Getting back into PC Gaming - what’s the state of play?

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I used to be an avid PC gamer, built a few rigs in my time, but got out of it about 12 years ago. Not really had much to do with PC’s at all since then and I’ve had my head in the sand when it comes to the latest PC and gaming hardware

Now my 11 year old boy is asking for one, and I have agreed to build one with him. It’s going to take a while to get up to speed with the latest memory types etc.

But how healthy is the PC gaming scene on the whole? Is it in good shape? Or should we stick to consoles now?

Also, for a gaming PC (not including peripherals) what’s a decent budget? Would £800 build a machine that’s capable of playing the latest games as decent settings etc?

And what is generally more cost effective - self-build or buying pre-built?

Thanks.
 
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The PC gaming scene is very healthy, but you'll probably get more response in the PC Gaming & Rigs forum :smashin:
 
PC gaming scene is what it's always been. Expensive and the best.

I always stand behind prioritising display and peripherals as they will nearly always outlast your GPU and processor most likely but people will disagree lol. I just value input and output methods highly.

Sadly the chase for 4k has left PC gaming really finding it difficult to match the pixel fidelity of the next gen consoles and still hold its signature and obligatory 60fps.

We've also been accustomed over the years to far more console ports which seem to look just as described, ports.

Still the modding, Steam and especially the emergence of VR keeps it as simply the best in class gaming experience if u have the money.


But oh god is it expensive now on the GPU front.
 
It's in decent shape.

It's rather a dinosaur in terms of hardware. Despite the capabilities of lower power chips these days many games are still built for minimum requirements of 100W or more, which is far from eco-friendly. Support for new technologies often seems grudging and console-led. Wide colour gamuts have been available in affordable computer monitors for a decade or more, but we're only seeing support for them now as part of the HDR TV standards.

Platforms and shops are also an issue. A lot of developers flocked to exclusive use of single platform in the mid-2000s, Valve's Steam, which pretty much forced everyone else out of business, aside from a few specialists like gog, matrix/slitherine and some publisher-specific stuff. We are seeing some potential signs of a potential revival now. Epic's game shop launched during last year and seems fairly healthy but a lot of games are still exclusives unfortunately.

There's still plenty of game development going on though, which is obviously what makes or breaks a platform. So while the PC gaming scene is overdue for some upheavals it's unlikely to die off any time soon.
 
Thanks, I was hoping to hear that. Thoughts on building vs pre-built?
 
Around £800ish, if possible.

Bit tight. That was loads years ago but now its a bit hard.

The good thing about this generation is you have the AMD 3600 which will power basically every game at a high FPS for a song.

The issue is GPU. I'd PERSONALLY get the cheapest decent second hand GPU I could and then upgrade it during the next Nvidia Refresh as it will likely have HDMI 2.1, a big RTX improvement and a good performance boost which should get a bit more over the 4k/medium 60fps mark to the comfortably territory.

The only thing you need to ask yourself is what do you want to do in PC gaming.
1. 1440p 16:9 high refresh rate gaming
2. Ultrawide monitor high refresh rate
3. Super ultrawide monitor high refresh rate
4. 4k OLED TV
5. 4k TV
6. 4k Monitor
7. VR

If you already have the screen sorted, then great. If you don't, then IMO the best experience bang for buck if you don't like big screen, is the 21:9 100hz+ IPS Gsync.


Do you have the monitor sorted?
 
£800 is fine to get games to run smoothly, you only have to spend loads if you want to go chasing sparklies.


Pre-built machines do tend to lag behind the fashions a bit. When I built my PC the year before last AMD was the obvious choice for the graphics card since nVidia weren't supporting VRR outside custom G-sync hardware, yet very few pre-built systems were offering AMD cards.

There is the occasionally excellent deal available in pre-builts and they do take away any worry of initial troubleshooting so they're worth looking at once you've decided what you want but a lot of the time components are preferable.
 
