PC gaming for noobs

[techno 3,511]

As my daughter is hopefully leaving home for good this year I have a spare room. This room used to be a place where my weights and other assorted shit lived in my house, that is not going to happen again.

Due to covid stopping me spending cash on fun I've now got some money to finally waste on PC gaming, something I've thought about in the past but ultimately dismissed. This is possibly largely to do with not wanting to waste a significantly sum of money( though that's been happening throughout my life especially at various sex shops due to being married but that's a different post altogether 😉) so PC gaming for noobs any help/advice is welcome because I know jack shit. It's not something I need to rush into and with covid I hear hardware is still hard to get. I've looked into furniture as I want a space for myself as the wife has decided my usual gaming space, our front room is her office. I will when they are available add a ps5  as well. 

So publications,.websites and general things to consider all will give me something more interesting to look at than actually doing work at work. 

Oh I will also want it for other computer type stuff, no not porn🙄 but my photography shit which will be one of my other pastimes that gets some love this year.

Thanks in advance. 🤔

[RenFengge 1,043]

Easiest recommendation on gaming chair? SecretLab

 

For PC? Are you doing a pre-build or you building yourself? I no longer build myself because it's not cost effective enough to warrant it. If I'm going to drop $2k on components, I want a service and warranty.

 

Also, going to PC build companies tend to get you the scarce components that are eaten up by bots.. like the GPUs.

[J4MES OX4D 10,064]

A good starting point is your budget - that should enable us to point you in the right direction and we'll go from there.

[techno 3,511]

45 minutes ago, J4MES OX4D said:

A good starting point is your budget - that should enable us to point you in the right direction and we'll go from there.

Having spoken briefly to @Diddums he suggested at least £1500 which is the ball park I was in.

 

@RenFengge  as I have no clue I was thinking I need someone to build as I'd guess you don't want to go pre-built

 

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,453]

Spend the bulk of your budget for the PC on the GPU for gaming.  Then, spend a hefty amount on the CPU, that will help with gaming and your photography.

 

 

 

[Plumbers Crack 4,072]

12 minutes ago, techno said:

Having spoken briefly to @Diddums he suggested at least £1500 which is the ball park I was in.

 

 

Does that include monitor, keyboard and mouse? With photography (depending on the level you want to work at) monitor can be critical

[techno 3,511]

5 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

Does that include monitor, keyboard and mouse? With photography (depending on the level you want to work at) monitor can be critical

That's what dids said but it's not a rigid budget 

[RenFengge 1,043]

33 minutes ago, techno said:

Having spoken briefly to @Diddums he suggested at least £1500 which is the ball park I was in.

 

@RenFengge  as I have no clue I was thinking I need someone to build as I'd guess you don't want to go pre-built

 

When I mean "pre-build" i mean like getting it from a PC builder. Here in the US, I bought my laptop from Maingear. My desktop is coming from Xidax. You can customize your build with them down to the thermal paste... and get service and a warranty.

 

I think one of the builders you have in the UK is ChillBlast? I would try going to a PC builder and discussing what you need with them. If you're concerned about upsell, I think there's plenty in the clan who would review the specs for you. My rule of thumb when I look into building a PC is that I do not cheap out on the stuff that is difficult or time consuming to replace (motherboard, GPU, CPU). I'll save coin on going from 64GB ram to 32GB ram knowing that I can add ram later. I'll save a bit on the hard drive from the builder since that's a relatively easy swap later or I can add storage space as needed. Power supply doesn't have to be the most watts initially. Again, something easy to upgrade. If you're going to overclock, then get the better thermal paste if it's an option. If you're not, then don't waste your $$ on it... even if it is like a few dollars more.

 

However, in my experience of graphic arts, gaming, and such for computers, you're going to want a powerful GPU and CPU.

 

Monitor quality is going to be super important for your photography if you are hoping for super accurate colors during editing. Calibrating your monitor is a whole other discussion.

 

I know you said about looking at resources to go through for researching this? I skim pcmag and tomshardware. I tend to read a little in PCGamer. But, I do take all that information from everywhere on the web and basically bounce thoughts off others in like Reddit.

 

£1500 is a great starting point budget for a PC. You will get something very kick-ass in that range.

[techno 3,511]

8 minutes ago, RenFengge said:

When I mean "pre-build" i mean like getting it from a PC builder. Here in the US, I bought my laptop from Maingear. My desktop is coming from Xidax. You can customize your build with them down to the thermal paste... and get service and a warranty.

