Gaming PC help

[SteveScooby]

My soon-to-be 13 year old would like a gaming type PC. Because he is soon-to-be 13, it needs to be neon and flashy lighted up as below.

Looking at spending around £400-£500 any suggestions what to get please?

[mikef]

I would suggest that the minimum GPU you would want in a gaming PC in 2024 is an RTX 4060, putting the system cost at £800 +

Your budget will get you flashing lights, but not much else of use - the spec you link to has on-board graphics, not a gaming CPU

[Defcon5]

Does he have a console?

You can play them with a keyboard and mouse nowadays I think

[Griffith4ever]

mikef said:

I would suggest that the minimum GPU you would want in a gaming PC in 2024 is an RTX 4060, putting the system cost at £800 +

Your budget will get you flashing lights, but not much else of use - the spec you link to has on-board graphics, not a gaming CPU

He's 13 , 1st pc. Get himn a 1080p monitor and a Radeon RX 6600 - which will play modern games fine with good frame rates, and cost less.

[fasimew]

For that budget I would look at 2nd hand. You don't need the latest GPU to play new games. £500 won't get you a lot if you're also wanting the peripherals. I wouldn't bother with a gaming monitor, an old 1080p TV will do fine.

This one looks decent. It's the first one I clicked on, so have a look around:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116044315191?mkcid=16&a...

[MissChief]

fasimew said:

For that budget I would look at 2nd hand. You don't need the latest GPU to play new games. £500 won't get you a lot if you're also wanting the peripherals. I wouldn't bother with a gaming monitor, an old 1080p TV will do fine.

This one looks decent. It's the first one I clicked on, so have a look around:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116044315191?mkcid=16&a...

That is actually a decent specification when I was expecting to hate it. The only thing I'd say it is needs a bigger, or additional NVME drive. 256GB is way too small. I'd recommend at least 1TB drive. Call of Duty titles eat up massive amounts of hard drive space these days.

This is also worth looking at: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235392048897

[alfabeat]

Also seriously consider going down the self build route. I did that for both of my son's and now both can build a PC or modify/upgrade them.

They have also built and sold a few over the last couple of years (ages 16 and 13 now).

You won't save much money doing it that way, but at least he is learning something out of it and will be able to modify/upgrade it easily in the future.

[Road2Ruin]

Don't listen to all the nay sayers. For a young lad you could probably get an AMD ryzen based APU system that will run most games just fine.
Here is an example
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-it-amd-ryzen-5-5600g-...

Look up a review on the processor on YouTube and see.

[Fast and Spurious]

MissChief said:

That is actually a decent specification when I was expecting to hate it. The only thing I'd say it is needs a bigger, or additional NVME drive. 256GB is way too small. I'd recommend at least 1TB drive. Call of Duty titles eat up massive amounts of hard drive space these days.

This is also worth looking at: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235392048897

Call of duty is an 18+ game, why would a parent let their 12/13 year old child "play" them?

[Andeh1]

mikef said:

I would suggest that the minimum GPU you would want in a gaming PC in 2024 is an RTX 4060, putting the system cost at £800 +

For serious gamers, AAA games and 1440p maybe... But for a 13 year old probably focusing on minecraft and fortnite.. A 4060 would be collosally excessive.

[Griffith4ever]

Fast and Spurious said:

MissChief said:

That is actually a decent specification when I was expecting to hate it. The only thing I'd say it is needs a bigger, or additional NVME drive. 256GB is way too small. I'd recommend at least 1TB drive. Call of Duty titles eat up massive amounts of hard drive space these days.

This is also worth looking at: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235392048897

Call of duty is an 18+ game, why would a parent let their 12/13 year old child "play" them?

All depends on the parents choices. My brother to our astonishment, lets his kids play GTA. They turned out lovely and don't go round shooting hookers or stealing cars at gunpoint.

