Hardware I want to buy a gaming PC. Sounds simple enough :/

[R4Liam]

So basically I have a new job and want to treat myself to various things including a gaming PC. Trouble is I have no idea what to get. The games I'm likely to play will be things like Minecraft, Elder Scrolls series, various casual/serious games on Steam, maybe CoD.

I will be eventually getting a PS4 because I love my CoD and can't really play well with a mouse (I know you can plug a controller into a PC). So is buying a gaming PC really worth it? I have a laptop atm but it can only play specific games that are encoded for the likes of my integrated graphics card (I think it's an intel hd 3000 or something). I can't really play game slike CoD on it although it does play Skyrim decently.

I'm not too fussed about the graphics/picture quality so long as I can play online/offline games perfectly smoothly. My budget is £500/600. Definitely won't go higher than £1000. Anyone know of the best place to buy a PC like this?

 

[LegendAssassinF]

ITS NEVER SIMPLE ENOUGH! lol Free bump since PC Gaming Mast Race FTW! Word of caution I would buy all the parts in one go and you will need to buy form different stores. I usually post on Tom's Hardware forums and then take their build and post on here for more help or any little changes.

 

[Vanth88]

It sounds to me like you just wanna play console games so the best thing for you is to just buy a console. The Xbox 360 has everything you just listed including Minecraft and if you're into smaller games then the XBLA is for you or heck even the indie games. What better console to play CoD on than the console everyones playing it on?

 

[trumpet-205]

It really depends. First gaming on PC with AAA titles means you have to go through some stupid DRMs.

What resolution/monitor will this gaming PC be using?

 

[R4Liam]

@LegendAssassinF You have confused me further

@Vanth88 Are you an Xbox representative or something? I prefer Playstations because I like consistency in what I have and I have always bought those systems, as do all my friends. I prefer playing games like Minecraft on the PC for keyboard commands and because it is perfect for PC as are games like the Elder Scrolls series which I prefer playing on the PC. That said I have been debating whether I will be using it much once the PS4 comes out, I worry it will collect dust. Can anyone assure me that gaming PCs are relevant in this day and age? After watching this I am in doubt:



@trumpet-205 More confusion :S I considered myself to be fairly technologically savvy as well! What are DRMs? As for the resolution, I have a 40 inch monitor but will probs get a fairly small one (still HD) so I can fit it on my desk.

 

[Originality]

For £1000, you can get a gaming system that can play anything at high/maxed settings and will typically last 3-5 years. £600 is still enough for a capable gaming machine, although that's when outlying factors start to get in the way. I'll draw up a basic build tomorrow (since it's late).

In the meanwhile, answer the following: Do you need a keyboard/mouse/monitor/speakers/windows within your budget?

EDIT: My opinion (as someone with 2 gaming PCs and every game console under one roof), consoles are limited when it comes to games. Console hardware is limited so devs have to work within that in order to deliver a smooth experience. Sometimes it doesn't quite work out (Skyrim PS3). Also when consoles go bad, they go bad (RRoD, disk scratching, YLoD/RLoD). PCs have better hardware (although the software often gets in the way) thus better graphics, and are very flexible between price ranges. Plus upgradable at any time (which makes it easily fixable too).

Plus I prefer PC based games distribution (Steam/GoG/others). The amount of money I've sunk into Steam sales... and my hardware (Core i5-2550K + GTX 770) plays them beautifully. That said, consoles still have some experience that are better than on PC. E.g. Monster Hunter on PSP/3DS. Some games are meant to be played with 4 friends in one room and a big ass monster begging for a Jaeger punch.

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Also, do you want to overclock?

 

[the_randomizer]

Here's what I currently have for my PC, and I spent $1100 USD on it. Best PC I ever used.

Core i5 3570 (K version if you overclock) Ivy Bridge
MSI GeForce 660 GTX 2 GB GDDR5
8 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333
1 TB Western Digital
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
23" Asus LED Full 1080p (need to look up exact model)

Just to throw a few ideas out there

 

[Satangel]

Check this tutorial out, from the hand of our very own Rydian. Very helpful!

 

[Kirito-kun]

So you want to buy a PS4 but you also want a PC to game? It would be much more money-efficient to skip the PS4 and build a beast gaming PC for $1000. Such a PC would crush the PS4 in every aspect, as well as having the perks of being a high-end PC.

In my opinion, the days of consoles are over. There's no advantage of a PS4 vs a gaming PC. The original appeal of consoles were their plug-and-play factor. However, nowadays, consoles have system updates, patches, mandatory installs, corrupt save files, and a bunch of other hassles. The appeal of consoles is no more.

Consider this build:

Intel Core i7 3770K
Nvidia GTX 770
8 GB Corsair Vengeance RAM
WD Blue 1TB HDD

This build will cost about $1000 and will dominate the PS4 and Xbone in every aspect.

Join the PC gaming master race. You won't regret your decision.

