Entry level gaming PC - help

Mike J

Mike J

Winger
I’m hoping some of you wonderful people could point me in the right My eldest lad (11) is after a gaming PC, I know nothing at this stuff, any suggestions for what I should be looking for and indeed how much I should pay?

I’ve no problem with it being second hand but I don’t have a clue what to look for.

Cheers in advance,
 


I think with an 11-year owld you're looking at a prebuilt one rather than sourcing parts. Which will be more expensive anyway.
I'm not up to date at all with tech these days.
 
Market is a complete mess right now due to chip shortages and scalpers so price wise it's hard to say what you should be paying.

Most CPU's and GPU's that aren't ancient are going for at bare minimum £100 more than they should be right now
 
Kenna said:
I'd say pre-builds were actually the best value right now however lately even those are struggling for cheap GPU's and are resorting to GT-710's which should be avoided like the plague.
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I think you're looking at a 1080 as a minimum at the moment for gaming.
 
ajthemackem said:
I think you're looking at a 1080 as a minimum at the moment for gaming.
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1080 would be great if they are available, but entry builds I'd say 1660's are good, they'll run all modern games at at least medium to low settings and get 60fps.

Really though, the future for budget entry level is in RTX cards for DLSS, my 2060 plays games at higher settings than a xx60's series ever should be able to thanks to games that support DLSS, 4k Watch Dogs Legion amazed me when it got 60fps with ease.
 
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Kenna said:
1080 would be great if they are available, but entry builds I'd say 1660's are good, they'll run all modern games at at least medium to low settings and get 60fps.

Really thought the future for budget entry level is in RTX cards for DLSS, my 2060 plays games at higher settings than a xx60's series ever should be able to thanks to games that support DLSS, 4k Watch Dogs Legion amazed me when it got 60fps with ease.
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DLSS is canny aye. But aye, as you say I think 1080s are still being used for mining so they're canny expensive still.
 
Mike J said:
I’m hoping some of you wonderful people could point me in the right My eldest lad (11) is after a gaming PC, I know nothing at this stuff, any suggestions for what I should be looking for and indeed how much I should pay?

I’ve no problem with it being second hand but I don’t have a clue what to look for.

Cheers in advance,
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Find out what games he wants to play, and what screen he will be playing on (4k for example?) and that'll make it loads easier to advise.
 
Mike J said:
I’m hoping some of you wonderful people could point me in the right My eldest lad (11) is after a gaming PC, I know nothing at this stuff, any suggestions for what I should be looking for and indeed how much I should pay?

I’ve no problem with it being second hand but I don’t have a clue what to look for.

Cheers in advance,
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Ask Gary at AGM media on hylton road. He will build you one for a good price. Built my daughter's for Christmas and it is quite high end and was under £800 Inc the monitor.
 
PTR said:
I'm well out of things for desktop gaming builds tbh. Everything I would say has already been posted.

Sorry, but a high end GPU on its own is about £1000 these days.
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Was thinking this, you're looking at £500-700 for a half decent one right now at the moment, double for a high end one.

Most people don't need real high end GPU's though tbh, they are just good for future proofing them.
 
Kenna said:
Was thinking this, you're looking at £500-700 for a half decent one right now at the moment, double for a high end one.

Most people don't need real high end GPU's thought tbh, they are just good for future proofing them.
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I wonder if, for an 11 year old, a £700 Gaming Laptop won't do the job.
Sure you won't get 1440p 144hz at 100fps, but you will get 1080p, 60fps.

Would also double as a family computer given it can be picked up.

Then when the kid is a bit older, they can build their own once prices come back to normal.
 
PTR said:
I wonder if, for an 11 year old, a £700 Gaming Laptop won't do the job.
Sure you won't get 1440p 144hz at 100fps, but you will get 1080p, 60fps.
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Tbh for a little more I've seen 3000 series laptops that could do 1440p at 60, I was surprised considering the laptop itself should have been the price of the GPU.


That's the one, just under a grand baring in mind you struggle to get a 3060 for less than 600 right now, only downside I see with it is the screen is only 1080 and 8gb of RAM is barely passable these days, I'd be upgraded that to 16gb immediately.
 
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Kenna said:
Tbh for a little more I've seen 3000 series laptops that could do 1440p at 60, I was surprised considering the laptop itself should have been the price of the GPU.


That's the one, just under a grand and you struggle to get a 3060 for less than 600 right now.
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Funny, just saw this

Gigabyte G5 15.6" 144hz Laptop - i5-10500H / 16GB RAM / 512GB NVMe / RTX 3060 + Free Gigabyte - Headset £899.99 (UK Mainland) @ Ebuyer | hotukdeals

www.hotukdeals.com www.hotukdeals.com

NOT saying anyone should buy this! Just popped up on ukhotdeals
 
Kenna said:
Jesus, cheaper and better than the argos one.

If this is in the OP's budget you can't get much better than that for the price.
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Always read independant reviews first though!
Just in case there's something crap inside box! especially for gaming PCs - cooling issues are a big thing (I have one, and when its running a full belt it can't provide enough power to the wifi chip, so I get drop outs - fixed by plugging an ethernet cable in!)
 

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