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Little Dude needs a gaming PC


bluzdog

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@bluzdog My son's PC is a Lenovo Legion 5. I got a black friday deal. I checked Lenovo and they currently didn't have any gaming tower PCs under $1,000 but I found Best Buy had a Legion for $999 that looked good to me. Here's the link (and no, it's not an affiliate link, just me trying to be helpful).  

 

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo-legion-tower-5-amd-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-3700x-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-256gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-phantom-black/6424472.p?skuId=6424472&ref=212&loc=1&ref=212&loc=1&ds_rl=1264993&ds_rl=1264987&gclid=CjwKCAiAjp6BBhAIEiwAkO9WuvtY_efqWiS--I_YA6ovnFfZJeD7p2gYef4tp0q9OOqwapwArRXXDxoCnuEQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

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Don't discount the added value of building a PC with your lad. I went through this with both my son and my nephew.

The shared experience of looking at parts and prices and having them investigate where they could find deals and comparing specs was invaluable.

The expectation and joy when parts were ordered and arrived at the door was fantastic.

Finally laying them all out with tools at the ready and explaining how all the parts fitted was a joy.

Actually putting the jigsaw together was brillant....for the first 10 minutes, then they got bored and went off saying "let me know when it is done so I can download my games" :D

Still it must have taught them both something, as they have both since upgraded their PC themselves or bought and built another one by themselves.

 

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Ditto what Hatstand said.

My 11-yo son and I built a modest intel PC for $390. The plan was to buy a $200 video card to bring the total to $600-ish, but video card prices are through the roof right now. He's playing Fortnite quite comfortably on it with the CPU's built-in GPU. Obviously, almost no textures, but looking at videos of people using the RX 570 or the GT FORCE 1650 Super, there is not a lot of difference.  I mean, for $390, we're pretty happy (he paid for most of it).

This is the original list. We downgraded the memory to 8 GB (we can expand later if needed), and found a deal in Amazon where you could get that same CPU and a motherboard for $185).

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/monomox/saved/#view=MHQ7RB

Take into account that the pandemic has decimated parts of the supply chain, so prices are fluctuating a lot.

Edited by Monomox
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If you do go the build it way for the first time.  Get yourself a larger case as it is easier to work in.   If you happen to located close to a Microcenter it could be worth the trip to check it out.  They also have refurbished PC off of lease for great prices.

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20 hours ago, antler said:

X-Boxes still need updates - every now and then when you turn it on you have the choice to either update, or stay offline. Never had a PlayStation, but I guess they're the same.

Yes but the console updates don't cause problems because they know what they are updating. Windows updates especially Windows 10, it's not so clear what they will do to the different hardware/drivers/software that you have on your system, many third party bits in there. Most problems can be fixed of course but it can be an  added running around and cost to find out what may be the problem. Not so bad if you have just one computer, but if you then have a few....

Some may not mind the possibility of that happening but I like hassle free gaming away from the computer rather than having yet another high maintenance computer child to look after. I also do not mind thrashing the console but when I was gaming on my music/video computer it didn't feel right to game on it as well. I guess if you are buying a computer just for gaming, it might be different.

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On 2/13/2021 at 6:49 AM, Finnbogi Ragnar Ragnarsson said:

Amd and a second hand 1060.

Avoid any intel older than 8xxx.

Do you mean GTX 1060 video card? I've been watching those waiting for the price to go down but it keeps going up. :( They started out around $275 used 2 months ago now the lowest I've seen them is on eBay for $300 Buy It Now including shipping. They usually sell for more after shipping when people bid on them. That's a 5 year old video card. It's crazy.

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On 2/13/2021 at 4:03 PM, antler said:

X-Boxes still need updates - every now and then when you turn it on you have the choice to either update, or stay offline. Never had a PlayStation, but I guess they're the same.

Yes and it takes forever. I recently replaced the power supply in his Xbox. It actually went pretty smooth.

