Gaming PC?

... I know this will have been covered before so feel free to link previous posts - I did try searching the forum...

Where are you kids buying your gaming machines and what sort of money am I looking at – I’m assuming north of a grand for anything worthwhile?

What kind of games?

What resolution and refresh rate are you planning on gaming at? 1080p and 60Hz can be done for a not totally insane amount of money.

I’m assuming north of a grand for anything worthwhile?

Ha! Good one! 🤣🤣

Prices of graphics cards, are ridiculous tbh.

Depending what performance you want of course, and what resolution you're playing at. 1080p & 60fps then yeah that's doable but as soon as you want to start looking at 1440p or above and/or more than 60fps then you're looking at £5-600 on a GPU alone.

A PS5 is now £400 and a good amount of games are 4k (native or upscaled) or 120fps, and quite frankly look stunning.

Baldur's Gate 3 is what is making me think about it seriously - but mainly RPG stuff that works better on PC and stuff like Civ or RTS games which don't work at all well on a console

I've already got an Xbox series X so used to 4k on a TV - but it's not so much the quality but the type of games

Definitely not any sort of online shooting malarky - if I want to humiliate myself on CoD or Battlefield I can do that on my Xbox from the comfort of my sofa

Set your budget and try and stick to it. Graphics cards are the most expensive bit.  We've two gaming machines in this house, one a little older but sporting a newer graphics card, and one about two years old. Watch your leccy bill though. Son's machine uses 200w just ticking over web browsing. 500w or more if gaming ! Daughter's machine is a bit less, newer CPU/board, but older GPU (sons old card), and that's on all day - gulp.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is what is making me think about it seriously – but mainly RPG stuff that works better on PC and stuff like Civ or RTS games which don’t work at all well on a console

I’ve already got an Xbox series X so used to 4k on a TV – but it’s not so much the quality but the type of games

That'll be doable then, but definitely look at the games you're wanting to play, benchmarks etc and then based on that and your monitor resolution you can see what CPU and GPU you need.

I agree that some games just don't pay well on console with a controller. PS5 does take a keyboard and mouse now, though...

Unless things have changed recently, games like CIV tend to be very highly CPU limited. So it's very dependent on the game requirements and also if you want to run it maxed out on the highest quality settings.

Just got a very good one of ebay (£350) last week for Zwift maybe too weak for high power games (which i do not play) but lovely graphics for what i needed:
Motherboard: Msi H310M
Cpu: i5-9400f @ 2.90Ghz
Ram: 16gb DDR4 3000mhz
Gpu: Msi GTX 1660ti 6gb
Storage: 2tb SSD

I've always found CCL Computers very good value

https://www.cclonline.com/pc/gaming-pcs/

Ha! Good one! 🤣🤣

Prices of graphics cards, are ridiculous tbh.

They're not cheap, but not as mental as they were.

3060 Ti for ~£350 is good enough for most games/resolutions/frame ratres, 3080 for ~£550 is future proof. Pick a price point you're happy with then the ideal spec is usually somewhere between 'spend £300 on everything else and the rest on the GPU' and 'spend half of it on the gpu'.

My gaming* laptop only has a 1650, it'll run zwift upto 2.7k at 60fps in whatever is now the 2nd tier graphics after they made a new super-ultimate or whatever it's called. Spending nay more on zwift and it's limited by single thread CPU performance still. It'll run most other games in 1080p at acceptable framerates too. There will always be games you can't max out, IIRC FarCry has settings that won't be supported properly for at least another generation of cards i.e the game has made itself future proof.

Currently playing a lot of Civ, and the re-mastered Red Alert and Age of Empires II. Haven't played FPS games since MW2, the singleplayer storylines seemed to go downhill at the same rate that online play just became overun with aim-bots.

*it's only really a mid-range fairly thin laptop with a discreet gpu, it's hardly a behemoth.

PCPartpicker ( https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/) is a great way of getting an idea of what a computer is going to cost and of finding where components are cheaper. I just built a new ITX desktop using it and it helped keep the cost down, but the real way I made it cheaper was by not choosing a bleeding edge GPU from NVidia.

AMD for both CPU and graphics... Still cost me 14000 SEK, but that is about half the price of the laptop I bought five years ago using Intel/NVidia and that I still use for video editing, music and Zwift.

Find a rabid PC gamer - we all know one, they're like football fans, at the drop of a hat they're spending half an hour telling you how they got an extra six frames per second after moving to fully synthetic in their oil-cooled rig - and empty their cupboard of cast-off hardware.

