My daughter wants a gaming computer so that she can play Fortnite, Roblox, etc. I know the sky's the limit on spending money on these. What I want is something adequate, no water cooling, no neon-lit boxes,etc. I have the empty tower already.
Help me build a gaming computer.....
- Thread starter daves66nova
- Start date
#1 Video card. The majority of games have been optimized at launch so a good video card is top priority because it should not only provide a lag free and immersive experience is should be able to do it on the size and resolution of the chosen display. Cheaper cards will run fine on a 1080i 24" display. You'll need to move up when you get into a 27" 1440 (2k) display or larger . Something like a Nvidia 2xxx or 3xxx series cards will do fine. More onboard memory the better.
#2 Display - 144hz or higher. Leave HD resolution (1080) for 24" monitors. HD resolution on a 27" looks pixelated. IPS panels will provide better color. TN panels will be slightly more responsive. Look for refurb. IIRC Asus has a refurb site.
#3 RAM - 12 GB or more.
#4 CPU
#5 Small SSD (250GB) and a good PSU.
Obviously a motherboard to connect everything together. The choice of video card will steer you to certain motherboards.
GL
#2 Display - 144hz or higher. Leave HD resolution (1080) for 24" monitors. HD resolution on a 27" looks pixelated. IPS panels will provide better color. TN panels will be slightly more responsive. Look for refurb. IIRC Asus has a refurb site.
#3 RAM - 12 GB or more.
#4 CPU
#5 Small SSD (250GB) and a good PSU.
Obviously a motherboard to connect everything together. The choice of video card will steer you to certain motherboards.
GL
I'm just getting one built to your specs for my son now. Unfortunately fortnite is quite a GPU pig but my guy says a geforce gtx 1060 6Gb plus should run it at good frame rates on low-med quality. The rest of the build is pretty average I think? We are just going to use a 21" 1080p monitor as well. I read the DDR3 RAM and motherboard are a bit of a dead end for upgrades?
It seems this is a bit better than the $500 used gaming pc's in my area, plus a some warranty and support.
It seems this is a bit better than the $500 used gaming pc's in my area, plus a some warranty and support.
I hate to be negative, but I think saving up a little extra cash is the way to go here. You're spending $570 on a 9-year-old processor and a 7-year-old video card. Buying used gear can be a great value but normally when it's somewhat recent (1-3 years).
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 89374
@daves66nova I was a systems integrator for many years. It is important that you start with a budget and go from there. The GPU will eat a huge chunk of your budget, and therefore I would leave it for last. These days, prebuilts are also a reasonable option, if you can get them for the right price. You also have to realistically assess for how many years you want to keep that machine. Therefore, building around a good platform is key.
If you stay out of the "non-sense" section like gimmicky coolers, cases, and gear, then you won't waste any money. Though getting quality cooling, using a high-qualify PSU, and using a common sense approach to building your system will have a definitive impact on its longevity.
Are you building a new computer or buying a prebuilt one?
32GB memory is what I recommend for even entry-level gaming computers nowadays. It's 2023 and the OS/applications/games are using more memory than ever. The price difference between 16GB and 32GB is relatively minor.
24" monitor 1920x1080 resolution 60/70Hz should meet your basic needs. 144Hz would be a nice upgrade but not necessary, however.
Games take up a lot of storage space too. I recommend 1TB of storage whether that's SSD/NVME or hard drive storage is up to you.
You didn't mention a budget but here's my proposal. I build PCs often for friends, family, clients...
Notes on the above:
Motherboard: Cheapest one with four RAM slots.
Video Card: RX 6600 is a competent 1080P card. NVIDIA doesn't deserve your money right now and you'll pay about 30% more for the same performance if you go team green. Another option for a few extra bucks would be an Intel Arc A770, 16GB which is about $300, BUT as the owner of an Arc card in my secondary PC for experimentation and tinkering I can't honestly recommend it until a few months down the road after some more driver updates as it's still not as polished as the AMD or NVIDIA options.
Power Supply: Phanteks Amp is a rebadged Seasonic, yes it's overkill but this way you can upgrade GPU in the future with no concerns. And a top tier power supply is important for long term stability and reliability.
CPU: F-Series Intel has no onboard GPU but you don't need it so you save $20 here. Includes a CPU cooler that's good enough. Yes I know AMD Ryzen exists and I know they have the 13th gen Intel chips already but you can save a few bucks here and always buy a used 12th gen i7 off eBay in a few years if you feel you are limited by the i5. But don't worry, you won't be anytime soon.