[fasimew]

Road2Ruin said:

Don't listen to all the nay sayers. For a young lad you could probably get an AMD ryzen based APU system that will run most games just fine.
Here is an example
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-it-amd-ryzen-5-5600g-...

Look up a review on the processor on YouTube and see.

This kid will most likely be wanting to play some more graphically demanding games at some point. I've got a 5700g and it struggles at times with art of rally. It's fine on pubg, and I'd imagine that Minecraft would be fine, but I doubt it would cope with something like cyberpunk without lowering the level of detail considerably.

[mikef]

"Buy cheap, buy twice". Especially with kids and gaming PCs

[Defcon5]

mikef said:

"Buy cheap, buy twice". Especially with kids and gaming PCs

Yeah the cheap kids always break

[J4CKO]

mikef said:

I would suggest that the minimum GPU you would want in a gaming PC in 2024 is an RTX 4060, putting the system cost at £800 +

Your budget will get you flashing lights, but not much else of use - the spec you link to has on-board graphics, not a gaming CPU

Not sure a youngster needs a £400 plus gpu for their PC, I have just upgraded to a 4060TI from a 2060 Super and that was only for MSFS. Everything else ran fine, still loads of games from the last twenty plus years you can play and even the latest ones will play, just need to drop the detail down a bit.

[SteveScooby]

Thanks for the tips all, I’ll have a good look through all the suggestions.

[anonymous-user]

As others have said, do not buy a PC without a dedicated graphics card just because it has lots of flashing LEDs.

Also if you are buying a PC without a GPU in the hope of buying one second hand and fitting it, make sure the power supply is up to it.

Otherwise you are going to have one very disappointed child when he realises he cannot play the games he want at any decent resultion and you cannot upgrad the PC due to it's limitations.

[Donbot]

MissChief said:

fasimew said:

For that budget I would look at 2nd hand. You don't need the latest GPU to play new games. £500 won't get you a lot if you're also wanting the peripherals. I wouldn't bother with a gaming monitor, an old 1080p TV will do fine.

This one looks decent. It's the first one I clicked on, so have a look around:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116044315191?mkcid=16&a...

That is actually a decent specification when I was expecting to hate it. The only thing I'd say it is needs a bigger, or additional NVME drive. 256GB is way too small. I'd recommend at least 1TB drive. Call of Duty titles eat up massive amounts of hard drive space these days.

This is also worth looking at: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235392048897

Both look good. You can always add more storage cheaply. Should run things fine at 1080.

[.:ian:.]

For my son we initially assembled a bare bones pc with basic parts and then over birthdays and Christmases upgraded parts and resell the old bits.
It's most important to pick the right cpu/socket and ram so there are decent upgrade paths.
F.e lga1700 motherboards can support both 12th and 13th gen intel chips, but not all do.
Likewise lga1200 boards can support 10th and 11th gen, don't go older than 10th gen intel.

AMD AM4 has a wide range of cpus

[eein]

Beware second hand or cheap PCs using older CPUs. A three year difference in age of CPU can typically make a high range CPU (eg intel i7 or amd 7xxx) be the same grunt as a lower end CPU (eg intel i3 or amd 3xxxx). Also mobile CPUs are way less grunt than desktop ones. To check on whether a PC is good or not, use https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ to see what the overall score is for the CPU and check it lines up to the price. There's lots of other details and specs on that site, but until you know exactly what you are doing with a computer and what the specs mean, the overall score is sufficient.

PCs are of course not all about the CPU, and for gaming you sometimes need a half decent GPU. So 'balance' all the specs of the different parts is needed.

It also depends what games they want to play. My nephew is gaming obsessed, but has gravitated to things like football manager, which need no GPU grunt.

I do a bit of gaming, typically on not the latest high end games, and have recently bought a ~£350 mini pc from minisforum. I've been running the various Star Wars games at 1080 and some at UHD on medium details with a i7-12700H running at UHD graphics mode. Doesn't meet any flashing lights requirements, but gives you an idea of what low end gaming is possible with.