I got out of PC gaming for exactly the reasons you describe. "Oh, this £500 card I bought last week is obsolete now is it? Great" But I do have what might nominally be termed a gaming PC. I'm struggling to think how much of it I spent actual money on, I got an SSD from Scan and I gave a mate like £60 for a gfx card, the rest I just wombled over time. It's never struggled to play what I want to play, but that's mostly retro stuff at 1280x1024 on a 4:3 monitor.

I have an Xbox Series X on a big daft telly. To drive that screen with a PC I'd likely have to sell a kidney. The crypto-mining thing together with various crises overseas has absolutely mullered the GPU market.

Find a rabid PC gamer – we all know one, they’re like football fans, at the drop of a hat they’re spending half an hour telling you how they got an extra six frames per second after moving to fully synthetic in their oil-cooled rig – and empty their cupboard of cast-off hardware.

I read that, laughed and then realised that you'd just described me. My cupboard is currently empty as I gave all my old kit away! (and I can't justify a new setup just yet as I'm waiting on the valve index 2 (deckard) before I upgrade)

Take a look at the Scan 3XS systems. Some great value stuff there.

I read that, laughed and then realised that you’d just described me.

It was intended as a joke of course. But I've been down this rabbit hole myself. When I last specced up a gaming rig I was sat there salivating with like £2k worth of hardware in my basket on Scan or somewhere, caught myself, went "this is madness, I play WoW and that's it" and bought a laptop instead.

What I was really describing though was an old friend of mine. He had a hardon for frame rates way back in the days of 3dfx cards and nothing much had changed when I spoke to him last. And I just don't get it, beyond pissing rights over the next Frame Rate Dweeb. AFAIK unless you have a medical condition the human eye craps out at somewhere around 50Hz (otherwise old lightbulbs would flicker).

As above, I have an Xbox Series X hooked up to a 75" screen. Driving an X-class car in Forza, I'm not counting frames and pixels, I'm trying to work out when to schedule the next time I can afford to blink.

Haven't you just described the gaming version of a bike nerd - saving X on weight, watts or aero? 🙂

I'll probably end up getting a gaming PC for my office at some point because I have a driving simulator that uses a PS5, but the PS5 is in the play room. I can't be bothered to keep moving it, seems silly to get 2 PS5s, and there are more racing simulator games on PC compared with PS5

@Cougar

Yup, in my defence I do (well, did, small child and all that) an awful lot of flight simming in VR. Which is pretty resource intensive, even with a 3080 I'm not even close to being able to max my settings, and my i9 9900k processor is starting to get a bit long in the tooth - I'm CPU bottlenecked it lots of games.

But anyways, back to the op. I've used the following vendors in the past without issue

CCL

AWD-IT

SCAN

Overclockers

I tend to build my own PCs as I enjoy it, but prebuilt is easier, especially if it's DoA! A friend of mine used PCSpecialist and rated them, but when I was buying they were last-generation parts at current-generation prices.

I typically use https://www.logicalincrements.com/ for the speccing and as Willard said, https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ for the actual shopping. For your use case I wouldn't be too fussed tbh, RTS is definitely not hardware intensive (my mate is playing Civ on my old rig with a quad core from 2007 and a GPU from 2011) compared to FPS so you could get yourself a nice rig for a nice price. One shortcut worth mentioning is on board APU's, some of the older AMD Ryzens with the G suffix had in chip graphics. Failing that a Sapphire AMD card will never be the wrong answer.

Ebay PC's are something to be wary of, look at what you are ACTUALLY getting and if there's no spec beyond eg i7 3500GHz then walk away. You could end up paying over the odds for a 10 year old chip and an old GPU with no proper upgrade path inside a shiny cheap case.

Haven’t you just described the gaming version of a bike nerd – saving X on weight, watts or aero? 🙂

It's enthusiasts of anything generally, to be honest. There's plenty of things that I'm nerdy about. Just in this particular case I don't really get the pursuit of ever-bigger numbers for no actual perceivable gain. (Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play Diablo. I'll leave my ironyometer here.)

Son’s machine uses 200w just ticking over web browsing.

That doesn't sound right...**

My 6800xt GPU idles at about 10-15 watts, but it will pull 260w at full tilt.

Likewise my 13600k CPU I undervolted, peaks out @ 100% load at about 120watts after a bit of undervolting at 5.3ghz, but idling/web browsing it self underclocks to 0.8ghz so won't be using anything like 120w.

