Gaming PC

[glosbucks]

We are buying a gaming PC for DS 14. It's a special present - joint birthday / Christmas with family members all contributing. It will be for gaming and also school work. Does anyone have Any suggestions on a suitable PC? Budget up to £1000 but ideally less! I'm not really sure where to start, DS doesn't seem entirely sure what he needs either and I don't want to make an expensive mistake. Thank you

Look at the games he plays - they will suggest a minimum spec needed.

Start with the game that needs most and with the money left consider a better processor, more memory or a better graphics card. You might also consider two screens.

You'll get better value for money with an AMD processor than you will for Intel, so look out for ones that have a Ryzen CPU.

Do you have any friends who can build PCs? If DS is interested in that side of things it'll make a great project, so much more fun than buying one pre-made. Although it's troublesome with lockdown of course.

If not, any of these (apart from the cheapest one which has a poor graphics card) would do him proud, they do basically get better scaling with price and are all good value for money. Note that you need the versions with Windows 10 so it's the higher price noted for each unfortunately! Also these don't include screens, mouse, keyboard.

www.cclonline.com/category/223/Desktop-PCs/CCL-Gaming-PCs/pricerange/700-1000/

The price slider can take you down as well as up, but this is where I'd consider the lowest reasonable spec for a 3+ year lifespan PC starts.

Clicking through and looking at the component lists is a good way for DS to learn what parts are good.

Thank you all so much - this is so useful. Particularly the website link.

Another reccomendation for CCL, they're based up the road from me and are excellent both in person and with their web-sales.

They often come up on deals websites - HotUKdeals is an example.

I would spend money on the 'core' of the PC, get a current generation motherboard, graphics card and processor and a decent PSU - this gives you upgrade options in the future that are cheaper than replacing the whole thing.

You can cheap-out on things like a keyboard and mouse initially as they are both cheap to upgrade and can be done incrementally, Likewise an old TV or monitor will suffice until either he or you work towards a new one.

Likewise, water-cooling, RGB lighting, fan controllers can all be upgraded later and do little for performance.