Help me spec a gaming PC!

[six wheels]

xx99xx said:

Thanks. Is 16GB RAM adequate?

What does 'ensure the PC is able to drive the screen for gaming' mean?

16Gb would be fine.


Drive the screen: a 1080 monitor is full HD, a 1440 monitor is twice the resolution (roughly, image complexity/quality) and a 4k screen is four times more complex.

Screens with a higher resolution require a more expensive graphics card. Those cards - for good 4k performance at least - would be your entire budget.

In addition, the rest of the machine should be specificed appropriately, which is more cost again.

A car analogy: if you’re putting in a 600bhp V8 you’ll also need to spend on the chassis, brakes, tyres etc.

[.:ian:.]

16G is generally OK, but I found Starfield wasn't happy.
If I left a browser open when running it, it would crash the game and the browser would have the sad face tab crashed image.
Upgrading to 32GB stopped this.

(Might just be Starfield being crap though )

[Murph7355]

Another project said:

I ordered a pc from pc specialist for my 15 year old sons birthday. This is the spec we chose ....
He is very happy with it and it can be upgraded later if he wants a bit more performance

Just built a very similar spec PC with my 12yr old...Graphics card was the main difference (Radeon 6600), plus 32Gb of RAM.

Came out sub-£900. Putting it together was a bit of fun for us both.

He's also just come from a Switch. Plays Fortnite, Rocket League and a couple of others. At 1080P resolution with all the settings up it gives 100+fps (still need to look into performance tweaks).

[P2KKA]

.:ian:. said:

16G is generally OK, but I found Starfield wasn't happy.
If I left a browser open when running it, it would crash the game and the browser would have the sad face tab crashed image.
Upgrading to 32GB stopped this.

(Might just be Starfield being crap though )

I would never spec a gaming PC with less than 32gb RAM these days unless you were planning on playing Duke Nukem 3D and Red Alert 2.

It just leaves you plenty of room to multitask, and teenagers love to have a game open + discord + YouTube + others all at the same time.


My current PC is severely held back by graphics but I upgraded in mid 2021 at peak COVID prices and decided to not bother since then + baby.

Otherwise
Ryzen 7 5800X
32gb RAM
1tb NVME
Decent branded PSU and large quiet CPU cooler. Donnt even remember now.

Used to spend hours keeping up with whats hot but these days im not as fussed.