:

Just to bring this back round, managed to source the following. Adding Windows brings it in just about on budget.
I'm in Czech Republic, so prices are not indicative of what's available in the UK.

Component	Price
MoBo MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max	63,85
SSD Verbatim VI550 S3 2.5" SSD 512GB	43,40

Your board will support an M2 NVMe card / disk (can I call it that?). If you can get hold of one at a suitable price, it might be worthwhile swapping the SSD for an NVMe.

[vetrof]

S6PNJ said:

Your board will support an M2 NVMe card / disk (can I call it that?). If you can get hold of one at a suitable price, it might be worthwhile swapping the SSD for an NVMe.

I looked at that, but from the reading I've done it seems that for gaming there's not really any benefit. So I could get a bigger drive for the money going SATA.

[S6PNJ]

At least it's been considered and discounted. Good stuff. I hope your build goes well.