Well I've just put my son's pc together today and was about £1150 but we added a monitor at maybe £100 and deepcool 120mm AIO for about £40. Might give a good idea on specs you can amend such as cheaper m/board or cheaper GPU or smaller / cheaper hard drive or SSD. Windows 10 take a bit of searching for a good deal:

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor £172.00
Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE ATX AM4 Motherboard £185.57
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory £74.39
Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive £91.95
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB OC Video Card £294.99
Corsair Carbide Series 275R ATX Mid Tower Case £69.22
Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply £69.98
Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit
 
It's in good shape for me.
However, desktop pc sales are falling rapidly.
high quality pc gaming is very expensive. I've just spent £1k upgrading my gaming rig in preparation for the 3080ti.
the best value and satisfaction comes from designing and building your own pc rather than having a prebuilt rig
pc building is not as daunting as one may think. I'd never built a pc until three years ago and now it's absolutely easy for me. Its imperative when building to research, prep and stick completely to the instructions etc
consoles represent superb value for the money. The majority of pc gamers have rigs less powerful than a ps4. But there's tradeoffs such as modding and upgrade potential.
There's lots of myths when it comes to pc gaming
Higher numbers doesn't mean higher performance
Ddr4 isn't any faster than ddr3
3600 memory isn't any faster in practice than 2100 memory
An ssd will not improve gaming performance in any way. You just save a few seconds in loading times
For gaming Intel are still the king of the cpu
You don't need a massive amount of cpu cores for gaming. More than eight cores makes for worse gaming performance.
The only people who need amd massive amount of cores are video designers. These account for less than 1% of the overall pc market. Of course there are those who like to show off their cores. These people account for many more than 1% of the gaming population.
Before building, check out the myths and reality of what you need for a gaming rig. By doing so you will save a lot of money.
Stock cpu coolers are rarely adequate. It's in the interest of manufacturers to install poor coolers as they ensure your cpu will fail more quickly. The replacement makes them an extra sale.
Make sure you have plenty of cooling in your pc. They overheat easily and shop bought pc rarely have enough cooling.
Fans are often incorrectly installed so there's not a continuety of air flow. These are basic things but incredibly important.
there's another significant reason why many choose pc over console. But I won't mention that. However long John silver would approve of pc gaming.
Pc gaming is a minefield but one that's worth persevering with as the gains outweigh the deficits
Happy gaming
 
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It's in good shape for me.
However, desktop pc sales are falling rapidly.
high quality pc gaming is very expensive. I've just spent £1k upgrading my gaming rig in preparation for the 3080ti.
the best value and satisfaction comes from designing and building your own pc rather than having a prebuilt rig
pc building is not as daunting as one may think. I'd never built a pc until three years ago and now it's absolutely easy for me. Its imperative when building to research, prep and stick completely to the instructions etc
consoles represent superb value for the money. The majority of pc gamers have rigs less powerful than a ps4. But there's tradeoffs such as modding and upgrade potential.
There's lots of myths when it comes to pc gaming
Higher numbers doesn't mean higher performance
Ddr4 isn't any faster than ddr3
3600 memory isn't any faster in practice than 2100 memory
An ssd will not improve gaming performance in any way. You just save a few seconds in loading times
For gaming Intel are still the king of the cpu
You don't need a massive amount of cpu cores for gaming. More than eight cores makes for worse gaming performance.
The only people who need amd massive amount of cores are video designers. These account for less than 1% of the overall pc market. Of course there are those who like to show off their cores. These people account for many more than 1% of the gaming population.
Before building, check out the myths and reality of what you need for a gaming rig. By doing so you will save a lot of money.
Stock cpu coolers are rarely adequate. It's in the interest of manufacturers to install poor coolers as they ensure your cpu will fail more quickly. The replacement makes them an extra sale.
Make sure you have plenty of cooling in your pc. They overheat easily and shop bought pc rarely have enough cooling.
Fans are often incorrectly installed so there's not a continuety of air flow. These are basic things but incredibly important.
there's another significant reason why many choose pc over console. But I won't mention that. However long John silver would approve of pc gaming.
Pc gaming is a minefield but one that's worth persevering with as the gains outweigh the deficits
Happy gaming
Sorry disagree with a lot of what you are saying above as an example ssd do make a difference to games try playing any game that loads textures while playing and you will see what I mean.. gta v assassins creed all very good examples of this. Also CPU cores are being utilised much more in gaming and amd are very much catching up with intel. You talk about the myths in pc gaming and that last comment says it all to be fair, intel are running scared at the moment of amd.. yes you may get slightly more FPS with intel at the moment but not much and costs a lot more
 
