Anyone clued up on gaming PCs who can help?

Just curious, which company is building it for you?

They're called PC Specialist: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

My lad (14yrs old) found them and seemed to come up with a spec list, but I don't know (and he's not sure either) if it's decent or not.

What's he going to play? The build looks decent, (I am looking at something similar), but the one proviso is whether the games that he want to play support Ray Tracing. If they do, an Nvidia card would be a better choice to take advantage of that. Otherwise, the AMD graphics is much better value.

The keyboard and mouse is a tricky one. I'd almost be tempted to leave them off and give him a choice to go and try out which ones he likes best, like I have a wireless Logitech mouse (because I like it and the way it feels) and a Huntsman TE keyboard (because it is smaller than a full size and has a less annoying click than some others).

I'd never heard of Ray Tracing, but just googled it and I'd rather get a card that supports it for future proofing. I'll look into that thanks. Good idea about the keyboard and mouse too, do they have these things at places like PC world/Currys to test?

Ray tracing is nice but both cards do ray tracing its just that AMDs 6000 cards were their first try at it and nvidia 3000 series was there second so it is better, me id still go for the AMD card but its worth looking up some videos to see if you get a comparison between say the 3060Ti or 3070 and the 6700xt as the two nvidia cards sit either side of the AMD one.
Id change your memory to 2 sticks of 16Gb as it will work a wee bit better in duel channel mode and although the PSU is fine i always go overboard with mine and for that would probably pick a 750w but as i said its fine.

What sort of screen are they playing on?

The memory is odd. It should be run in dual channel, ie 2 sticks not 1, so 2x16GB instead of 1x32GB. It would also be better with faster memory, 3200 or 3600MHz. 16GB is plenty of memory for gaming, so could save some money there if that's an option.

Thanks for the info, looked at the Nvidia cards. Holy crap 😲 may have to stick with the AMD.

I'll look at the memory too, thanks.

At the moment he only has a 28" LG TV/monitor which is 60Hz. He'll need to upgrade it, but it's all a bit experimental for a bit as we don't really k ow what we're doing 🫤

Good idea about the keyboard and mouse too, do they have these things at places like PC world/Currys to test?

Yeah they have quite a range in my local store. I tried them out and bought one, but having played on it with my favourite game I now realise I don't like it that much. However that particular game has a lot of controls and needs a lot of thought put into customisation. Other games probably aren't like that.

A good starting point is to decide what resolution you want to play at.
1440p monitors are probably the sweet spot at the moment as 4k monitors are harder on the PC, and it's still a nicely higher resolution than HD /1080p.
You can get them with better HDR and higher refresh rates and AMD freesync and Nvidia G-sync for better money.. Which to my eye makes for a better monitor than a lower spec 4k monitor that will be harder on the PC.

Thanks for the info, looked at the Nvidia cards. Holy crap 😲 may have to stick with the AMD.

Supply is getting better so prices are getting more sensible, the performance/value is fairly close though so if you're buying a £500 card then a £500 AMD card is pretty much the same as a £500 NVIDIA one, it's just that as pointed out above, NVIDIA have a bit of a jump on AMD at the last generation (don't even look at 40xx cards). The RX 6700 XT is comparable to a 3060Ti. But it gets a bit messy when you look at different games as some will benefit more from DLSS (essentially fancy upscaling) which in turn means Ray Tracing works (because early ray tracing at full resolution was ....... very slow to the point it was just a gimmick that wasn't useable in fast games).

Other than that, 2x8GB 3600Hz memory will be quicker, and on that board you can always add another 2x8GB in the future to make it 32GB, but games don't generally need it as they use the video RAM on the card to store all the textures.

Cant help with the spec these days, but pcspecialist have built me 2 very nice gaming PCs before. Good choice!

512 GB SSD is a bit small these days. You wouldn’t want to run games from the 2TB HDD so that is for bulk storage, does he need that? Would be better with at least a 1TB SSD and ditch the normal drive.

At the moment he only has a 28″ LG TV/monitor which is 60Hz. He’ll need to upgrade it, but it’s all a bit experimental for a bit as we don’t really k ow what we’re doing 🫤

I have the 27 inch version of this 32" monitor, and it's superb. https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-32-usb-c-gaming-monitor-g3223d/apd/210-bdxv/monitors-monitor-accessories

EDIT, it doesn't have built in speakers though, basically as built in speakers are universally crap, so it's assumed you have your own speakers/amp plugged into the PC anyway.

I was in a similar position last year but at a much lower spec as it was only for Minecraft. Got one from Palicomp who I think I found through a thread on here. Very good service and they were great when we had issues with it last month.

At a quick glance they may also be a smidge cheaper than PCS.