Rocky

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23 minutes ago, bluzdog said:

I pushed my price point some and I'm considering this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-2tb-hdd-512gb-ssd-black/6401068.p?skuId=6401068

It checks most of the boxes and should be future proof for some time. What do you guys think?

Rocky

Looks great, if you can get it. Stock seems to be a bit of a problem these days everywhere. I just tried to get some balanced cables at my local G.C.. None in stock. Had to order them on Amazon.

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3 hours ago, bluzdog said:

I pushed my price point some and I'm considering this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-2tb-hdd-512gb-ssd-black/6401068.p?skuId=6401068

It checks most of the boxes and should be future proof for some time. What do you guys think?

Rocky

Looks great. The 2080 Super is great card. It's going for a pretty penny on ebay. If it's available I say get it.

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7 hours ago, bluzdog said:

I pushed my price point some and I'm considering this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-2tb-hdd-512gb-ssd-black/6401068.p?skuId=6401068

It checks most of the boxes and should be future proof for some time. What do you guys think?

Rocky

 

3 hours ago, hillyard said:

Looks great. The 2080 Super is great card. It's going for a pretty penny on ebay. If it's available I say get it.

 

Agreed.

That card would be great for a while.

If he is gaming at 1080 he could have all the eye candy he wants. IOW, all graphic settings turned up all the way!!

Also that CPU ain't no slouch!!

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8 hours ago, bluzdog said:

I pushed my price point some and I'm considering this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-2tb-hdd-512gb-ssd-black/6401068.p?skuId=6401068

It checks most of the boxes and should be future proof for some time. What do you guys think?

Rocky

Silly question I know, but you do have a good monitor to go with that beast, don't you?

Fancy graphics mean nothing without a fancy monitor....and keyboard....and ergo-mouse.....etc...

Oh, what have you let yourself in for? :D

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14 hours ago, Shane_B. said:

Do you mean GTX 1060 video card? I've been watching those waiting for the price to go down but it keeps going up. :( They started out around $275 used 2 months ago now the lowest I've seen them is on eBay for $300 Buy It Now including shipping. They usually sell for more after shipping when people bid on them. That's a 5 year old video card. It's crazy.

Yes, I mean GTX 1060. It's a strange situation but I saw them last year going down to around 120 dollars. Still ebay is the typical opportunist haven, so the prices there are unfair and unrealistic, but local facebook groups or sites are a better bet.

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1 hour ago, Finnbogi Ragnar Ragnarsson said:

It's a strange situation but I saw them last year going down to around 120 dollars. Still ebay is the typical opportunist haven, so the prices there are unfair and unrealistic, but local facebook groups or sites are a better bet.

There was a massive rush this holiday season (along with Covid).

Almost impossible to find higher-end video cards (and power-supplies) actually in-stock.

Huge demand and almost no supply results in unusually high cost.

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15 hours ago, bluzdog said:

I pushed my price point some and I'm considering this: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i7-9700k-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2080-super-2tb-hdd-512gb-ssd-black/6401068.p?skuId=6401068

It checks most of the boxes and should be future proof for some time. What do you guys think?

Rocky

That should do it. The specs look great!

But one thing to be aware of with that PC, it's using a small form factor motherboard, so there won't be a lot of future proofing as far as upgrades in the case go. And the full sized RTX2080 will be taking up most of the PCIe room inside. But that's probably not going to be an issue, as it has high enough specs that it should have a good usable lifetime, as is.

So just a couple of observations...

The 16GB RAM is on a singe stick, so it's not dual channel, unless you add RAM. That cuts the memory bandwidth in half.

The 2TB hard drive is a spinner, so unless you load all the games on the 500GB SSD, they might load slowly.

Edited by abacab
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13 hours ago, 53mph said:

Silly question I know, but you do have a good monitor to go with that beast, don't you?

Fancy graphics mean nothing without a fancy monitor....and keyboard....and ergo-mouse.....etc...

Oh, what have you let yourself in for? :D

I have a monitor but it's not 4k . I may revisit that down the road, for now he should be set.

Rocky

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