 

I think one of the builders you have in the UK is ChillBlast? I would try going to a PC builder and discussing what you need with them. If you're concerned about upsell, I think there's plenty in the clan who would review the specs for you. My rule of thumb when I look into building a PC is that I do not cheap out on the stuff that is difficult or time consuming to replace (motherboard, GPU, CPU). I'll save coin on going from 64GB ram to 32GB ram knowing that I can add ram later. I'll save a bit on the hard drive from the builder since that's a relatively easy swap later or I can add storage space as needed. Power supply doesn't have to be the most watts initially. Again, something easy to upgrade. If you're going to overclock, then get the better thermal paste if it's an option. If you're not, then don't waste your $$ on it... even if it is like a few dollars more.

 

However, in my experience of graphic arts, gaming, and such for computers, you're going to want a powerful GPU and CPU.

 

Monitor quality is going to be super important for your photography if you are hoping for super accurate colors during editing. Calibrating your monitor is a whole other discussion.

 

I know you said about looking at resources to go through for researching this? I skim pcmag and tomshardware. I tend to read a little in PCGamer. But, I do take all that information from everywhere on the web and basically bounce thoughts off others in like Reddit.

 

£1500 is a great starting point budget for a PC. You will get something very kick-ass in that range.

Wow 👍

[Plumbers Crack 4,072]

I’ve been reading Custom PC recently which is a pretty decent mag. Got a year’s subscription as a Christmas present 

[phil bottle 9,845]

FG has form for building our own machines so I will encourage that😁

 

My advice is to first decide what display you want, 1080p, 1440p or 4K. That will determine which GPU to go for.

 

Personally I'd go for 1440p. It's the sweet spot between lovely graphics and high frames. There's some good GPUs that will give 1440 and all the fps, that won't destroy your wallet.

 

Then we need to decide AMD or Intel.

 

@Diddumswill be better suited for that advice as I'm Intel only.

[J4MES OX4D 10,064]

17 hours ago, techno said:

Having spoken briefly to @Diddums he suggested at least £1500 which is the ball park I was in.

£1500 is a decent budget - a rig with a 3070 would be a fantastic entry point and it'll already get you ahead of the PS5 for the entire generation. This could handle 1440p like butter and would be great for 4K gaming for years to come. Trouble is you'd probably need another £500 on the side for peripherals and a monitor.

 

If you aim to spend £1000 on the device and £500 on the side, you'll probably restrict yourself to 2K gaming and then have a pricey upgrade route going forward if you wish. It will be perfectly satisfactory though and still offer a great gaming experience but for just a few hundred more, you could literally put yourself in the high-end gaming bracket and get the best out of what is technically possible. 

 

It's a great time right now to be getting a new PC and there are some excellent pre-built devices available in the UK at exceptional prices. 2K would offer the best value and see you comfortable for many years and with a 3070, you'd get all the extra visual effects. 4K would be more demanding as time wears on but right now, a card like that should be comfortable at maxing out games at 60fps. 

[Plumbers Crack 4,072]

That’s a good shout James except......

 

19 hours ago, J4MES OX4D said:

It's a great time right now to be getting a new PC and there are some excellent pre-built devices available in the UK at exceptional prices. 

....You can’t get 30xx cards for love nor money and the same is generally true about the new gen CPU ranges. I’ve looked at pre-builts recently as there were rumours system builders were getting first dibs of the new gear but even they are say you can order but you’re in a queue on a “first come,first served “ basis 
 

I think you’ll need to be patient like me Gazz and use the time for research. Hopefully prices and availability will normalise in say 3 months

[techno 3,511]

2 hours ago, Plumbers Crack said:

That’s a good shout James except......

 

....You can’t get 30xx cards for love nor money and the same is generally true about the new gen CPU ranges. I’ve looked at pre-builts recently as there were rumours system builders were getting first dibs of the new gear but even they are say you can order but you’re in a queue on a “first come,first served “ basis 
 

I think you’ll need to be patient like me Gazz and use the time for research. Hopefully prices and availability will normalise in say 3 months

Oh one thing this thread has shown me is I know less than nothing😂

I'm seriously in no rush 

[The3rdWalker 1,274]

Please do not buy a gaming chair. Go to an office store and buy a good ergonomic chair. It will be more than half the price of a 'gamer chair'.

[J4MES OX4D 10,064]

29 minutes ago, The3rdWalker said:

Please do not buy a gaming chair. Go to an office store and buy a good ergonomic chair. It will be more than half the price of a 'gamer chair'.

Yeah, most gaming chairs are usually poorly designed from an ergonomic standpoint, needlessly over-engineered and stupidly expensive. Many tend to go out and blindly buy one just by its looks, brand or because their fayvorwit khantent creator has one (probably given to them along with a pile of cash) which is silly. All of my chairs have been office ones and they have all been comfy and not too expensive - £40-70 range. My mate paid £379.99 for his a few years back and I struggled to find one justification for it costing that much. 

[techno 3,511]

1 hour ago, The3rdWalker said:

Please do not buy a gaming chair. Go to an office store and buy a good ergonomic chair. It will be more than half the price of a 'gamer chair'.

