My son wants to build a gaming computer

Ian H

Ian H

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But he is 12 and has no clue what he is on about and neither do I. I suggesting buying one that’s been built but he says he can build a better one himself.

He has an App called BuildCores and he says that tells him it will all work well together and from there he sent me this list (not sure why it’s in dollars):

Build Name: liam
Total Price: $529.45

Ryzen 5 2600X
$166.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B428V2L

ASRock B450 Steel Legend
$107.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MV7LR1B

(2x8GB) TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 3200
$57.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T637L7T

WD Blue SN550 500GB
$59.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YFF3JCN

Corsair iCUE 220T White
$99.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RQW7W9P

LEDdess Addressable RGB LED 120mm Case Fan with Controller for PC Cases, CPU Coolers, Radiators System (3pcs RGB Fans, 2pcs led Strips, 2nd Gen RF Remote Control, A Series)
$36.50
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079JFHQMS

Generated by BuildCores on October 18, 2020 1:14 pm
———————————————


He says he will use the hard drive from his computer that he has now and he has a graphics card 1660 or something.

What should I be advising him?
 
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Gaming PC's are a minefield mate, our two are on Xbox platform, you get a good 5 to 7 year run per console where as High End PC's are obsolete in a year.
 
The best advice is to buy a ready made one.

Assembling a processor to a mother board requires a lot of care and knowledge as well as precautions against damage by electrostatic charges.
 
It looks ok to me, I've built a couple of intel based PCs which work great

Every wire is labelled and can only go to one socket.

It may have jumpers to be set, read the motherboard manual.

Cable clips are important for neat cable runs.





The list doesn't have an operating system though.....it'll need one.

It needs either windows or Linux.
 
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I've built a number of PCs, and now find it's not worth it. You can get one readimade, probably for less, either off the shelf or to order (especially discontinued models)

With the desktops I tend to add extra disks, memory, USBs, and in the past upgraded graphics cards (gamers need lots of that) and processors as tech progressed, but I don't do games. I get stuff from Novatech but there are lots of others.

If he wants to build one for fun, let him.

If he's interested in saving money, he could get a used cast-off and upgrade where it falls short. Gamers are constantly buying new and selling old.

I used to buy these "barebones" and fill them up with disks, memory and cards.
https://www.novatech.co.uk/search.html?search=barebones


Is that still worthwhile? I see one of them comes with a Ryzen 5.

With a tower, you can even swap out the motherboard in a couple of years if you want to. I also fit extra fans and filters, so tinkering is less dusty.
 
Last edited:
I used to build them years back, in hindsight it was just pouring money down the drain.

BUT, it's a good skill to have and best way to understand how things work is to take them to bits and rebuild them so as a project it has more than £ value.
 
When times were hard, it was a way to upgrade an old machine to get a couple more years out of it.

Gamers were always selling second-hand graphics cards, and I also upgraded processors a few times.

I gave a few away that were adequate for email, browsing and home office apps.
 
JohnD said:
I've built a number of PCs, and now find it's not worth it. You can get one readimade, probably for less, either off the shelf or to order (especially discontinued models)

With the desktops I tend to add extra disks, memory, USBs, and in the past upgraded graphics cards (gamers need lots of that) and processors as tech progressed, but I don't do games. I get stuff from Novatech but there are lots of others.

If he wants to build one for fun, let him.

If he's interested in saving money, he could get a used cast-off and upgrade where it falls short. Gamers are constantly buying new and selling old.

I used to buy these "barebones" and fill them up with disks, memory and cards.
https://www.novatech.co.uk/search.html?search=barebones


Is that still worthwhile? I see one of them comes with a Ryzen 5.

With a tower, you can even swap out the motherboard in a couple of years if you want to. I also fit extra fans and filters, so tinkering is less dusty.
Click to expand...

Yes, thanks John, I do like the look of those barebone one so will show him that (y)
 
Ian,
I have been impressed by these PC build guides on YouTube.
Decide your budget and see his suggestions (noting that your son already have a £200 graphics card).

As US does not include Tax, and you need to also get Windows10, I base these as 1US$ = £1.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TechByMattB/videos

SFK
 
What games does he want to play?
Was this list put together on a budget?
What he has specified looks very entry level and will soon be not good enough.

Choosing an X CPU gets him very little benefit for the money, there are better ones out there IMO.

Try https://pcpartpicker.com/ too.
 
mattylad said:
What games does he want to play?
Was this list put together on a budget?
What he has specified looks very entry level and will soon be not good enough.

Choosing an X CPU gets him very little benefit for the money, there are better ones out there IMO.

Try https://pcpartpicker.com/ too.
Click to expand...