RAM: 16GB is fine for gaming, but since you have two RAM slots left you can upgrade to 32GB later easily enough. Be sure to go into the motherboard's UEFI BIOS and enable XMP so it actually runs at the rated speed.
SSD: NV2 is a solid, no-BS NVMe drive. You won't notice the difference in performance to a higher-end drive for everyday usage or gaming.
Monitor: 24" 1080P is the budget sweet spot IMO. If you want to spend more and go 1440P I'd recommend 27". I didn't really research the monitor just picked the first one that seemed reasonably priced, and had a good refresh rate.
OS: If you have a Windows 7, 8, or 10 license key floating around from an old PC you can use that, no need to buy Windows. But if you don't have that already and want to be legit, it'll set you back $120.
Notes on the above:
Motherboard: Cheapest one with four RAM slots.
Video Card: RX 6600 is a competent 1080P card. NVIDIA doesn't deserve your money right now and you'll pay about 30% more for the same performance if you go team green. Another option for a few extra bucks would be an Intel Arc A770, 16GB which is about $300, BUT as the owner of an Arc card in my secondary PC for experimentation and tinkering I can't honestly recommend it until a few months down the road after some more driver updates as it's still not as polished as the AMD or NVIDIA options.
Power Supply: Phanteks Amp is a rebadged Seasonic, yes it's overkill but this way you can upgrade GPU in the future with no concerns. And a top tier power supply is important for long term stability and reliability.
CPU: F-Series Intel has no onboard GPU but you don't need it so you save $20 here. Includes a CPU cooler that's good enough. Yes I know AMD Ryzen exists and I know they have the 13th gen Intel chips already but you can save a few bucks here and always buy a used 12th gen i7 off eBay in a few years if you feel you are limited by the i5. But don't worry, you won't be anytime soon.
RAM: 16GB is fine for gaming, but since you have two RAM slots left you can upgrade to 32GB later easily enough. Be sure to go into the motherboard's UEFI BIOS and enable XMP so it actually runs at the rated speed.
SSD: NV2 is a solid, no-BS NVMe drive. You won't notice the difference in performance to a higher-end drive for everyday usage or gaming.
Monitor: 24" 1080P is the budget sweet spot IMO. If you want to spend more and go 1440P I'd recommend 27". I didn't really research the monitor just picked the first one that seemed reasonably priced, and had a good refresh rate.
OS: If you have a Windows 7, 8, or 10 license key floating around from an old PC you can use that, no need to buy Windows. But if you don't have that already and want to be legit, it'll set you back $120.
Last edited:
You can play around with parts/costs using pcpartpicker. If you decide to build one yourself, don't forget to include the cost of a mouse, keyboard, OS, and maybe a printer into the total cost. You may find out that you can get a prebuilt system from dell, hp, bestbuy, ... for less than it would cost you to make.
Whatever you do, don't totally cheap out. You'll be disappointed in the performance and system will soon be obsolete.
My thoughts: Ryzen 5 or Intel I5, 16 GB memory, 500 GB SSD + 1 or 2 TB hard drive. Match video card to games recommendation.
Let us know what you decide!
Regards,
John
Whatever you do, don't totally cheap out. You'll be disappointed in the performance and system will soon be obsolete.
My thoughts: Ryzen 5 or Intel I5, 16 GB memory, 500 GB SSD + 1 or 2 TB hard drive. Match video card to games recommendation.
Let us know what you decide!
Regards,
John
Eek, I'm sorry, but there is no way I would pay for that that system. maybe prices are higher up north but that's crazy for such an old build. You can do way better than that for just slightly more money.
Yeah I'm sure we are below the sweet spot for cost to longevity, but my son is paying for half of it, and around~$500 is his budget. TBH, I hope he grows out of gaming, but if he wants to keep playing for years then he'll have to figure out his upgrade path and earn some money to do it.
Last edited:
Preferably new
Games like Fortnight don't need a high-end computer. The most popular video card on Steam is still probably a 1060 3gb. It's hard to recommend the 3gb version now since newer games have started using more memory, and the 6gb version is 10% faster, if you catch a good deal on a used one it will get the job done for plenty of games. Speaking of used, a 1070 is plenty for most games at 1080p and some 1440p. If buying new, the sweet spot for the past many months has been the 6600 in the $200-$225 range. Or a 6600xt/6650xt for a bit more.
Nvidia cards do better at raytracing, but raytracing is generally such an fps hog that it shouldn't be much of a consideration except if looking at the higher-end cards. The mid-range and lower cards generally can't output enough fps if raytracing is turned on, so raytracing on those is kind of a gimmick.
