Hello all, I’m considering fully switching from console gaming to PC gaming. I have an outdated PC a friend helped me build from exactly 10 years ago, and it has never been upgraded. I currently have a Nintendo Switch and Xbox (360, One, and most recently Series X). I did this mainly because I liked physical games, such that I have kept boxes, manuals, and discs for my games. However, I have been getting more and more frustrated with console gaming as the years progress and am thinking of switching to fully PC, including emulation up to Switch of older game systems. I know nothing about building a PC, the one I had in college was for games technically but was not top of the line even then, and I mostly used it for torrenting, CAD modeling, and old emulation (up to Nintendo 64 at the time). I’m thinking of transitioning that fully to a NAS if possible as I build out my media library, and build a new one from scratch for gaming. Any advice on what a price range would be and components to look for would be appreciated! I see secondhand builds on Facebook marketplace or similar but don’t have a good feel for if they are even good deals or not. For what it’s worth, I will probably need new everything (hardware, case, and peripherals like mouse, keyboard, and monitors). So, if anyone could help guide to me what a good price I should be expecting would be and some benchmark specifications that I could keep an eye out, that would be lovely.
Edit: for what it’s worth, I generally play games a few years after release when they go on sale, unless they came up on Xbox game pass or I received it as a gift to play. Additionally, I had an Oculus Rift hooked up to my PC but it struggled with many things on it, so I plan to upgrade that at some point with maybe the Valve Index system. That doesn’t need to be an immediate buy as I’d rather my money go into the computer hardware itself first.
You can build a fabulous PC for not much, but you can also end up feeling disappointed for a few times more. It’s about expectations and targets.
What resolution gaming are you trying to do? Are you wanting insane frame rates or is 60fps enough? There’s a huge difference between 60fps 1080p and 120fps 4k. Since you mentioned PC VR, the target is really high as it’s usually rendering higher than 4k, and smooth, high FPS is critical. You may still want more than a 4080 can give you in some games.
I just built a PC for my nephew, he got my old 2080 (used cost is $200-$300), and some mid-tier AM5 combo deal from Microcenter. He’s super happy with it because it does what he wanted it to do. I helped him keep his expectations within his budget, critically an entry level 1080p gaming monitor as he wanted to get high FPS on Valorant.
I think 60fps would be fine, but like I said I can always upgrade later to include VR as there is no immediacy. When you say huge difference, I assume you mean huge price difference between those correct?
At minimum, I would like it to be at least as good as my current gaming ecosystems on consoles are, which I imagine is fairly cheap. However, I am willing to go higher to future proof myself as I don’t want to spend $500+ each year just to keep top of the line parts in the system. Someone mentioned around $1500 which seems reasonable at this time, especially because I plan to sell off my existing consoles and games to help offset the cost.
Right, huge price difference. Performance isn’t totally linear like this, but it’s still helpful to think of it in terms of pixels and fps. 4k is for times the pixels of 1080p, 120fps is twice the frames. So to go from smooth 1080p 60fps to smooth 4k 120fps you need 16 times more graphics power.
Your screen resolution and fps goals (capped by your screen’s refresh rate) are something you want to nail down. I think the jump to OLED 120hz or higher screen is better than 4k partly because getting high fps out of 4k is much harder.
A $1500 budget can go a long way. Don’t think about future proof, think about meeting your goals in games today, whatever you build will be fine for 8 years as long as your standards don’t change. Outside of pushing 4k and high fps, graphics demands have plateaued compared to 10+ years ago. Ray tracing was the last big wow, and AI processing in the pipeline has done wonders at improving performance. I don’t see the value of a motherboard that costs more than $200, and the best value CPU for gaming is the 7800x3d which is $400 when not on sale. You don’t need more than 32gb of RAM, decent kit is about $100. Cases are looks subjective, airflow objective, runs $30 to $150, up to crazy high for gamerz styles. Any PSU over $100 is a waste of money, even driving a 4080 super. For storage get a well rated NVME within your capacity goals, $100 gets you a good brand with decent space. That would leave $500 for a graphics card, buying new won’t get you top of the line, but you could get last generation’s best with that. If you live near a Microcenter and can wait for a good bundle, you can save a few hundred. Sorry for ballparking, writing from my phone. Use pcpartpicker and have fun with it.
No need to apologize, this was very helpful! Someone near me is selling a PC with the following specs.: “NVIDIA GeForce 4060 Ti - 16 Gb ram- 2tb Ssd - AMD Ryzen 7 5700 comes with 2 165 hz monitors , audio technica mic , mouse and key board and headphones .” For $650, it seems like a good deal. Would you agree with that?
That’s a great deal with all those accessories. You can price all the other stuff new. None of these things degrade really, so functionality will be identical to new.
Only downside if you’re looking for one is the AM4 platform is done. Basically that’s a computer anyone would have recommended you buy 3 years ago new for what you’re budgeting, minus a few hundred for a mid range GPU. If the keyboard, mouse, and headphones are quality you’re getting a steal for someone in your position.
Okay great! That’s good to hear. I reached out to them to say I was interested. I can upgrade that platform at a later date if needed, right? But it should last me a while.
Yeah, upgrading the platform means Motherboard, RAM, and CPU. You’d be upgrading your GPU before then though. Don’t sweat it.