Good catch on the memory, completely missed that. Yes, for sure go with 2x16 sticks of 3200 or 3600. Faster than that is not worth it.

Also, just don’t look at he prices of the Nvidia 40xx cards. They scare me! As was said above, 3060Ti levels of performance is pretty damned good so any card that does something like that is probably safe, plus he can upgrade it later, and the cpu if he wants/needs to.

That said, I am still using a GTX1070 and that seems fine.

I'm an Alienware fan(awaits the haters 😆 ) But I've been over the arts and upgrades you're buying and its not dissimilar price to the Aurora R13.

I bought the X51 which is a seriously old system now(probably about 10 years old) but still very capable.

Some good info, thanks all for the help.

How old is he, what games will he be playing and would he be better served with an Xbox / Playstation?

I'd file dual-channel RAM under 'nice to have' rather than something I'd lose sleep over. If it's a comparable price then go for it. I'd agree with the drive swap though, SSDs are cheap enough these days that a large spinnydisk is kinda redundant. You can always add one later if needs be.

He's 14 and tends to play things like Apex and Call of Duty on XBox at the moment, but I'm not 100% sure what else. We have a budget of about £1500 and he's been saving for ages for his first gaming PC.

With PC Specialist, check they aren't doing the previous generation or twos kit at full price - I noticed that when I built mine.

In terms of upgradability, that motherboard/cpu is the AM4 socket which has been superseeded recently by AM5, so to upgrade in the future will require a new motherboard/cpu/ram (as it's ddr4 and ddr5 has just replaced it). Graphics card upgrades are currently just a case of swapping the card and making sure your power supply can deliver to them, the corsair 650w is a solid choice for that though.

The ram is actually a biggie - AMD processors love dual channel, which will make a noticeable difference to the gaming performance, especially the lows, so 2x16 will perform better than 1x32.

Cougar is right about having moar ssds over HDDs though, but these are really easy to fit yourself if pc specialist are being extortionate on the upgrade cost

It's also worth mentioning that if you're in any way technically minded, computers are remarkably easy to build yourself these days.

Looks pretty decent to me, with the RAM caveat mentioned above and depending on exactly how much it is.

Not heard of pcspecialist before but I've had quite a few bits and pieces from CCL before. For example this:

https://www.cclonline.com/pc/gaming-pcs/horizon/horizon-5-amd-rtx-3060ti-gaming-pc/

comes in under budget at £1380 and is pretty much comparable to the pcspecialist one except it has an nVidia RTX (i.e ray-tracing) GPU and probably better memory for gaming overall. The spare £120 could get you an extra SSD.

The GPU and CPU combo is solid - as above a Nvidia card is better for dlss/raytracing, but neither are essential. If you can get a 3060ti for a similar price I'd go with that (have one myself) but otherwise it's not that much of an issue. The only game I've really appreciated raytracing has been cyberpunk 2077 so far.

I'd suggest 2 x 8 ram sticks, 32 is overkill for gaming unless you have lots of background processes. But get something faster such as a 3600 CL16.

I'd also suggest replacing the HDD with a Sata SDD, not even 2tb, perhaps 1tb.

The ram is actually a biggie – AMD processors love dual channel, which will make a noticeable difference to the gaming performance, especially the lows, so 2×16 will perform better than 1×32.

Fair, I didn't know that. The last AMD socket I dealt with was the AM3 residing in the desktop here.

Anecdotally, AMD does seem to change their sockets a lot less frequently than Intel.

It’s probably not the point, but the Xbox series x gpu is meant to be very similar performance to the 6700 XT (just a lot cheaper as Microsoft subsidise the Xbox), so don’t expect much of an upgrade.

Anecdotally, AMD does seem to change their sockets a lot less frequently than Intel.

You're right, and with AMD processors historically, you've been able to slot any processor of the same socket type into any motherboard with a bios update, so the very first AM4 boards can run the final generation AM4 processors, which is why I'd strongly consider getting an AM5 board and processor as a sort-of future proofing.

https://www.logicalincrements.com/ is my go-to for sanity checking specs and making sure nothing is going to bottleneck or have money wasted on it.

@molgrips what mouse did you get? I'm on a Logitech G700S and even that runs out of buttons in Elite if you try to do everything with one profile. There are MMORPG style mice out there but I wouldn't really fancy one of those.

I have a Logitech Hero G502 on the basis it wasn't silly money. It's good all round, really - the software for it is comprehensive, allowing you to bind key presses to the buttons. It's not quite perfectly shaped for how I want to hold it but it's ok. The issue is that there are two pairs of buttons on it besides the normal ones - one is not particularly easy to use frequently and the other is nearly impossible.

