Advice on a Gaming PC for my son?

[MoonStone]

Hi, I am hoping i can get a little bit of advice…I’ve been reading through a lot of posts on this forum over the last couple of weeks and it has reinforced to me how clueless I am in regards to what components work best together for different purposes.

I am buying a gaming pc for my son this week (talked him out of a laptop)

I spoke with him this morning to find out exactly what he wants to do with the new PC, his responses were -


-Main purpose of the pc would be gaming and Video Editing

-Games include Minecraft, Fortnite & Call of Duty

-He wants to stream on Twitch

-Support VR

-Be able to attach multiple monitors at some point

-He mentioned something to me about a 144Hz Monitor

-Option to upgrade in a few years


Budget would ideally come in at £1100-£1200 (including the monitor)

if anyone could recommend a configuration and monitor it would be most appreciated

Many Thanks

 

[Scott]

How necessary is the VR aspect of it all? VR is a very expensive option at present, requiring high end hardware to get a reasonable experience from proper gaming titles. The fun stuff is easy enough to power, but the headsets & hardware are still quite expensive. If it's a future state thing it should be all but ignored for the present as a future GPU upgrade would cover the VR aspect if it's a "down the line" requirement.

Other than that, everything else is easily do-able. You can smash 1080p with that budget, possibly even getting on for 1440p depending on how much is required for the monitor.

 

[MoonStone]

Thanks for the reply, in theory it's important to him, in practice maybe not so much, he has a friend with an Oculus Rift and mentioned that he would like the friend to be able to bring it around and use it...am assuming the VR option would push me over that budget...in terms of the monitor I was thinking around the 200 mark but am open to suggestions.

 

[Oussebon]

Something like:

Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)

Get 3 Months of XBOX Game Pass for PC w/ select AMD Ryzen CPUs
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B450-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCIe M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1500 MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Monitor
AOC G2590PX 24.5" 144Hz Gaming Monitor
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Price: £1,142.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/exdvq6rBvT/


You could up the PSU to the TXm series as it's better quality and more efficient, and modular

And/or - does he already have Call of Duty Modern Warfare? If not, if he going to buy it anyway?

If he doesn't have it but wants it badly you could go a smidge over budget with the RTX 2060. It's a bit faster than the GTX 1060 Super, and has a free copy of the game bundled. So while it technically takes you over budget (£1219) if it saves you the cost of the game at full retail price, why not...

But you don't need a 2060, a 1660 Super is more than enough.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare PC Performance Review and Optimisation Guide - OC3D

Introduction – Preparing for the calls of next-gen The pst two iterations of Call of Duty have been doing a lot of exciting things on the hardware side. Black Ops 4 focused on delivering a “Battle Royale” experience through the game’s Blackout mode, which targeted the development team’s...

www.overclock3d.net

(1660 Super roughly equals a 1070)

Similarly the R5 3600x has a free game - a choice of Borderlands 3 or The Outer Worlds. It is not worth the ~£40 for the performance alone but if you/he genuinely were going to buy one of those titles anyway, why not.

R5 CPU will do well for streaming, certainly better than Intel alternatives at a similar price point. And video editing. And will be as good as or sometimes better in gaming too...

The system can do VR. If you were planning to buy a £500 VR setup I'd probably suggest getting a slightly bigger budget for the PC. But if it's just a case of a mate bringing on over, sure, they can do that.

The system can be upgraded (you might expect to upgrade a graphics card for gaming every few years).

It will support multiple monitors. Exact number of monitors may depend on the exact model of 1660 Super used by PCS. Usually 3 as the GPU would have HDMI, DP, DVI. I checked the zotac and palit models that I expect PCS are likely to use - the zotac actually had 4 outputs and specifies support for 4 monitors (palit, the usual 3). But tbh 2's probably enough to be getting on with...

 

[MoonStone]

Thank you Oussebon! this is just the kind of info i was hoping for, I will consider those items that come with the free games, there has been talk about an Oculus Quest as a Christmas present, to the best of my knowledge it seems to be a self contained VR unit with no need for a PC so presume i wouldn't need to worry about it