Starter gaming PC

[panholio]

Hi all,

My son turns 12 in the next couple of weeks. He wanted a PS5 but has now declared he would like a gaming PC.

I’ve no idea where to start, I don’t want to spend more than £4/500 and from what I have seen they seems to be £1k + for something decent.

Good news is he has a nice ultra wide monitor and desk etc. so just need the tower I think.

He loves Fortnite etc but has a VR headset he wanted to do something PC related with. My laptop wasn’t man enough.

FB marketplace seems to be full of second hand ones, but always wary.

Any advice?

Cheers.

[.:ian:.]

£500 is a tight budget!
Had a quick play with cclonlines pc builder
https://www.cclonline.com/ccl-cyogpc-create-your-o...

Not the fastest in the world, but for my son we started with bare minimum spec, then upgraded ram, graphics, case, powersupply, cpu, selling off the old parts on ebay.
It doesnt have wifi, you may want to get a motherboard with wifi if required.
I went for a motherboard with 4 ram slots, so you can upgrade from 16GB to 32GB easily



The problem is going to be the windows licence... probably a easy thing to solve though

Edited by .:ian:. on Sunday 28th July 09:17

[Mr E]

My standard answer is usually “buy the bits and build it yourself”.
Your son will then have the confidence to upgrade it when opportunity arises.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/guide/NtFfrH/entry-lev...

You might save some money with pre-loved parts?

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

.:ian:. said:

The problem is going to be the windows licence... probably a easy thing to solve though

This, I used to build a lot of PCs in the 90s and I lost track of the amount of people who though Windows was for free and came with office built in.

The most important part for games is the GPU, how much more is it to upgrade to a 3060? Ideally I would go for a 4060 minimum, but I assume that will destroy the £500 budget.

[Mr E]

GPU could be £500 on its own

What resolution are we trying to drive?

[Baldchap]

You ain't seen me, right

[Murph7355]

Just been through this with my 12yr old

IMO £4-500 isn't enough to get something usable with some longevity to it unfortunately, without going for used parts (which are too dicey IMO).

£750-£800 is where it's likely to be....we tried to go lower, but motherboard choice without creating a dead end, and graphics card choice without lowering the frame rate massively were limiting factors.

What he has now will play Fortnite at 1080p, Fortnite settings pretty high and a framerate of over 120fps.

PC Parts Picker linked above is really, really useful to choose parts, check compatibility and get an idea of costs. Just be very careful not to assume the parts prices it is showing you are the cheapest you can get them for, make sure that ALL parts are showing a price, and be careful using it's "create list for Amazon" feature....we saved over £100 over the end price that showed.

Building it with him was fun, and has given him a better understanding of how it all works.

My lad still needs a much better mouse and keyboard, but a spare I had kicking round is OK. And he's using his old Nintendo Switch controllers for gaming currently.

Here's what we plumped for:

• AMD Ryzen 5 7600 CPU (no CPU cooler - the processor comes with one and the case had lots of space and fans)
• ASRock B650 mtoherboard (flexibility for later as much as anything, plus built in wifi)
• Gigabyte Radeon RX6600 GPU
• 32Gb DDR5 Kingston Fury Beast memory
• 1Tb Mushkin vortex SSD
• Kolink observatory mesh case (came with 5x fans which saves money)
• Kolink 500W 80+ bronze semi-modular PSU
• Creative Labs Pebble speakers

Use Google for Windows license keys. There are plenty of suppliers.

We also bought an ASRock 1080P 27" monitor...but if you have a monitor already you've no need for that.

[soad]

A PS5 makes far more sense, financially. No Windows malware/viruses to battle either.

[mike9009]

Just bought one of these for my 11 year old lad. Budget was definitely constrained based on what money he had.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/116238390543?mkcid=16&a...

It is a little old but perfect for his current needs, he can then upgrade it when necessary. He is well happy with it for Fortnite, rocket league and Roblox plus simple video editing. (Compared to our laptop which he was using). Obviously won't be great for much more demanding games, but this is his limit at the moment.

It does need a WiFi adapter and mini display port to hdmi cable too.

[panholio]

Thanks so much everyone.

I think I will (try to) talk him into a PS5.

Edited by panholio on Sunday 28th July 17:57

[Road2Ruin]

Components are more expensive than pre-built nowadays.

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-volt-amd-ryzen-5-4500...

Try this place.

[annodomini2]

In budget:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/awd-it-charger-ga...

£100 more, but much better machine:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/pc-of-the-week-fa...

[Mouse Rat]

Have you considered a steam deck ?

We have one and it runs most games at an ok frame rate. Ours is mostly docked using wireless keyboard, mouse, monitor and used like a PC. However there is the added bonus of it being portable.
Good and flexible peace of kit.

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

annodomini2 said:

In budget:

£100 more, but much better machine:

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/pc-of-the-week-fa...

This would be my choice and only £90 over budget (although you have to install Windows yourself)

As others have said, you couldn't build one for less.

[captain_cynic]

panholio said:

Thanks so much everyone.

I think I will (try to) talk him into a PS5.

Edited by panholio on Sunday 28th July 17:57

Remember that with the PS5 there are ongoing costs. PSN subscriptions, games are more expensive.

PC has a higher cost of entry but a lower TCO.

[Griffith4ever]

captain_cynic said:

panholio said:

Thanks so much everyone.

I think I will (try to) talk him into a PS5.

Edited by panholio on Sunday 28th July 17:57

Remember that with the PS5 there are ongoing costs. PSN subscriptions, games are more expensive.

PC has a higher cost of entry but a lower TCO.

Very much correct.

That £500 PC up the top doesn't look to shabby. a 3050 isn't going to rock the world but it'll be enough. Not all kids HAVE to tick the "ultra" settyings for each game :-) That's what graphics settings are for.

Im running a 3070 and it shows a 40 series card is NOT the bare minimum. Im running ultrawide (3440x1440) and all of my games are maxed out with DLSS enabled, often on quality mode. I don't obsess about getting 100fps, but also, my games are still smooth. 12gen i5 in mine.

Windows licenses can be had very cheap from CDkeys and ther likes and they are NOT illegal or "dodgy". £9.99. I'm using one on this very PC

[a311]

I've built x2 PC's now. My most recent earlier this year. I subscribed to a few UK based You Tubers, they all seem to do builds with examples of recommend builds for entry, intermediate, and high end builds. I recall one doing a PC build with comparible specs to a PS5. You can often get special offers on the likes of Scan. The builds I pretty straight forward but I was tareing my hair out with some of the case to motherboard connections which took up about 90% of the build time.

Windows OS you can get from the likes of CD Keys.

[130R]

On Windows licenses - I'm currently using Windows 10 but my trusty Windows 7 Professional license still works even after changing every hardware component in my PC multiple times. I've never had to do anything extra during activation either.

[audi321]

If my kids are anything to go by, it's FPS (frames per second) that matter for Fortnite.

PS5 max is 120fps. Wasn't enough for them, so built a PC out of relatively low spec parts (for example 1080ti GPU) and managed to get it up to 250fps. Monitor was 240hz so it turned out ok............

So I would check first, if 120fps is ok, then defo a PS5.......if not, you'll be buying both within 3 months.