It's in good shape for me.
However, desktop pc sales are falling rapidly.
high quality pc gaming is very expensive. I've just spent £1k upgrading my gaming rig in preparation for the 3080ti.
the best value and satisfaction comes from designing and building your own pc rather than having a prebuilt rig
pc building is not as daunting as one may think. I'd never built a pc until three years ago and now it's absolutely easy for me. Its imperative when building to research, prep and stick completely to the instructions etc
consoles represent superb value for the money. The majority of pc gamers have rigs less powerful than a ps4. But there's tradeoffs such as modding and upgrade potential.
There's lots of myths when it comes to pc gaming
Higher numbers doesn't mean higher performance
Ddr4 isn't any faster than ddr3
3600 memory isn't any faster in practice than 2100 memory
An ssd will not improve gaming performance in any way. You just save a few seconds in loading times
For gaming Intel are still the king of the cpu
You don't need a massive amount of cpu cores for gaming. More than eight cores makes for worse gaming performance.
The only people who need amd massive amount of cores are video designers. These account for less than 1% of the overall pc market. Of course there are those who like to show off their cores. These people account for many more than 1% of the gaming population.
Before building, check out the myths and reality of what you need for a gaming rig. By doing so you will save a lot of money.
Stock cpu coolers are rarely adequate. It's in the interest of manufacturers to install poor coolers as they ensure your cpu will fail more quickly. The replacement makes them an extra sale.
Make sure you have plenty of cooling in your pc. They overheat easily and shop bought pc rarely have enough cooling.
Fans are often incorrectly installed so there's not a continuety of air flow. These are basic things but incredibly important.
there's another significant reason why many choose pc over console. But I won't mention that. However long John silver would approve of pc gaming.
Pc gaming is a minefield but one that's worth persevering with as the gains outweigh the deficits
Happy gaming
I'm going to have to disagree on some of the points on the above.

AMD probably represent best value for performance just now in gaming. Their CPU benefits from the faster ram and we're not talking a fortune for the faster ram. Just looking on amazon 2 x 8gb @ 2133 is £63.97 and @ 3200 is £64.99

SSD is a good choice as well, maybe even NVME for the PC. I replaced the hard drive on my sons PC earlier this year with an SSD and it actually vastly improved the PC running games. Again cost wise there is no real reason not to look at SSD or NVME when building a new PC now unless you require a lot of capacity over speed.

Again on coolers you can get away with stock coolers in particular on the new AMD cpu's. They'll run hotter of course but it's a saving. CPU's are ok running 60 to 70C gaming but I like the benefits of better cooling not everyone may choose that.

I will agree building a PC is not as hard as it might seem. There are plenty of youtube video's about to help someone if needed.
Pre built can be ok but you are at the mercy of the shop. You also potentially have less choice with maybe compromises in the build you want.

Lastly I don't think the PC is the same "market" for games as it may have been in the past. Nowadays there are so many free games, along with games on promotion or giveaways. I don't use epic but there are folk with a decent games library from the free games given away by epic as one example.
If you aren't buying every game on day one then there is a good option to get most PC games for a good price.
 
Unless you have a gaming chair you cant even compete online.
 
...
There's lots of myths when it comes to pc gaming
...
And you've demonstrated many of them when it comes to your ill informed post.
 
Thanks all.

If going down the pre-built route, what are the best places to buy from these days?
 
I went with Chillblast and also have used Dino PC.
 
I personally think PC gaming has always been healthy but now as of late the consoles take up more of the retail space as far as I have seen around here.
 
PC gaming is fine for the next few years. It has long found its niche: tech enthusiasts and/or people who like games they can't usually find on consoles.

The same questions about PC gaming's future come up each time a new console generation arrives. Consoles will have their customary advantage in sales, value for money (for most people), ease-of-use and accessibility. PCs will have the power advantage at higher prices.

With a new console generation on the horizon - supposedly offering bigger improvements than moving from PS3/XB360 to PS4/XOne - the first year or two will only see high(er)-end PCs comfortably offer more power. But this is dependent on properly optimised software which, in theory, is generally easier for consoles.

For me, £800 will definitely get you a decent system. I don't think it would be 4k at 60fps, but 1440p on a monitor at 60fps is achievable.

Be selective on components - PSU below £100, case below £80, skip on the RGB options unless you really want them - but a system capable of gaming well at 1440p is achievable.

In terms of cost effectiveness, I can only speak of self-build, but I've heard good things about Dino PC. Putting together your own comes with its usual headaches, so peace of mind has value in pre-built.
 

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