The modest AMD one looks pretty good to me.

He plays Call of Duty on his x-box but we got him a pc last year when he went to high school, that says i5 on it so I don’t know if that could be reused.

I got him the graphics card for his birthday then realised his PC power supply doesn’t have a high enough output to power it, that’s when he started looking to build one.

He makes his list and shows it me, I say ‘No chance’ then he swaps parts, although I could always get him half for Christmas and make him work to pay for the rest
 
What are the shipping costs involved in ordering parts from the US? What happens if you need to return components? It's a lot less risk and hassle to use a 'configure your own' site. You can choose what you want and they build it for you:

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/amd-am4-gen3-pc/

At the above site if you select Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and select 'No Operating System' (to be comparable with your quote) it comes to £442, delivered in a few days and you are covered if there's a problem. You would want to increase the amount of RAM, and change the motherboard and graphics card but still doable for under £500.
 
Funny, I spent most of yesterday looking at computers!

For son 1 I bought earlier this year a renewed PC from Amazon. Renewed can but a lot cheaper for good processors, but obviously aren't new. They should all have new hard drives. Get the OS on an SSD drive, makes it much faster. The most important thing in a Gaming PC is the graphics card - this does most of the work for games, not the CPU. Plenty of RAM important too.

I paid £450 for: Dell OptiPlex Gaming Desktop (Intel Core i5-4570, 16 GB RAM, 250GM SSD, 2 TB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB Graphics, Windows 10, WiFi) (Renewed)

Now son 2 wants a computer, and I want to get something that will keep him going for a good few years. He has an xbox, so I told him get a PC for learning programming, playing less graphics intensive games etc, but after looking at renewed PCs on Amazon, and countless websites, I think I might go for a new one from Mesh. I bought a PC from Mesh about 7 years ago and it was great until too much dust got in and it packed up! Anyway, I might just get this one, which is their cheapest: https://www.meshcomputers.com/custom-gaming-pcs/ryzen-3000-3rd-gen-pcs/matrix-ryzen-5/

Just waiting to hear from the school to see if I can get a cheap Windows OS. I think he should have Linux, but my wife says just put Windows on it "like everybody else". Can always dual boot, and Windows 10 now has a Linux virtual machine built in, which was news to me yesterday!

The best thing about building it himself is to learn about computer hardware and learn how to upgrade it himself. For his though, you want to make sure the motherboard and power supply are as future proof as possible, so latest motherboards (means more expensive!) and bigger power supply. If he wants to put in a bigger graphics card in a few years he might find he needs to upgrade the PSU too. Cannot see a PSU in your links.

I'd also recommend to buy from UK Amazon, not US, as will make life easier if you need to return parts.

Another option is "bare bones PC" - some companies sell the case, psu, mobo, fans, and then you just add everything else.
e.g. https://www.novatech.co.uk/barebonebundles/

When it comes to cost, I guess it is always down to cheaper for companies to bulk buy parts, and individual parts often have a bigger mark-up on them than the whole machine. But, ready made often make compromises too, such as the smallest PSU that will run it, older chips, slower drives etc.

Oh, there are some cases, not many, where a graphics card might not be compatible with a CPU or motherboard - it might fit, but they might not play together. Rare, so check first. Just ask the mobo manufacturer and GPU maker if the yare compatible.

as said, a bloody minefield.
 
Food for thought - I just looked up prices for all the parts in the Mesh PC I am thinking about getting (note, this PC is one with CPU with integrated graphics, so not a "gaming" PC). Mesh price is £459. Buying the parts (I did not shop around, mostly used Amazon, Scan) came to £646

Game Max Expedition Black Windowed Micro ATX Case £40.09
450W Power Supply £39.99
ASUS Prime B450M-A uATX Motherboard (AMD) £59.45
AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G w/ RADEON™ RX VEGA 11 Graphics £129.97
AMD AM4 Wraith Stealth Cooler up to 65Watts £8.99
16GB 2666MHz DDR4 £58.49
256 GB 2.5" SATA III SSD £126.93
1TB SATA III 6GB/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache 8ms £32.99
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit £134.48
USB Full-size Keyboard and Optical Scroll Mouse Bundle £14.89
£646.27

That's a hell of lot more for the same product.

Maybe look for a good gaming PC and then call the company and ask if you can have without the graphic card, as you already have a Ggeforce GTX 1660.

Something like this: https://www.meshcomputers.com/custom-gaming-pcs/ryzen-3000-3rd-gen-pcs/mesh-ryzen-gaming-pc-cs/
which is £749.00, but you might be able to knock £150 off without the GPU (which is £150 at Scan).

Scan is a good place to get parts if you still go that route.
 
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