I am talking about Elite Dangerous, of course, and what I really need is not buttons but control axes. As many axes as a HOTAS but with the precision of a mouse. And the fact I'm attempting this with Geforce Now adds another level of difficulty on top!

In terms of CPU is it best to go with the Intel i5/7 or AMD Ryzen 5/7? Or with a decent graphics card does it not make a lot of difference? Thanks

Oh gods! This is such can of worms.

a 5600x or a 5800x will do you for just about whatever you need to do. I guess there is not much difference, but AMD just seem to be a bit cheaper for the same performance.

One thing though... the Ryzen 7xxx stuff in AM5 format (newer, more expensive) and takes DDR5 memory (newer, faster, more expensive). 5600x or 5800x should be fine.

Ok, thanks

Ryzen's for bang for buck.

which is why I’d strongly consider getting an AM5 board and processor as a sort-of future proofing

Only if you've found the end of the rainbow and there really is a pot of gold there. The new motherboards are pricey and DDR5 memory to go along with it isn't cheap either. Future proofing is fine if you like to upgrade lots and want the newest kit but chances are most of us don't do that.

That sounds really stupid on this forum where lots of people will buy a shiny new part that's 1% lighter than what it's replacing!

The biggest outlay is the graphics card. We did my daughter's Gaming Machine on a budget, in that we paid my son for his GTX970 so he could get a RTX2070 a couple of years ago. Daughter's machne had a Ryzen 5, 16GB SSD and ARGB lights and the GTX970, but it's more than quick enough for her gaming genre. My son's running an overclocked 4th gen i7 and a RTX 2070 which is enough for racing sims over 3x 1080 screens.

Having recently gone through a similar journey but with a 'video editing and gaming' caveat I came up with a similar list.

Highly recomment getting 1Gb 1st SSD instead of 512 and making sure it is NVME - aka the fastest.

I was naturally drawn to AM5 until I realised that the top spec AM4 CPUs will still be damn quick in 3 years time and a lot cheaper.

Always go for 2x RAM sticks in dual channel rather than a single one.

Otherwise, sound build.

I'm on a Ryzen 5 5600X and 5600XT GPU with 16GB RAM. All good here on a 3440 x 1440 monitor.

And if I need to squeeze some more out I can overclock.

Yeah I really wouldn't go down AM5 at this point, motherboards and RAM are still hella expensive and a 5600x will be very solid for a few years to come. There's also the 5800X3d as a future upgrade which still rivals 7000 series CPUs on an AM4 platform.

It's always worth plugging all the components into https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/ just to see what the build-it-yourself cost would be and the individual review ratings of the components (in case any are known to be crap). I wouldn't actually recommend building it yourself but if there's more than £200-300 cost added on by PC Specialist it might be something you could negotiate over.

Just a thought but how about a Steam Deck?

Might be classed as a very cheeky stealth ad so delete if I'm breaking any rules, but I gave my son the PC I built up during Covid so his old one is currently gathering dust in a corner:

Ryzen 5 3400G Processor w/AMD cooler (Wraith RGB iirc)

ASUS A320m AM4 motherboard

16Gb (2 x 8) 3200 MHz DDR RAM

GTX970 GPU

Lots of case cooling fans

Various storage (I can't remember exactly but I think 256Gb SSD for windows install and then a 1TB HDD, although it's a SLOW one repurposed from an old laptop)

Wifi card

RGB keyboard & mouse

It played stuff like Fortnite, Roblox, War Thunder, etc. no problem at 1080p

Might be worth around £400 at the moment, but would give a decent base and a sizeable amount of change from your £1500 budget to upgrade motherboard/CPU/GPU/storage?

Thanks for the offer, but would rather get one built up so we have any support if something goes wrong.

I've come up with this build now based on help from here (thanks!) and my own research:

Intel Core i5 12400F Alder Lake-S CPU
Kingston FURY Beast 16GB (2x 8GB) 3600MHz DDR4 RAM
Gigabyte B660M DS3H AX DDR4 Intel Socket 1700 Motherboard
Be Quiet! Pure Rock 2 Air Tower CPU Cooler
CCL Choice GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GPU
Montech Air 100 ARGB Mid Tower Gaming Case - White
Gigabyte P650B 650W 80+ Bronze PSU
Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-bit, DVD, OEM Licence
3 Year On-Site Warranty Upgrade (UK Mainland only)
Samsung 980 1TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD
Cooler Master SK652 Mechanical Keyboard, USB, RGB, Red TTC Switch, Gunmetal Grey
Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse, Black

Price is £1478.45

Take a look at scan.co.uk. I've used them for years and service and warranty are spot on.