Some games, often online games with lots of players, may need a CPU that's better than the GPU. MMOs, probably Roblox, etc, a CPU with fast single-thread performance can be important, sometimes due to the games only using 2 to 4 threads, as well as the CPU having to calculate for all the players, etc. A Ryzen 3600 is still a very good CPU, (and usually a good bargain used. I'm not saying to buy a new one), but on the type of games I just mentioned, a 5600/5600x can often put out 30% more fps, just because the CPU is faster in single-thread performance. Just something to keep in mind particularly for certain games.
Again, a mediocre 3600 CPU and a 1060 GPU can probably play Fortnight around 100fps on max settings anyway. So any hardware better than that is probably plenty for most games at 1080p. Of course, various newer "triple-A" games need faster hardware.
If getting a 144hz monitor, that requires having the hardware that can output high fps. Not much point in a 144hz monitor if the computer can only do 60fps in the game.
Nvidia cards do better at raytracing, but raytracing is generally such an fps hog that it shouldn't be much of a consideration except if looking at the higher-end cards. The mid-range and lower cards generally can't output enough fps if raytracing is turned on, so raytracing on those is kind of a gimmick.
Some games, often online games with lots of players, may need a CPU that's better than the GPU. MMOs, probably Roblox, etc, a CPU with fast single-thread performance can be important, sometimes due to the games only using 2 to 4 threads, as well as the CPU having to calculate for all the players, etc. A Ryzen 3600 is still a very good CPU, (and usually a good bargain used. I'm not saying to buy a new one), but on the type of games I just mentioned, a 5600/5600x can often put out 30% more fps, just because the CPU is faster in single-thread performance. Just something to keep in mind particularly for certain games.
Again, a mediocre 3600 CPU and a 1060 GPU can probably play Fortnight around 100fps on max settings anyway. So any hardware better than that is probably plenty for most games at 1080p. Of course, various newer "triple-A" games need faster hardware.
If getting a 144hz monitor, that requires having the hardware that can output high fps. Not much point in a 144hz monitor if the computer can only do 60fps in the game.
head down to OC, and hit up Microcenter in Tustin.
Find the game she wants to play with the most stringent hardware requirements and go from there.
https://pcpartpicker.com/ has some guides as well as if you don't want to follow their guide, then it has their way of listing the parts that you can print out.
And of course, you need plenty of zip ties... for cable organizing.
For motherboards... you tend not to go wrong with Gigabyte and Asus. I've had good luck with Asrock, which is a fairly new (and a little more value-conscious), but others don't have luck with them. I also prefer to spend a little more on ATX boards vs micro-ATK boards.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2022
- Messages
- 221
Ideally, it would be suggested that you visit the gaming spec site and view and compare the game specs. often this means those sites have recommend values or graphical and ram specs which one should follow. For instance, One site list at least 6 different video/graphic card and 3 different motherboards and 2 different ram chips which should be used for this particular game. But be warned, that if the game is popular and is patched often, your system will be out of date in less than 2 years. head over to microcenter and buy a predesigned system for less than 1K.
This is what I’d build right now. Ryzen on AM5 for an upgrade path. 16Gb ram is plenty for almost all gaming, I have a hard time breaking 10gb including background stuff running.
Agreed. My son plays Fortnight and a few other games on a used office PC (Dell Optiplex). It came with an i7 processor and 16 gb of ram, I just added an SSD and a $150 GPU. For a low budget rig it seems to run very well and he is happy with it.
Lots of opinions and lots of options available, but IMO, for anything decent that will still play games few years down the road and be useful as a computer, you’re looking at about $1k for the PC alone.
To me, it’s not really what particular games this computer will play, but at what resolution. A 1080p resolution will require far less graphic “horse power” than a 1440p resolution. A 4k resolution will require top end graphic cards, which are all super expensive.
To me, it’s not really what particular games this computer will play, but at what resolution. A 1080p resolution will require far less graphic “horse power” than a 1440p resolution. A 4k resolution will require top end graphic cards, which are all super expensive.
D
Deleted member 89374
@daves66nova your budget for this?
Also, you can save on windows by getting a key from a third party store. I got mine from PCWorld for something like $40 for a windows 10 pro version. Works without issues and it even worked on my sons PC I built recently. That surprised me as it was supposed to be one use key. So now the price of it is actually $20 lol.
I ended up getting one from Offerup. It runs great, according to my daughter. I'll post specs later.... Thanks to all for the suggestions!
