Dd needs a decent gaming computer.

[VivaLeBeaver]

She's getting seriously into gaming. Runs her own minecraft server and has her own YouTube channel. Her laptop really isn't cutting it anymore.

I've got a decent gaming laptop with a dedicated graphics card but I can't really find a laptop with a good gaming spec at the minute.

So am now considering a desk top for her. She likes the look of the all in one PCs and while I admit from a space point of view they may be more practical am I right in thinking that long term a proper desktop will be better as components can be upgraded, memory added, etc??

I've been looking at some websites where you select your own components and they build you a PC up? I've got vague ideas of wanting a decent NVIDIA graphics card, at least 6mb memory, 1tb hard drive, probably an i5 processor. Maybe an equivalent AMD one but I don't know much about AMD.

Anything else I need to consider? Dd quite fancies a touch screen monitor. If the OS is 8.1 will any touch screen monitor be compatible with any desktop? Haven't had a desktop in over ten years!

How old is she? Have you thought about helping her build a desktop herself? Just work out the spec (sounds like you have for some) & buy the parts. It's not that difficult to put them all together and install the OS. It's a great project & there are a lot of websites with info. Doing this will give her a much better spec machine and she will be able to upgrade parts herself in future. Not to mention the educational benefits

She's 13yo. Is it much cheaper to buy the parts and build it ourself then rather than just specify your own parts and get someone to build it for you?

If you use somewhere like ebuyer it can be. It's also a fantastic life skill to have (not to say potential money earner)

I'm not sure I've got the time to do it.

Building a PC is definately rewarding, but remember you will need to buy the OS (most likely windows) as well, and can add £100~

As for components AMD will get you more "bang for your buck" at the cost of not being as powerful overall, unless your DD is playing the latest and greatest at Ultra settings on a 4K monitor the mid-range cards are much of a muchness. For a 13yo I would go AMD CPU & AMD GPU. Personally I buy from Scan or Aria (ebuyer always wants a copy of credit card bill from me so I refuse to buy there)

DH got a desktop PC built for DS2 at a local computer shop. It's not flashy looking like ready made gaming pcs, but according to DS it is "an awesome beastie" machine .

How much are you willing to spend?

I can highly recommend Chillblast - have just bought a customised desktop from them. I based my purchase on the recommendations given on a thread on the Yogscast forums as I know they're populated by gamers. Here's the thread. The one recommended was quite high, cost-wise, so I made a few changes, downgraded a couple of the components etc.

I dunno, we've built computers in the past and its never really worked out cheaper.

What works best pricewise I find is to get something basic and upgrade only the bits we need.

The trouble is, basically, gaming computers need all the good stuff. You'd need a good graphics card, a good processor...

I'll tell you what, she's one lucky kid though.

Does she really need high specs? My older kids plays on Minecraft a lot and we have a server in house and we're using 4-5 year old pcs, sometimes with better graphics cards added (but never top of the range). Seems to run fine, tbh.

Oh and building a pc isn't terribly hard once you know what you want. If you can put an ikea bookcase together, you'll be fine.

I agree pricewise a self build gaming PC will cost more than an off the shelf PC, mostly because these days off the shlf PC's dont have didicated Graphics Cards but use CPU integrated ones, like of newer Intel or AMD processors.

My last PC was no-where near topend, but it played new games on decent settings, and as for minecraft it is not especially GPU intensive, you could get a self build PC with an integrated GPU to save cost and just ensure the motherboard can fit a graphics card should here interest continue into games that require more graphics grunt.

I did a quick look and ia basic machine capable of gaming could be around £500 including case, monitor, keyboard & mouse.

Ooh, lots of answers.

At the minute she has a toshiba laptop which wasn't a bad spec. Its an i3 I think, 6mb memory, can't remember the hard drive size. But an integrated graphics card. She finds that minecraft is quite laggy on it especially if she has lots of mods such as pixelmon.

So I started looking for another laptop, one with a separate graphics card and can't really find anything. Then I thought that a desktop would be better long term as we can upgrade components as needed.

I'm not sure she needs a specific gaming desktop for minecraft, just something better than what she has at the minute. But long term I can see her being the sort of kid who in a couple of years time would be interested in even more complex games. So I thought decent desktop to last her.

Will check out Yogscraft, Scan and Aria. Thanks.

Don't really want to spend more than £600-£700 inc monitor and os.

this looks good