I'd be supprised if my whole system was using more than 100w for general desk jockeying.

To put that into perspective, we used to have domestic light bulbs that use more power than my PC*.

**edit, unless you are including the power the monitor/tv, & speakers power consumption too? Modern graphics cards will kinda 'go to sleep' to save power if you're not doing graphics work or gaming etc.

*When essentially idle. I'm probably pulling about 600/650w when gaming.

Something like this is a good starting point, I reckon.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/guide/bJQzK8/entry-level-intel-gaming-build#compatibility_notes

I'd probably swap the i3 for an i5 either the 13400 for budget or the 13600.

I'd also swap the power supply for an equivalent wattage Corsair unit - but that's only because I've had issues with gigabyte power supplies in the past.

Oh, and a better cooler so the PC didn't sound like it was trying to take off.
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@olddog

I could bang on for hours about PC gaming specs but as mentioned above its a pretty big subject if you are not up to speed.

I'd suggest having a read in this forum to get some ideas. https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/community/new-to-pc-gaming-upgrade-advice.172/

Ultimatley the price will depend on what resolution and refesh rate you want to game at.

A 1080p/60hz system will be a lot cheaper than a 1440p/144hz system

Thanks all - I'll have look at the suggestions and have a think.

Also Starfield is out soon so hopefully that will keep me busy on the Xbox for a good while

I worked around this by subscribing to Geforce Now.

12th gen Intel may be a bit cheaper if it's still available, I doubt you're going to lose much that way.

I worked around this by subscribing to Geforce Now.

@molgrips  that is interesting

I always recommend scan to friends as they're great to deal with.

This pc looks decent for the price

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-gamer-rtx-amd-ryzen-5-5500-16gb-ddr4-12gb-nvidia-rtx-4070-1tb-m2-ssd-win-11

I use Scan because they're within kicking distance. It's odd how many companies have acute attitude readjustment when you're being vexed in Reception.

I had a run-in with them on a mid-sized scale some 20 years ago. Times move on, they've been great every time I've dealt with them since. Back then it was like "uh, there's people in the building," today they seem to actively welcome customers. I almost miss the old version. 😁

I bought a PC Specialist machine for the office, after a colleague recommended them, which kept blue screening so I sent it back for a rebuild under warranty. It started doing it again so I rebuilt it myself and it's been fine ever since. I wouldn't buy another one from them.

This just came up on HUKD. Seems good for 1080/ 1440p gaming.

Windows 10 Home
Intel Core i5-11400F Processor
Intel H510 Motherboard
16GB DDR4 SDRAM
512GB SSD M.2 2280 NVMe
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Graphics
2 Year Warranty

£699

https://www.box.co.uk/9S6-B93051-820-MSI-MAG-Codex-5-11TC-820UK-Intel-Core-i5_4292649.html?utm_source=hukd&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=box

@molgrips that is interesting

My favourite game became PC only and there was no way I could afford a decent PC. A standard HD GFN sub is £8/mo and depending on how much you play the cost of the electricity you save using a cheap PC Vs a powerful gaming one can make a significant dent in that. I upgraded to the 4k premium sub because my monitor is big so it makes a decent difference.

You do need good broadband though.

@mattyfez - 200w including 3 large monitors, VR headset, etc, so whole system.  Power monitor on the socket for the extension lead that everything is plugged into.

If you already have a laptop with thunderbolt you could go with external graphics, 200plus for the enclosure before you buy a card but that could last you a decent amount of time.

@molgrips

Given it's mainly Baldur's gate 3 I am interested in playing and I have an Xbox X for other gaming this makes a lot of sense to me.  I upgraded my broadband to 500 Mb full fibre so I'm sorted in that respect.

Just dropped ~800 notes on a 4070ti.

Looks lovely connected into my 65" telly running everything ultra at 4k / 120hz.

What resolution you're going to game at is the defining thing IMO.   I've an older intel 8700k which is enough to push the 4070ti to about 80% of it's theoretical maximum, but I was in no way going to upgrade the whole thing (to get a better CPU I'd need a new mobo) - but the handy thing is that since consoles became so popular then games rarely push the graphical capabilities of PCs much any more (PCs get the same shizzle but people think that running 250fps is worthwhile (anything a lot over 120hz is pretty much not visible to the human eye) - so, for me, if you can keep your fps at a reasonable level at your desired resolution then you've got yourself a rig that'll do for quite a number of years.