 

[Vanth88]

lol what? no.. I was legitimately trying to help by just suggesting you'd probably wanna stick with consoles for now. Everything you mentioned in your original post seemed to indicate you'd prefer consoles over PCs. The fact that I even brought up Xbox 360 at all was because it had everything you wanted at a cheaper price. I didn't suggest PS3 because it doesn't have Minecraft and if it did I would've suggested getting either-or.

If you're wondering if its worth getting a gaming PC at all then I'd suggest waiting on it. You're already planning on getting a PS4 and while a gaming PC is nice its not going to offer you anything that your PS3 or PS4 already does, and thats playing games. If you're dead set on getting a PC though then you could afford a decent enough computer to play Skyrim and Cod at max or close to max settings but with the PS4 just months away welllllll...

*EDIT* That's assuming you really didn't want to spend £1000 on a PC. For £1000 yeah you could definitely get a good PC. I was thinking if you wanted to spend the least amount than £500-£600 would be plenty and thats including a monitor as well.

 

[R4Liam]

Originality I am not particularly interested in getting max settings. I don't need any external hardware like mouse, keyboard etc. But I would like to buy good gaming equipment I.e. gaming mouse, keyboard, headset. I have a decent monitor too. I will have to get an operating system with it though. (Unless there's a way to install Linux or something on startup) I think windows 8 is pretty disappointing tbh..
I want the console for the exclusives. Also I just play better at cod on consoles even though I could adapt. Also my laptop is weakening now and now that I'll be commuting to uni I can do most of my work on a desktop computer at home (I do graphic design so some pretty high performance stuff). And you're right consoles seem a lot more social.

Thanatos Telos I don't think I'd need to if I bought the right PC.

Kirito-kun You make a very compelling point. Maybe in the future I'll invest in the highest end PC but I just want to dip my toes for now by spending 500, 600 at a stretch. Also the other points I made about consoles.

Vanth88 Just checking The fact I can play minecraft on a system isn't the selling point for me because I can already play it on my okay laptop and as I said I prefer it on PC.

Thanks for all of your help everyone!

 

[Fishaman P]

I read the suggestions above, and they seem a little overkill.

3rd Gen i3 [Core i3 3xxx] (or 4th gen [Core i3 4xxx], if you can find it)
AMD Radeon HD 7770
4GB RAM

That should do the trick for £350. It won't play Crysis 3, but Minecraft, CoD, and Starcraft should be just fine with that.
If it seems a little weak for you, you can bump the CPU up to an i5. The graphics cards listed is what I personally use, and I couldn't be happier for $90 (£60).

 

[Kirito-kun]

I read the suggestions above, and they seem a little overkill.

Overkill? A 3770K + GTX 770 + 8GB 1866 RAM may be high-end, but it's not overkill. Overkill is when you buy more than what is needed to max out every single game on the market.

For example:

EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard ($470)
Dual Intel Xeon X5690 CPUs (2 x $1650)
GTX Titan GPUs 4-way SLI (4 x $1000)
48GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RAM ($729)
Dual Crucial M4 512 GB SSDs Raid 0 (2 x $438)
Silverstone ST1500 1500W PSU ($412)

Total: $9787

THIS is overkill. For over $9000, you could have a PC that'll be more powerful than the PS6.

 

[Rydian]

Overkill is when you buy more than what is needed to max out every single game on the market.

Overkill is assuming that everybody wants to max out every single game on the market.

 

[Hells Malice]

@LegendAssassinF You have confused me further

Can anyone assure me that gaming PCs are relevant in this day and age? After watching this I am in doubt:

I almost wet myself and fell of my chair after I read this question.
Then I actually did wet myself from laughing so hard and fell of my chair when you linked a BLOPs 2 video.

Oh christ.
Oh god.
Breathe
Breathe.

You must be trolling. Even next gen is struggling to keep up with PC gaming and its not even out yet, baha.

Anyway, i'm in agreement with Vanth. You seem to be a confused console gamer. As soon as you switch to PC gaming you'd probably be like "Playstation what? the hell is that?"
At least I know when i got my gaming rig my consoles immediately started to rot, only being revived for the odd jRPG since PC rarely gets those, and especially not the good series like Tales.
But if you're not planning to make the switch to PC gaming, there's really no point getting a gaming PC. It's an investment, it's not exactly super cheap. You'd be better off waiting for the PS4 if you only plan on playing console games on PC anyway.

 

[Kirito-kun]

In order to help your decision on joining the PC gaming master race, let me compare the raw power of the PS4 with a few gaming-grade graphics cards. In case you do not know, FLOPS stands for "FLoating-point Operations Per Second". It's the measure of the raw computational power of a GPU. More FLOPS = better visuals, higher frame-rates, more sophisticated games, better draw distances, etc.

