Gaming PC help for a clueless father!

[Snowy90]

My lad (28) is still into PC gaming, also from age 12 & must have spent a fortune on it over the last 10+ years...
His current setup consumes about 1Kw per hour when running in play mode
- and as he works from home thats about 18hours a day... Keeps the room quite warm.
Its water cooled but in the summer, needs a room fan running too!
At least he's worked from age 16, so specifies and pays for it all himself.

Good on him, he works to support his hobby/passion, i wouldnt want to add up what i have spent in the garage! But it keeps us sane.

 

[Joe 90]

If looking to spend money. I'd be looking at steering wheels etc and build him a racing simulator. A recaro seat in a frame with feed back steering, wire in your own hand brake and if that's not enough I'd go down the virtual reality route. Take a look at some of the builds on you tube and what you can do.
And if you sell it on you'll still get good money.

 

[Snowy90]

Xbox ps5 etc will hold their value and after 3 years you'll find you'll sell it at Christmas with a few games and get a lot of it back. The ps5 now new is £450 and you'll find in 3 years it'll still be the same price new and that's the reason it'll still be worth plenty second hand. Where as your gaming pc will be out of date.
I dont get spending thousands and always upgrading.
Your console will work out costing about £50 a year.
For the 2 games he mostly plays it would be madness.
My youngsters play them games on the console and its perfect. I dont see why you need more.

I am in complete agreement, whilst might be 2 year old tech it does exactly what he needs just maybe not what he wants.

 

[Snowy90]

If looking to spend money. I'd be looking at steering wheels etc and build him a racing simulator. A recaro seat in a frame with feed back steering, wire in your own hand brake and if that's not enough I'd go down the virtual reality route. Take a look at some of the builds on you tube and what you can do.
And if you sell it on you'll still get good money
But throwing money at pcs I just don't get.

This is right up my street! Part of my hobby is turning old race car body panels into stuff he would love this.
Only thing is with gaming chair desk and other stuff we would need a bigger house!
But i love the idea

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Xbox ps5 etc will hold their value and after 3 years you'll find you'll sell it at Christmas with a few games and get a lot of it back. The ps5 now new is £450 and you'll find in 3 years it'll still be the same price new and that's the reason it'll still be worth plenty second hand. Where as your gaming pc will be out of date.
I dont get spending thousands and always upgrading.
Your console will work out costing about £50 a year.
For the 2 games he mostly plays it would be madness.
My youngsters play them games on the console and its perfect. I dont see why you need more.

Mine are Minecraft snobs.

Prefer to play Java over bedrock on W10 or consoles.

Though to be fair there's a huge amount of mods to completely change Minecraft to suit.
Right up to astroid mining.

I've always viewed consoles as one trick ponies.whereas a pc is a a tool as well as a gaming machine.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

If looking to spend money. I'd be looking at steering wheels etc and build him a racing simulator. A recaro seat in a frame with feed back steering, wire in your own hand brake and if that's not enough I'd go down the virtual reality route. Take a look at some of the builds on you tube and what you can do.
And if you sell it on you'll still get good money.

Still doing that. Vr SIM racing is incredible for the immersion.

 

[Onoff]

Still doing that. Vr SIM racing is incredible for the immersion.

Do you go the whole hog like my sad sack of a nephew? He actually dons racing coveralls, helmet, gloves and boots to go "racing".....in his lounge.

He's 50.

Still has to come to me for an M8 tap and how to use it though!

 

[Onoff]

The last pc I built from scratch was a 286 with a 5 1/4" floppy.

I was so excited to add a 3 1/2" fdd.

Had a massive 20MB HDD.

Monochrome green monitor too!

 

[Joe 90]

Do you go the whole hog like my sad sack of a nephew? He actually dons racing coveralls, helmet, gloves and boots to go "racing".....in his lounge.

He's 50.

Still has to come to me for an M8 tap and how to use it though!

Everybody has their own way of going mad. My wife prefers me gaming rather than ******* my money against a wall getting drunk.
Next time your at his house for the laugh you need to go in the full gear and helmet and pull a chair up beside him for a passengers seat and call out the rally notes. Even bring a fire extinguisher incase if he rolls her, tv might go on fire.

 

[ukracer]

Still doing that. Vr SIM racing is incredible for the immersion.