I'd already decided to do this tbh, I want something that's suitable for both gaming and relaxing in. I'd also ended up on a site that sells reconditioned ejector seats from f4 phantoms😳

[Plumbers Crack 4,072]

I have an admittedly over engineered gaming chair (Noble Hero for height not weight), yes it was expensive but, with all the other PC stuff I do for bowls, part time work, etc I reckon I'm in it 5 - 6+ hours a day during autumn/winter and I think it's great. I never ache when I'm finished. Had it coming up for eighteen months and no cushion sag so far. Very pleased with it

[Greboth 2,721]

Always good to welcome more to the PC gaming 🙂 I'd disagree with Ren though about going prebuilt, while there is more hassle in building your own at your budget I'm almost certain it will be cheaper (or a better spec) and the warranty on individual parts is usually equal or longer to that offered by system builders.

 

GPU - Parts are a pain at the moment but as James said an RTX3070 (or AMD 6800, maybe 6700 depending on benchmarks) at minimum should see you sorted for a good few years.  Obviously if you want to splash the cash there's always a 3080 too.

 

Or even simpler - buy the highest card up this list as your budget allows; https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

 

CPU - To disagree with Phil here, I think this is AMD all the way.  The Ryzen 5000 series CPU's beat Intel in everything so that's what I'd be looking at.  The numbering scheme is pretty simple; for your budget buy the highest number you can.

 

Or, again, simpler - buy the highest CPU up this list as your budget allows; https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html

 

Motherboard - will depend on which CPU you go for though I'd be aiming for middle of the road on price here.  Top end has everything typically but is overkill unless you're pushing voltages and overclocks etc.  The cheap end tend to use not so great caps and vrm's and some with no coolers on them either.  Basically after that you're just looking to make sure they have the features you want (enough sata ports for however many drives you want, 3 or 6 audio jacks or optical, enough usb ports etc.)

 

RAM - 16Gb 3200Mhz still seems to the be sweet sport for price and performance.  16Gb is the minimum I'd recommend but should see you good for a few years and somewhere you can save some £ now as it's easy enough to add another 16Gb in a few years if you find you need it.

 

Power Supply / PSU - 650W should be enough though I'd probably say go for 750W as you'd be in a more efficient range of the PSU.  PSU's are a pain though as every brand has good and bad ones, Corsair, SuperFlower and Seasonic generally fair the best but not all their PSU's are good.  Find a few in your budget and google for reviews, there's usually full teardown reviews of them and it should let you know if it that model is a good one or not.

 

Storage - NVMe for Windows, 500Gb as an absolute minimum but 1tb would be better.  After that, it depends what you want to store and how much. 

 

Case - This will depend on where you want to put it though other factors to consider are to make sure it can fit your motherboard size (itx, m-atx, atx or e-atx - the motherboard listing will tell you).  After that it's just down to how many drives you want, front panel usb's etc.  Some cases come with front panel card readers which can be useful as it saves digging out cables camera's all the time.  The final thing to consider is CPU cooling - depending on the route you choose you need to make sure it will fit.  Almost all cases will list maximum height for air cooler and fan/radiator support for AIO liquid coolers.

 

Monitor - As already said 1440p is the sweet spot still.  4k is still a bit out of reach for gaming at good refresh rates but 1440p isn't plus it's a nice resolution bump over 1080p.  If you want it for photography, I'd look at one with good colour accuracy which generally speaking means an IPS monitor.  However there are good TN and VA panels too so similar to PSU's this will be best done by googling for review of specific monitors.

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,453]

Damn, Greboth... you need to post this up as a guide somewhere.  I agree with every word you said.  Great post.  

[phil bottle 9,845]

9 hours ago, BO7H B4RRELS said:

Damn, Greboth... you need to post this up as a guide somewhere.  I agree with every word you said.  Great post.  

He's a disagreeable cunt, don't encourage him 😁

[GazzaGarratt 11,069]

On 1/2/2021 at 6:14 PM, RenFengge said:

Easiest recommendation on gaming chair? SecretLab

 

13 hours ago, The3rdWalker said:

Please do not buy a gaming chair. Go to an office store and buy a good ergonomic chair. It will be more than half the price of a 'gamer chair'.

 

Good to have opinions on this and great to see so much advice. If my 2p is worth anything, I have a Secret Lab chair and if you can afford one, then i'd always say buy one. I think its similar to having Astros as a headset over a cheaper version. Both do the same job but this chair has helped me no end, especially now I live in it every day for 12ish hours at least a day in lockdown.

 

 

As we seem to have a bit of time here as i'm sure Gaz will be delighted about 😄 from a dummy to another dummy when it comes to this stuff around the highly tech guys and girls, we should make this as simple as possible. A self build I think is the way forward because it helps you learn as you go along. All it is, is a fairly simple jigsaw, and something that could be walked through on video. What helped right at the start though was - what pieces do I need! I think @Greboth pulls this out the most so Gary can see what he needs so he can learn along the way. Can someone check the list i've took from Greebs post and add to it where possible please? I've added Keyboard and Mouse which were missing at first glance.

