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 Post subject: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 7:08 pm 
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So, my son is 14 years old in 3 days.

He basically lives in front of a screen, despite my pleas. He loves gaming. Plays lots of Fortnite, and I will have to ask about specific others if it makes a difference.

Wants to build a desktop gaming system, and is willing to sell his PS4 to get it. I would like to keep that in house so I can play a game now and then.

If you are replacing a gaming system or have recommendations, please let me know. It will be a budget build .. no need to price keyboards or mice.

Approx. budget $400. I have one good monitor (was back in the day, likely no longer good).

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 8:33 pm 
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Some of what he is looking at ..

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor

ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING K4 ATX AM4 Motherboard

Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory

Patriot Scorch 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5 80 4gb

Deepcool MATREXX 50 ATX Mid Tower Case

EVGA Super Nova G+ 650

~~~~~

AOC C24G1 24" Curved Frameless Gaming Monitor

~~~~~

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Thu Jan 23, 2020 12:10 am 
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Hey Now Fubar!

I took a look at what your son is looking at and input the items into one of my favorite sites: https://pcpartpicker.com/ in order to see if there may be any hardware conflicts as well as check on pricing.
You stated in your first post that the budget is $400, however what he is looking at is going to run over $800 to get what he wants as well as getting things he did not account for (cpu cooler, OS, thermal paste) also, he may or may not need an optical drive depending on how he plans to install the OS onto the drive. Now, I did not see any hardware issues, but as of right now, the site states that this build (I did add the cpu cooler (picked for being well reviewed as well as being pretty silent), Win10 Home, and thermal paste) and it sits at: $886.34.

Now, there are other options you CAN look at.

I usually watch a LOT of Youtube and one of my favorites is Linus Tech Tips, this vid covers budget gaming PCs with one build being under $300 and another ~$500. I would recommend the $500 build for the better performance as well as the SSD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfcschg9uwU

Also, there are other youtubers with their own budget PC builds and I recommend you look at those as well as it may give you some ideas.

Lastly, if you do NOT want to build a PC, then I would recommend woot.com or amazon.com. Frequently, Woot.com will have gaming PCs for sale from pre-built suppliers such as ibuypower or cyberpowerpc. This is the route I went with my boys (19 and 14). I waited for a decent deal to show up on amazon, my budget was ~$1000 for their PC, and ended up getting a decent system for ~$700, which I then upgraded with better GPU and PSU. About 1 year later I doubled the memory from 8 GB to 16 GB and now they game pretty much any game at high level graphics with little to complain about.


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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Thu Jan 23, 2020 7:31 am 
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Hey Now Jinx!

Thanks for the input and thoughts. I will look it over. I asked about a pre-built but he wants to build. He may be able to keep selling things off to get to the price range you mentioned for the original build, but we shall see.

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Thu Jan 23, 2020 12:22 pm 
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My kid is now 16. At 14 I intended to build but couldn't do it for the price of a comparable pre-built. Be sure you can run VR in the near future.

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 7:32 pm 
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You could drop the wattage of the power supply down to 550W and save some bucks. I'm running a Ryzen 7 2700, 32GB RAM, same model motherboard, similar SSD and I think a stronger video card on a 550W psu without any problems. The Ryzens are low power chips iirc.

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:05 pm 
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something I always preached back in the day and still do is if you are looking for a system that is $700 or less its usually better to get a pre-built as companies like HP, Dell buy in such bulk they are able to keep cost down. With that said there are 2 main reason why people like us like to build a rig and that is you get more power for your dollar but also the avg life span of a rig you build above the $700 budget is much longer then that if pre-builts as you can more easily upgrade the various parts as long as you have a strong foundation to build off of i.e the motherboard.

the good news though is pre built computers that are ok from gaming (nothing to hardcore) have gotten better and cheaper to get thanks to SSD and M2 drives getting cheaper and Ryzen cpu's being cheaper then the Intels and the avg person going more to laptops these companies are trying to better stay competitive by grabbing gamers to buy their desktop computers.

IMO if your son is dead set on build his own rig I would wait till you have more money( preferably $1000 at least) this way you can be better set for the next 5 year with really only having to worry about the video card at most vs trying to build something less the $700 he might be left a little disappointed of the life span will be short lived

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:14 pm 
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I know I posted a little late but if you are still working on this I may have a HT Omega Claro sound card that is PCI im looking to part with if interested

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 Post subject: Re: Gaming Desktop for Son - 14 yrs
PostPosted: Wed Feb 19, 2020 7:40 am 
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Sorry Matrix .. didn't get notified of some of these responses.

Anyway, he has completed his build by reaching into my empty lint lined pockets.

Seems to working well and he did like Apple .. no cd drive .. just USB and download.

Thank you for the input. And he wanted to build instead of buy, but I think buying is probably the better way to go.

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