PS4: 1.84 TFLOPS

GTX 660 Ti (Common gaming card): 2.4 TFLOPS

GTX 770 (High-end gaming card): 3.2 TFLOPS

GTX Titan (The equivalent of the atom bomb): 4.5 TFLOPS

GTX 690 (Two small atom bombs duct-tapped together): 5.6 TFLOPS

And you have to keep in mind that these are the graphics card currently on the market. Every year, faster GPUs are released. The PS4 on the other hand will be stuck to a measly 1.84 TFLOPS.

That's my biggest issue with console. When you buy a console, you're stuck with the same hardware for 7+ years. When you build/buy a PC, you can upgrade it whenever you want. You can keep it for much longer than a console if you don't mind low settings, or you can upgrade every other year if you want to max out everything. Towards the end of a console's lifespan, the games that come out for it start to look like crap compared to PCs, due to it's outdated hardware. Then, when a new generation of consoles comes out, you are forced to upgrade. Not the case with PC. PC gaming gives you much more freedom.

 

[PityOnU]

In order to help your decision on joining the PC gaming master race, let me compare the raw power of the PS4 with a few gaming-grade graphics cards. In case you do not know, FLOPS stands for "FLoating-point Operations Per Second". It's the measure of the raw computational power of a GPU. More FLOPS = better visuals, higher frame-rates, more sophisticated games, better draw distances, etc.

PS4: 1.84 TFLOPS

GTX 660 Ti (Common gaming card): 2.4 TFLOPS

GTX 770 (High-end gaming card): 3.2 TFLOPS

GTX Titan (The equivalent of the atom bomb): 4.5 TFLOPS

GTX 690 (Two small atom bombs duct-tapped together): 5.6 TFLOPS

And you have to keep in mind that these are the graphics card currently on the market. Every year, faster GPUs are released. The PS4 on the other hand will be stuck to a measly 1.84 TFLOPS.

That's my biggest issue with console. When you buy a console, you're stuck with the same hardware for 7+ years. When you build/buy a PC, you can upgrade it whenever you want. You can keep it for much longer than a console if you don't mind low settings, or you can upgrade every other year if you want to max out everything. Towards the end of a console's lifespan, the games that come out for it start to look like crap compared to PCs, due to it's outdated hardware. Then, when a new generation of consoles comes out, you are forced to upgrade. Not the case with PC. PC gaming gives you much more freedom.

With console, you're "stuck" with a device that will run every AAA title released for the next 7+ years without any issue or need to configure and maintain extra software.

Any issue with console graphics can be directed at The Last of Us.

Much less powerful consoles can keep up with more powerful PC's because they are dedicated machines and don't have to worry about general computing or multi-tasking.

Since OP is getting a PS4 for sure, he would probably be better served by just saving his money in investing in PS4 games down the line. With the platform's emphasis on indie games and with most games being released cross-platform nowadays, it's not like he'd be getting that much more by spending close to $1000 on a PC.

PC master race, perhaps, but my frugality overrules that any day.

 

[Kirito-kun]

With console, you're "stuck" with a device that will run every AAA title released for the next 7+ years without any issue or need to configure and maintain extra software.

Any issue with console graphics can be directed at The Last of Us.

Much less powerful consoles can keep up with more powerful PC's because they are dedicated machines and don't have to worry about general computing or multi-tasking.

There's a difference between "running" and "running well". Sure, consoles can still run games towards the end of it's life cycle, but it'll look like crap and have low frame-rates. As an example this gen, Far Cry 3 looks better on PC with all the settings turned down to minimum then on consoles. And the last of us? Are you saying that it looks better than The Witcher 2? Crysis 3? Far Cry 3? Does TLOS have tessellation? Post-processing?

And consoles have no issues running AAA titles? Perhaps you remember the whole ordeal about Skyrim becoming super laggy on PS3 after your save file becomes too large.

I respect people who prefer consoles, but suggesting that consoles have graphics that even come close to PCs is straight-up wrong. Consoles will never and has never had better graphics than PCs.

 

[LegendAssassinF]

With console, you're "stuck" with a device that will run every AAA title released for the next 7+ years without any issue or need to configure and maintain extra software.

Any issue with console graphics can be directed at The Last of Us.

Much less powerful consoles can keep up with more powerful PC's because they are dedicated machines and don't have to worry about general computing or multi-tasking.

Since OP is getting a PS4 for sure, he would probably be better served by just saving his money in investing in PS4 games down the line. With the platform's emphasis on indie games and with most games being released cross-platform nowadays, it's not like he'd be getting that much more by spending close to $1000 on a PC.

PC master race, perhaps, but my frugality overrules that any day.

I agree with you there if he is getting a PS4 you might as well buy games on that and eventually buy an Xbox One if you are missing any exclusives that you want to play. Rather spend 1,000$ on games + consoles than buy a PS4 and 700$ PC that isn't going to hold up that well in for next generation because you didn't put the extra money for a better GPU that would be prepared for OC to eventually Crossfire/SLI