Much prefer PC gaming to console.  It's just a much more versatile platform with much more going for it.

My lad got a good first gaming pc from scan pc, on offer before Christmas. Service was great and he's since bought a decent gaming monitor and chair and he plays some pretty resource heavy games without problems. Spec is here (no longer available but may give you an idea of something similar): https://www.scan.co.uk/products/scan-gamer-rtx-intel-core-i5-12400f-16gb-ddr4-8gb-evga-rtx-3070-1tb-m2-ssd

Edit: cost was £1250 at the time (Dec 2022)

Given it’s mainly Baldur’s gate 3 I am interested in playing and I have an Xbox X for other gaming this makes a lot of sense to me.

Not all games are supported but Baldur's Gate 3 is, from a few days ago apparently.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/geforce-experience/games/

GFN presents you with a launcher where you log into your Steam, Epic, UbiSoft or er EA account and you can play whatever you own in there. There may be some slight issues on some, e.g. in Elite Dangerous you cannot access the remote filesystem to install 3rd party tools or copy your key binding files to backup etc. Also (and this is a bigger issue for me in ED) you can only use mouse, keyboard and/or an XBox controller to play. I want to use a joystick so I use a controller emulator, which works but has fewer buttons than a typical HOTAS.

If you only want to play one game you could subscribe then unsubscribe when you have completed it. You'd save thousands.

There is another service where you access your own complete remote PC as if it were yours and you can install anything you want but it's a lot more expensive.

GFN is a load of crap, IMO, unless you are playing turn based games where input latency doesn't matter.

Personally, the latest Xbox or playstaion is probably best VFM for a pure gaming platform, as much as it pains me to say it.

That said, I need and want full PC functionality as I can do what I want with it, without being restricted to this or that. it's a hi-fi home media center, an office machine and a gaming machine all in one box.

Well, 2 actually, I have one main powerfull one, and my older one is in the bedroom as it's semi retired.

No pissing about with subscriptions. Buy it or pirate it, never subscribe, it's a massive con.

You're looking at around £2k for a decent 1440p set-up (inc. 27" 1440p IPS monitor), I'd only go beyond that if I was looking at 4k gaming which it doesn't sound like you are. Unless on a tight budget I'd skip going for a 1080p set-up, yes it will work fine for a lot of people but even on a game like BG3 the increased resolution (with what can be a crowded UI) makes a difference.

The first question I always ask is what monitor you want to use, as that defines what you need from a PC's performance. I personally like a 34" ultra wide 3440x1440 144Hz monitor. These can be had for £3-400, look pretty good without being as demanding as a 4k monitor, wider field of view and decent refresh rate. Adaptive sync is vital, I'd never PC game without it, but most monitors support it now, TVs you have to be more selective with.

Last time I bought a whole new PC was 2015 I think, from Scan, one of their custom 3XS systems. Upgrade motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU beginning of last year with a bundle from Awd-it. Redundancy payout means the long-desired GPU is now on order 🙂 an RTX 3080 - the one on offer on Scan's website. Just a bit quicker than the GTX 960 it's replacing 🙂 Unfortunately in my excitement failed to realize the 650w PSU currently in use isn't enough for the RTX3080 before I ordered it. Which took it over what I had really intended to spend on it. Feels very extravagant but it'll be in use probably at least as long as the GTX960 has been.

GFN is a load of crap, IMO, unless you are playing turn based games where input latency doesn’t matter.

Depends on your expectations, your skill level, your broadband, the game you're playing and your pocket. I've spent many hours on it and if there is any input lag it's a tiny fraction of a second so I compensate for it in the game I play.

After an update there was an issue with one of the data centres and one game, dunno if fixed yet.

Like I say it was either that or give up my favourite game since I could not justify the cost of a gaming PC.

To be fair Elite will run on any old shit, or certainly did in Horizons. That rig I was talking about was what I started in it with. Battle of Akuntsu was fought and won on a system older than my kid.

It does look a lot prettier now though.

At the very bottom end of the gaming PC world - I put together a PC specifically for Zwift. An old S/H office spec computer, with a good but old (970) graphics card and an SSD.

Total cost £140 ish. Lots of information an build guides etc on the ZPCMR “Zwift PC Masters and Riders” Facebook group if anyone is interested.

PS - it does run some games surprisingly well for what it is. Elite works fine, Minecraft runs well and can run some of the more simple shaders (the fancy ones go a bit laggy though) etc.