Many years ago I used to take apart and put together personal computers. However, it was not for gaming purposes.
The last machine that I ‘plug-and-play’ put together was back in 2007. I imagine a lot has changed since then.
My sons want a Windows gaming PC for this upcoming Christmas season.
Would it be more cost effective to purchase all the components and build a tower or purchase a prebuilt machine?
Also, I’m not looking for a high-end machine. Something in the middle should work fine since they aren’t hardcore gamers.
Anything marketed as “gamer” is likely to be a rip-off.
Buying components is typically more cost effective, and building a PC together with your sons would be a great learning experience!
However, there are often pretty good deals for used PCs from gamers selling their middle-end rigs on eBay, for example. It’s also possible to get just a middle-end graphics card this way.
Buying components separately is cheaper, though sometimes there are good deals on pre-builts.
Choosing the right components can be a bit tough, it all depends on your budget. That’s the first question. If you’re buying it for Christmas you may want to wait for black friday and buy then.
The market is still kind of in shambles. Everything is a lot more expensive than it should be because of parts shortage. If you’re looking for mid-range I’d recommend a GTX 1660, but if you want to spend a little more and future-proof your PC, I’d recommend an RTX 3060.
Try searching your local craigslist / classifieds market for preowned PCs. It’s usually not too difficult to find a good deal on a second hand PC as long as you’re ok with hardware that is a few years out of date.
It is not a Windows PC out of the box, but the Steam Deck is one of the best value prebuilt options available, and since you won’t need it until December the long waitlist shouldn’t be an issue.
If your sons are not playing hardcore games, and are fine turning the graphics settings down, then you can save a lot of money by not buying a graphics card. Intel’s integrated graphics, and AMD’s APUs have gotten powerful enough that I have not used a dedicated GPU since ~2017. You won’t be able to run a 4k display or VR on one, but most games at 1080p with the graphics settings turned down are perfectly playable.
Intel’s integrated graphics, and AMD’s APUs have gotten powerful enough that I have not used a dedicated GPU since ~2017.
Would you, please, give me a little more information about both of those and how to track them down?
AMD’s APU, and Intel’s UHD graphics are marketing terms for integrated graphics processors. It just means that the CPU has a built-in GPU.
When purchasing components, or choosing a prebuilt system, you can simply select a CPU that has “integrated graphics”.
Even a modest graphics card will drastically out perform any integrated graphics chip, but if your sons are not playing hardcore resource intensive games then you can save a lot of money not buying a GPU. You can also always purchase a GPU later for a birthday / next Christmas to enable them to play more intensive games.
Excellent! Thanks so much.
Buying components is almost always more cost efficient. The only reason that might not hold true is if GPUs are still extremely expensive in your area, then prebuilts could be ok. You can get really good deals on used parts if you have a rough idea of what you are looking for/at. Especially if youre looking for older generation hardware, people upgrading let stuff go for quite cheap quite often if you’re on the lookout.
Other than that, as was mentionned, building a PC with your kids would be a really fun experience so thats also a bonus!
I’ve never messed up with hardware before until last year that I built my computer. But I use the website logicalincrements.com to avoid mishaps or rookie mistakes. Even so at the end, I sought helped because I didn’t know how to connect the PSU correctly and didn’t wanted to mess up my brand new components. There are other websites that help you built a PC like the one I mentioned if you don’t like that one.
Buy something with aan AMD GPU and go Linux