 

1. GPU / Video Card
2. CPU
3. CPU Cooler (Optional but you might as well)
4. Motherboard
5. RAM / Memory
6. Power Supply /PSU
7. Storage - SSD
8. Storage - Internal Hard Drive
9. Case
10. Monitor
11. Keyboard
12. Mouse
13. Operating System
14. Chair (Optional like opening reply)

 

@techno  be super clear on the budget because now you know your money needs to cover these 13 must-have items above. Its then putting 12 of those items into the Case (13th item). I apologise if i'm sounding like i'm making you suck eggs but i'm dumming it down to how I told myself because I just turned myself off all things PC for years I hadn't pretty much forgotten everything I knew (which was very little compared to these guys anyway).

 

The budget then should be like how @J4MES OX4D  said. Minimum spend with a max you'd go up to. Make the objectives real. You want for officey stuff and photography and then I imagine some hard working games we all commonly play, right? If so, then I'm sure the others here will take your list and do a PC Part Picker List so you can start seeing what each part costs, lowest price today and where to buy them from.

 

Once you get there, then its all about next steps of building it which i'm sure we can all work out together with you. But let's take one step at a time i'd say 😄 Great to see you making the jump though, one of the best things I did in recent years!

[techno 3,511]

1 hour ago, GazzaGarratt said:

 

 

Good to have opinions on this and great to see so much advice. If my 2p is worth anything, I have a Secret Lab chair and if you can afford one, then i'd always say buy one. I think its similar to having Astros as a headset over a cheaper version. Both do the same job but this chair has helped me no end, especially now I live in it every day for 12ish hours at least a day in lockdown.

 

 

As we seem to have a bit of time here as i'm sure Gaz will be delighted about 😄 from a dummy to another dummy when it comes to this stuff around the highly tech guys and girls, we should make this as simple as possible. A self build I think is the way forward because it helps you learn as you go along. All it is, is a fairly simple jigsaw, and something that could be walked through on video. What helped right at the start though was - what pieces do I need! I think @Greboth pulls this out the most so Gary can see what he needs so he can learn along the way. Can someone check the list i've took from Greebs post and add to it where possible please? I've added Keyboard and Mouse which were missing at first glance.

 

1. GPU / Video Card
2. CPU
3. CPU Cooler (Optional but you might as well)
4. Motherboard
5. RAM / Memory
6. Power Supply /PSU
7. Storage - SSD
8. Storage - Internal Hard Drive
9. Case
10. Monitor
11. Keyboard
12. Mouse
13. Operating System
14. Chair (Optional like opening reply)

 

@techno  be super clear on the budget because now you know your money needs to cover these 13 must-have items above. Its then putting 12 of those items into the Case (13th item). I apologise if i'm sounding like i'm making you suck eggs but i'm dumming it down to how I told myself because I just turned myself off all things PC for years I hadn't pretty much forgotten everything I knew (which was very little compared to these guys anyway).

 

The budget then should be like how @J4MES OX4D  said. Minimum spend with a max you'd go up to. Make the objectives real. You want for officey stuff and photography and then I imagine some hard working games we all commonly play, right? If so, then I'm sure the others here will take your list and do a PC Part Picker List so you can start seeing what each part costs, lowest price today and where to buy them from.

 

Once you get there, then its all about next steps of building it which i'm sure we can all work out together with you. But let's take one step at a time i'd say 😄 Great to see you making the jump though, one of the best things I did in recent years!

No apology needed Im at the stage where I haven't even bought the eggs that require sucking so your post is very helpful and saved me the time of piecing an actual list together. 

I also took a quick look through the links @Greboth posted.

Thanks for the suggestion of putting a post up its definitely opened my eyes to what's involved and provided me with a definite learning opportunity.

 

[RenFengge 1,043]

18 hours ago, The3rdWalker said:

Please do not buy a gaming chair. Go to an office store and buy a good ergonomic chair. It will be more than half the price of a 'gamer chair'.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... The chair I have from SecretLab is comparable in price to what's in office stores... with a better build quality and more comfortable.

 

I've gone through so.many.office chairs between home and work. This is so ergonomic and comfortable. I think the gaming chair will need to depend on the quality and consideration. For example, SecretLab takes into account your height and weight. My chair is different that @TurboR56Mini 's chair. It makes a huge difference.

[Plumbers Crack 4,072]

Gary, please ignore one piece of Lee's advice.....do NOT try and put the monitor, keyboard and mouse inside the case, it'll make using the system a bit difficult and you might have trouble getting the side panels back on! 🤣