Advice Gaming PC

[Edmond]

Hi
Friend wants to buy a gaming PC for his son he seen one for £679, is that decent enough or what would he be looking at An entry level?

costco have this


Any good?
Ta

 

[Syri]

Firstly, pricing up the components on Scan (not shopping around, just used that as it's quick and easy to chuck a build together) it comes to just over £630, that's for components though so you need to build it and also add windows to that, but you can get a windows 10 key for less than a fiver on ebay (and they do work, I've used a couple and know a few others who have as well). So price wise, for what it has, it's not great but not too bad either. it's hard to say for definite though as I don't know the quality of the parts, so I've just gone for the cheapest options when trying to match.
As for whether it's actually any good, there are a few things I'd mention. First, the CPU is a second generation Ryzen (the Ryzen 5 2600 to be exact) so it's decent, but as of last week, 2 generations behind. The RAM is just enough for gaming, but doesn't state if it's single or dual channel, nor does it state the speed. These won't make a huge difference, but if you're at the bottom end already trying to get just a little bit extra might be the difference between a game being playable or not. Lastly, the SSD. It's nice to have an SSD rather than a HDD, but it doesn't specify whether it's a SATA or NVMe drive, which can make a big difference to loading times.
Taking all of that into account, personally I'd find it hard to recommend that as there are a few too many unknowns, and if you're set on that spec, you can build it up for a little less even, and also know every part that's going in.
Hope this is some help.

 

[Moriath]

16gb ram min really. And for amd procs you need 2x4gb for the ram ptherwise performance will be shocking. So 2x 8 would be better but one dimm on its own is bad.

a 1660 ti or better would be good dont think the 1650 is up to much.

no idea about rizens

price is ok

480gb i guess is a sata ssd not seen an nvme at that size. But its not huge and you need bigger space very quickly. Nice to have the second drive different from the system drive also

 

[BloodOmen]

Ryzen 5 alone doesn't tell much, it could be a low end Ryzen 5.

8GIG of ram isn't very good, my laptop runs 8GIG of ram and it struggles with most games I try to play on it as windows / browser chews up a bout 4.4 before I even touch a game;



Also, pre-build rams generally low frequency crap and Ryzens perform better with higher MHZ stuff so that would also impact the overall performance

GTX 1650 is poop. 1660 Super (or Ti) minimum as Moriath said, don't be fooled by the 16xx series age, it might be relatively new (like a year or so old?) but they were always intended as budget cards - 1650 is roughly the equivalent to a 1050Ti (maybe a tad faster)

If your friend is on a budget, aim for something like an RTX 580 or a 1660 Super (1660 Super is probably the best price performance card in the world atm)

 

[Moriath]

Ryzen 5 alone doesn't tell much, it could be a low end Ryzen 5.

8GIG of ram isn't very good, my laptop runs 8GIG of ram and it struggles with most games I try to play on it as windows / browser chews up a bout 4.4 before I even touch a game;

View attachment 42793

Also, pre-build rams generally low frequency crap and Ryzens perform better with higher MHZ stuff so that would also impact the overall performance

GTX 1650 is poop. 1660 Super (or Ti) minimum as Moriath said, don't be fooled by the 16xx series age, it might be relatively new (like a year or so old?) but they were always intended as budget cards - 1650 is roughly the equivalent to a 1050Ti (maybe a tad faster)

If your friend is on a budget, aim for something like an RTX 580 or a 1660 Super (1660 Super is probably the best price performance card in the world atm)

Forgot about the ram frequency. rizen really work better with faster 3200+ ram. bog standard runs at 2133mhz.

 

[MYstIC G]

Depends what he wants to play. It's reasonable given the included monitor but it's two generations behind so it'll drop away from AAA pretty fast

 

[BloodOmen]

Something like this is what I would say is both entry level and would still last quite awhile... obv you wouldn't be doing 1440p+ at 60+fps but it should be more than enough for anything below that for ages yet. That's £733 and that's purely picking from Amazon, you can probably shave a fair bit off that by shopping around or swapping bits in and out... it just doesn't include a monitor or windows etc. B550 board too so it has a decent upgrade path.

 

[Gwadien]

The one thing I would say is don't let him buy what you posted @Edmond there's plenty of PC building youtubers who buy pre-built 'supermarket' PCs and are horrified (there are some occasions where they're pleasantly surprised) but generally speaking, they do some very shady stuff to make it that cheap.

If you want a pre-built (which I totally understand) I'd stick to Scan or Overclockers, but unfortunately, I think you need a budget of £1k~ if he needs everything.

 

[SilverHood]

Costco deal is not terrible, like others have said, building yourself, you get way more mileage and better quality components, but if it's a 10 year old that plays minecraft and other games that are not terribly demanding, it will do.

Costco

www.costco.co.uk

If the above link is it, then note that it has zero slots for upgrades apart from hard disks, and no optical drive.

 

[Edmond]

He cant build it himself, he's not technical enough, and he would want some kind of shop warranty in case of issues.

Pre-built from Scan is prob the best option. I will pass all this on to him... thank you all

 

[BloodOmen]

He cant build it himself, he's not technical enough, and he would want some kind of shop warranty in case of issues.

Pre-built from Scan is prob the best option. I will pass all this on to him... thank you all

Yea, Scan or OCUK are both good for pre-builds just avoid shit like brand supermarkets, cyberpower and shite like that.

 

[Wij]

I bought my son's PC last year from AWD. They are really good value if you aren't fussed about getting the exact components you want. They save money here and there but not necessarily in ways that bother you.

For instance my son's PC has an unusual motherboard that is huge with loads of PCI slots (or whatever the modern name is). It was marketed as being for bitcoin mining but obviously when the bottom fell out of the bitcoin market they couldn't shift them and AWD picked a load up cheap. Works fine though so I don't care.

£600 got him a machine with a 1060 that's fine for 1080p gaming and I didn't have to bother doing any build. It can be upgraded later like any machine.

/edit: Dads normally upgrade son's machines with their cast-offs. He's already had my old SSD and will get my 1080 when I get round to upgrading.

 

[Gwadien]

/edit: This Dad normally upgrade son's machines with their cast-offs. He's already had my old SSD and will get my 1080 when I get round to upgrading.

FTFY

 

[Jupitus]

FTFY

That's what I do.... 2-1 now