For example this pc listed below has a rtx3070 card for £1250

Scan pc

I'll take a look, thanks

Edit: That seems a good deal too

Just to note, pre-built systems you'll probably pay about £90-£100 for a windows licence..
Better tick the 'no operating system' box and buy a grey market key code for a tenner if you're comfortable doing that. - you'll have to make a windows bootable usb stick, but you can download windows itself for free direct from microsoft, just you won't have a key for it.

I'm happy to pay for a Windows 11 license and its £120 on the MS site anyway, so getting it installed on the build is fine. I will be using it for some business use too so would rather stay legit.

I'm not sure if the scan.co.uk build up there ^^ has any RGB case fans in the case or a CPU cooler? Are they essential to the build?

I’m not sure if the scan.co.uk build up there ^^ has any RGB case fans in the case or a CPU cooler? Are they essential to the build?

Personally I think RGB fans etc. are pointless unless you want fancy colour changing case lighting... I just go with non-illuminated decent quality fans/cooling, but each to thier own.

RGB basically just means the fan (or whatever) has built in LED lights that can change colour, pulse along to music, etc..

Although my mate has an RGB motherboard that will change colour according to CPU temperature, so its normally green, but goes to yellow - orange and finally red if it gets to hot. Kinda cool I guess but not at all nessesary.

Thanks, I understood the RGB thing, and I think my lad would like that (a bit of "bling" to show his mates), was just concerned about how the decreased ventilation would effect performance if I left it standard.

Kind of a moot point - RGB just means it's got lights on it, it doesn't affect performance, you can buy crappy RGB fans/cpu coolers or good quality ones, equally you can buy crappy un-lit 'normal' ones or good quality ones.

In my experience I wouldn't go crazy on fans to start with, they are reletivley cheap and you can allways add more or upgrade the existing ones if you need to.

Unless I misunderstood and your asking if they'll supply the build with no fans at all?

They won't.. It'll just come with generic case fan(s) as supplied with the case and the cpu cooler in the case of AMD cpu's I'd imagine it will come with the standard AMD wraith cooler, etc.

It might be that a particular model of case comes with RGB fans as standard anyway.

The pc from scan or any other reputable seller will come setup with correct airflow for the spec of the pc so 'standard' will be fine unless you start overclocking.
If you're not 100% sure you can give scan a call or if you're nearby go and have a look at the showroom and chat with the guys there. They're very helpful.

To be honest, that Scan build looks decent. It also looks like it comes with RGB fans and, if wants more, he should be able to add them.

I’m happy to pay for a Windows 11 license and its £120 on the MS site anyway, so getting it installed on the build is fine. I will be using it for some business use too so would rather stay legit.

It's the same 'windows', you download the OS from Microsoft directly, get all the updates etc. It's not like buying a chinese smartphone where the CCP are filtering everything you type and security updates end as soon as it's no longer sold.

All that's different is where the license key comes from. I've no idea where, I guess off the back of scrapped/returned laptops or something. Either way they work fine and save £100+.

Office/365 on the other hand ..... grey licenses are a PITA. Although my current one seems to be working fine, and at the end of the day they cost less than a couple of months subscription and the vaguely reputable sites re-supply them if they don't work.

memory is shit and it is only in single channel. You want two sticks of ram or you loose performance. The M/T of the ram is slow and the timings will probably be crap as well.

CPU and GPU are good.

Case looks ok

Cooler looks shit

Buy the stuff and build it yourself.

After much faffing and going down many rabbit holes of benchmark tests and PC specifications for hours, I finally went with the scan.co.uk build + a Corsair keyboard, mouse, mat and headset bundle. He should be happy with that, thanks everyone!

I'm sure he'll be happy with it.
Give us an update once you get it.
I was going to post this mouse mat earlier as he likes RGB

Corsair MM800

Good to hear you made a decision, even with all the "help" we gave! I'm still having a hard time speccing one.

Although superfluous at this point in this thread and to the OP, another thing I think Alienware systems beats the rest hands down is they come in neat cases. Most PC's, by which I mean 99.9% are big square clunky boxes.

My X51 has sat under the TV on a shelf no more than150mm high, as the case itself is 95mm thick, and unlike the standard box can lay on it's side. It's even got my blueray player sat on top of it.

I know they are pricey for what they are, and you can do better on a custom made system money for spec wise, but the systems are built for gaming only, with that being its primary use.

I've haad standard PC's in the past and even built one of them myself, but if I had the choice again and the funds I'd buy another Alienware system. I've had the current for at least 8 years and its never failed me on anything, and I think that all I need to do to run current games in 4k or whatever is update the gpu and install some more ram.

@dyna-ti

Alienware systems are utter and complete trash.