Gaming pc for Xmas

[Games516]

Hi my son wants a gaming pc for Xmas. I don't have Any idea what I'm buying . I know he does not want to built his own . My budget is upto 300 . May consider bit more if its going to make a big difference.

As I said I have no idea what I'm talking about so please don't get technical as I won't understand at all.

If anyone can help /have suggestions could you please send links ? As would be really helpful.

Ds saying to but on amazon but in not sure ?

Thanks 😊

Thank you . That makes sense.

How does it work with building own gaming pc? Ds does not know anything at all. He argues that he does. But I know he does not otherwise he would not be bugging me for a 300 pounds one from amazon .

What age is he? I would be tempted to get him PS5 or and Xbox for now. Then if he really wants the gaming pc he could save towards it. Building a PC isn't really all that difficult but the individual parts can be expensive so it takes a long time to get a result. Most people who are serious about a gaming PC would.want to build their won as they can gave the spec they want.
My own kids went through this stage and had consoles instead..one if them has recently started to build his PC but is looking at a couple of years before it is completed as he wants it.

Anything you see for under around £1500 really won't be much good and the really cheap ones are just normal pcs made to look the part.

How old is DS?

You won't run GTA, Fortnite on that very well.

You're not going to get a gaming PC to run those on £300. This is the cheapest I've found inside-tech.co.uk/product-category/gaming/shop-by-game/grand-theft-auto-5/ and that's over £509 with VAT.

It comes with a free mouse, mouse mat and keyboard but you'll need to buy a monitor which is around £100+, especially if he wants HD graphics.

An entry level gaming pc is going to be upwards of £600/700 realistically. Yes, you can pick ones up for £300 but they aren’t powerful and will glitch and not be capable of game play.. depending on what games he is going to run? If it’s just Minecraft/Roblox then any pc will run that just fine and you don’t need a gaming one

I got this one in the end see pic. I'm just hoping it's OK. Don't really know what I have bought

It won't do the job... It will be ok for a bit and that's i.

Oh not good . I basically just wasted 800 😞

Can't you return it and get your money back? Then save for another year or so to buy a good system.

Not really DS knows he's got it.

Ours was £1000 in 2020 from Overclockers, really happy with it, still doing well, though we've upgraded the SSD and added two HDD.

I see you've bought one though - she's it matter that DS knows? Tell him you're returning it to try and get a better one.

We got one from eBay last year at around £400. It had a years warranty and has run games ok. We were quoted about £1300 for a build locally.
I can imagine the one we have will need upgrading/ replacing in the next year or so but we were very pleased for the price

Return it and get one from here
https://www.ginger6.com/pcs/800-gaming-pcs.html

I can't as I have it on credit I have a year to pay. I don't have 800 outright

Of course you can return it.

My son plays ronlox and fortnite ans looked at gaming pcs and gaming laptops. An ok one with enough memory , speed and good enough graphics were around 1k. We ended up getting a normal laptop which cost 500 and seems to do the job

I think the pc you have chosen is fine for your teen.
It has 16gb of ram and the rtx 3060 is a reasonable graphics card. Games will play absolutely fine with it! Plus of course, he can upgrade graphics card, add more ram in the future which solves what to buy him next Christmas.

Prior to seeing you have already purchased one, I would have recommended buying from a company specialising in gaming pc s though - their phone line tech support is useful to have. But I’m sure you will have someone locally who can help with any issues.

Yes I was hoping it's OK for now. And could add to it. No idea how that's done but guessing it can be. It's his birthday in March so he could possibly add something then

I mean this kindly, I would return this PC and get your money back.

My son asked for a gaming pc and we spent a long time researching it, you can't get anything decent for that price. You will also need monitor, keyboard, mouse, head set etc.

What games does he want to play? As that will make a big difference.

My son got this one custom made, refurbished in the end (spec below) it was about £800 and he has since spent some more upgrading it as well. He used all of his birthday and Christmas money from all of his relatives to buy it.

Very minimum you want at least an i5 processor, 16gb RAM, 8gb graphics card. Bonus is solid state drive.

Specification:

Processor: Intel Quad i7 4770 3.4 GHz

Storage: New 240 GB Solid State Drive (system)

1 TB HDD (for additional Storage)

Memory Ram: 16 GB (have since upgraded this)

New Graphics Card - 8GB RTX 3050

Processor: Intel i7
RAM: 16GB
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce
SSD/HDD: SSD
Total Storage: 1001-2000GB

www.onbuy.com/gb/p/gaming-pc-dual-22-monitor-setup-i7-4770-480-ssd~p61364326/?variant=61364349&graphics-card=8gb-rtx-3050&case-colour=tempered-glass-rgb-case&condition=refurbished

I’d probably get your local gaming pc shop to do it for you tbh. It’s extremely fiddly and if you get one tiny thing wrong , the damn thing just won’t switch on- as I’ve found out helping my teens . Not worth the stress unless you love that kind of thing and see it as all part of the gaming pc experience. Which I don’t 🤣.

I have just checked what we got last year and it was actually this one. It was £549 not £400. It seems to play the games he uses and my goodness does it get done use.