You can build an entry level PC (all new parts) for about 600 USD. That will play most games at decent frame rates at 1080p. From there there’s almost no upper limit. So it’s best to first set your budget and then see what you can get for that. I’d recommend budgeting at least 1000-1500 USD, if that’s possible. That should buy you something pretty decent.
I think that budget sounds reasonable. What does that extra amount get me if the entry level is already playing most games?
Higher frame rates and higher resolutions and better settings. The better your machine, the higher settings you can use, which looks nicer. For $1000-1500 you should be able to go up to 1440p. It depends on what kinds of games you play. If you play competitive shooters, a higher frame rate will be a real advantage. For pretty much everything else it’s all about the eye candy.
Edit: here’s a video with a few build examples. This channel is pretty good for choosing components to get the best performance for your money.
Thank you! I almost exclusively play single player games. Some recent favorites were Elden Ring, Lies of P, Super Mario Wonder, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. How intensive is Nintendo Switch emulation? I imagine it’s taxing on the machine but I’m not sure how intensive to get decent performance.
Switch emulation seems rather easy these days and any entry level machine should do it just fine. I don’t have any experience in that, though. Elden Ring and the like will definitely benefit from a more powerful machine. I’d recommend at least an RX 7700 XT or RX 7800 XT and pick the rest of the components to go with that.
It’s not a question of price range, it’s a question of budget. You can do all of those things on a few hundred dollar PC, or you could get all that and more, and a separate NAS or server for as much as you want to spend.
pcpartpicker has some community builds that can give you an idea of cost, value, and performance.
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/
AMD GPUs are better on Linux than Nvidia, if that’s important to you (which it should be). I’ve made nv work through the years but it is not for beginners.
Can you expand on this please? I am on Tumbleweed and just install the nvidia driver and have never had any issues. I go full AMD otherwise but in the land of old crap where I live, I pick up things like used 1060s for cheap.
It’s mostly kernel upgrades that can be a problem. If you stick to the repo, you will generally be fine. If you need a specific version of CUDA, or a feature that’s only in the newest driver release, you’ll have to build the kernel module yourself. It’s not a huge deal after you learn how it works but you’re almost guaranteed to break it at some point and then you’re on the command line. If that scares you, go AMD.
I was considering Linux but I don’t think I’d use it daily for gaming. I am interested in using Playnite which I believe is Windows only for my main games launcher.
Fyi an alternative to Playnite with a similar goal is Lutris. You can even integrate several platforms like Steam and GOG to download games directly through the Lutris interface.
On top of that, it’s super easy to install games via exe’s, custom install scripts, add existing install folders, etc. The UI is a little bit spartan compared to Playnite, but it’s very powerful.
I say this because, among other things, a huge benefit of Linux is that it’s great for older hardware. From the sounds of it, you aren’t looking for the latest and greatest in terms of build specs, so Linux may be right up your alley (also no built in spyware, ads, forced online connections, and resource hogging processes that can’t be disabled).
Yeah I have been considering switching to Linux at home, if nothing else other than to be familiar with multiple OS styles (I use Windows for work, and used MacOS in college). Do you know if Lutris have an ability to integrate some achievement unlocking ability/tracker? Additionally, do you suggest an OS/desktop environment to setup?
I think you may be out of luck with a built in achievement tracker unfortunately, although I personally haven’t looked into it. I’ve never been a big achievement hunter, but I’m sure there are external Linux compatible tools for tracking such things.
As for recommendations, you’re going to see a million names thrown around. As a broad suggestion, I might start with something based on Debian (tried and true, tons of resources, huge community). Maybe Pop! Or Mint. There are purpose built gaming distros with more tools and optimizations out of the box, however these are often small projects with shorter histories so I’m hesitant to recommend them.
As for desktop environment, it depends on what you want. KDE is my go to. By default it handles very similarly to Windows, but it’s incredibly customizable so you can really set it up however you want. KDE also has basic HDR support, which can’t really be found elsewhere. Gnome is a little more MacOS like, but it’s really its own beast. Gnome is great if you leave it default but I think it sort of falls apart when you try to customize it.
Also, if you do decide to go with Linux, I emplore you to look at getting an AMD graphics card. Their drivers are built into the Linux kernel so they require little to no setup, and usually perform better than NVidia. NVidia cards often have niche, hard to solve issues (speaking from experience. I spent a few years with a GTX1080 and often had the strangest bugs that I just couldn’t solve. Switched to an RX7600XT and everything just works). As a bonus, AMD is also usually cheaper than NVidia.
Those are all good reasons for AMD, and cheaper is always a good thing to hear! That’s a shame about the achievement tracking, I enjoy having it on Xbox and retro achievements. If this is only going to be used for gaming (probably 95%+ of the time), then I don’t mind setting it up and not really digging too far into customization as long as it’s functional. I’ll use some web browsing with Firefox, and maybe some small uses of gimp but otherwise I don’t foresee much else as the other PC will be dedicated to torrenting/jellyfin server. Thanks for the recommendations! AMD for graphics card, but does it matter for CPU or other hardware?
I’m biased towards AMD in general, I just find them to be a slightly better value, but Intel CPUs are great too, and I don’t think they have any noticable issus on Linux.
As for other hardware, it depends. Just make sure to do a bit of research and compare multiple options, especially for something like the storage, motherboard, RAM, or power supply. It’s usually pretty easy to sus out which brands are trying to catch your eye with low prices and tons of RGB, and which brands are offering a great product (I will suggest Seasonic for a power supply. They aren’t the cheapest but the build quality is excellent).