But how close to reality is the Sims now? Not the ones that Merc and Redbull use but the DIY versions?

 

[ukracer]

Do you go the whole hog like my sad sack of a nephew? He actually dons racing coveralls, helmet, gloves and boots to go "racing".....in his lounge.

He's 50.

Still has to come to me for an M8 tap and how to use it though!

Cheaper than the real thing though. Because unlike what Lewis thinks the opportunity to go racing cars is never going to be equal.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Do you go the whole hog like my sad sack of a nephew? He actually dons racing coveralls, helmet, gloves and boots to go "racing".....in his lounge.

He's 50.

Still has to come to me for an M8 tap and how to use it though!

Lol na. Office chair and bolt the wheel to the desk as needed.
Years back I started making a cockpit but I grew up.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

But how close to reality is the Sims now? Not the ones that Merc and Redbull use but the DIY versions?

Assetto Corsa is very close.

Richard burns rally. Old game is still the closest to loose surface I've played.

 

[gaz1]

Lol na. Office chair and bolt the wheel to the desk as needed.
Years back I started making a cockpit but I grew up.

are you sure on that one

i remember the big screen you got and how much you was in the dog house with it

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

are you sure on that one

i remember the big screen you got and how much you was in the dog house with it

Only until she started using it for study days for uni. She won't let me change it now.

Great screen for music/film production.

 

[Onoff]

Lol na. Office chair and bolt the wheel to the desk as needed.
Years back I started making a cockpit but I grew up.

Twenty odd years ago I was going to build a 2 seater car sim / spaceship in the space under the stairs complete with a gull wing door for my lad. One of the many projects I didn't do...

Still mulling an outside loo in the garden with a blue flashing light on top aka the T.UR.D.I.S

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

Twenty odd years ago I was going to build a 2 seater car sim / spaceship in the space under the stairs complete with a gull wing door for my lad. One of the many projects I didn't do...

Still mulling an outside loo in the garden with a blue flashing light on top aka the T.UR.D.I.S

I got to the mock up stage for geometry but never went any further.

2011 ISH. Got into kite buggying not long after and shelved SIM racing for a few years.

 

[Onoff]

A MAME arcade machine is a pretty good father and son project.

 

[dobbslc]

My boy got a gaming PC for Christmas a few years ago that my wife's cousin speced up for us, I have no idea what went into it or what it cost (ignorance is bliss) he is still happy with it now and did the Minecraft and Fortnite thing. He now plays some racing game that runs a series of championships and has one real Playstation vouchers of £30 + !
The steering wheel has been broken and fixed multiple times along with the chunk out of the desk!
He wants a sim seat for Christmas this year
He did want a PS5 last year but they seemed to have made a massive cock up on those as we still can't get one so he's ditched that idea now (must have cost Sony millions)
What I will say is that if I'd known how much heat the gaming PC throws out I wouldn't have bothered fitting a radiator in his room!

 

[J1nx]

All these games have detail settings/graphic options etc. You can usually play the latest games in a moderate PC with these options turned down. The problem is, will your son be happy with that?

At the bottom end, you'll probably find an AMD Ryzen 5 3400G (built in graphics Vega 11) graphics is your best bet.... budget about £450 all in.

Google it and you'll find plenty of reviews. They've also released the Ryzen 7 5000G series you're probably looking at £150 more.

Imo some of the other recommendations here are a bit dubious but this post here is good advice, the AMD integrated graphics offer some decent bang for buck, plenty for the titles you’ve mentioned whilst offering the ability to upgrade later. It’s nice to have onboard graphics with a graphics card anyway simply for any troubleshooting later on.
To better the Vega graphics your wanting at least an old 1050 and the current crazy price for graphics cards means these are terrible value. To get cutting edge graphics budget £1-2k for the card alone.
CPU isn’t as important, plenty of people running £1k cards on systems with chips nearly a decade old. The 5600x is as high as almost any game needs. 16gb of RAM, stick to well known brands but don’t go crazy, not much gain after 3000Mhz cl16 tbh and as for motherboards, I’d have this way down on priority.

With the new gen of consoles, PC’s cannot come close for the price, to simply game they win easily. PC‘s offer a lot more and as the consoles age they will slowly catch up.

Heres my suggestion…
Palicomp
Id go for the ‘double up’ offer personally. It’s a budget system but reasonable value in the current market.