New Gaming PC

[NoMoreE46]

I would like to get a gaming PC for my elementary school aged son.  Timeframe is for Christmas but can purchase now. 

He likes to play Fortnite and is using a 3 gen iPad.  I want to reward him with a better setup to play games and for him to have his own device for school work.   A custom build is out as I don't have the time  (work six days/week.)  

Given that our total budget would be about $600, I would appreciate your thoughts.  We need a monitor as well.

I came across this and need advice if this machine will be okay for the next three to four years.  

Gaming PC dhgate.com 

[SecretAzure]

That's quite a tight budget for a gaming PC. I would say that it is certainly enough to run Fortnite in probably low, low-medium settings. This should still be an improvement over an ipad though. As far as school-work goes, this should be able to handle everything from Zoom calls and basic schoolwork all at once just fine.

I will say the storage is quite limited. With 120 GB of storage there won't be much room to expand. Windows itself is 32 GB atm, fortnite is about 20 GB. As long as he's fine deleting games to add new games down the road this should suffice. 

If you can find a monitor second-hand, I would say throw as much of your budget as you can at the actual PC. And down the road, a second, better monitor could serve as another gift while adding much more productivity capabilities to the workflow. I could not even manage my job if I didn't have 2 monitors to work with.

[NoMoreE46]

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@SecretAzure wrote:

That's quite a tight budget for a gaming PC. I would say that it is certainly enough to run Fortnite in probably low, low-medium settings. This should still be an improvement over an ipad though. As far as school-work goes, this should be able to handle everything from Zoom calls and basic schoolwork all at once just fine.

I will say the storage is quite limited. With 120 GB of storage there won't be much room to expand. Windows itself is 32 GB atm, fortnite is about 20 GB. As long as he's fine deleting games to add new games down the road this should suffice. 

If you can find a monitor second-hand, I would say throw as much of your budget as you can at the actual PC. And down the road, a second, better monitor could serve as another gift while adding much more productivity capabilities to the workflow. I could not even manage my job if I didn't have 2 monitors to work with.

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@SecretAzure ,

Thanks for the insight.   There is a configuration option to add a  1TB hard drive for $50 so I would do that.  I appreciate the idea for a used monitor.  

So yes, probably need  to get a better  graphics card - could you suggest  one to play Fortnite at medium settings?

[SecretAzure]

As I recently told someone here, I haven't PC gamed in a while but I do still very closely follow tech. Fortnite can run on most anything but to get that medium quality threshold, I'm going to ping @Anonymous to see if they have any ideas as to what will be a good start. The GFX card in the PC you linked is probably 10 year old tech if not older. 

[Anonymous]

That's one seriously tight budget. Any games besides Fortnite? Fortnite isn't too demanding to run but for most games, anything less than an RX 570 isn't going to be ideal (and the 570 is still going to disappoint on major titles). 

You really don't want to buy some no-name brand when buying prebuilt PCs. It is often next to impossible to get warranty service and they cheap out in ways that are very impactful (like using a single stick of RAM to save $10, crippling memory bandwidth severely in the process). 

At that price point, it's better to just spend the money on an Xbox One X or PS4 Pro because a gaming PC in that bracket is going to be very disappointing when it comes to any AAA titles while console games are optimized to have good performance on that hardware. 

I am not really a budget fan when it comes to PC hardware. In my experience cheap stuff fails and getting it fixed or replaced, even with a warranty, is a hassle so I don't really bother with it. The cheapest PC I would even recommend starts at $550 before taxes. Maybe someone else can chime in with some acceptable budget recommendations. 

[wasCB14]

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@SecretAzure wrote:

As I recently told someone here, I haven't PC gamed in a while but I do still very closely follow tech. Fortnite can run on most anything but to get that medium quality threshold, I'm going to ping @Anonymous to see if they have any ideas as to what will be a good start. The GFX card in the PC you linked is probably 10 year old tech if not older. 

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+1

They may call it a gaming PC, but you're getting specs far inferior to my general-purpose desktop tower (bought almost 4 years at Costco for $390 pretax, plus another $190 for a monitor).

I would suggest Costco...except you need to pay for a membership...and their product offering has been getting more expensive.

[wasCB14]

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@Anonymous wrote:

You really don't want to buy some no-name brand when buying prebuilt PCs. It is often next to impossible to get warranty service and they cheap out in ways that are very impactful (like using a single stick of RAM to save $10, crippling memory bandwidth severely in the process). 

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So what are the good brands for prebuilt PCs? I've mostly bought Dell out of familiarity.

Is HP still good? CyberPowerPC? iBuyPower? Acer?

Brands to particularly avoid?

[NoMoreE46]

@wasCB14 @Anonymous @SecretAzure 

Thanks everyone.  That PC has two slots for RAM so I knew that  I could upgrade later.  
But geeze,~ a 10 year old card?  I had no idea.

Xbox Series X   {editted to correct name } so it will be then.   This should be a beast from what I just read. Hopefully, it will be around $600 when released.

Praying that my Panasonic Plasma will last for this hookup.

[SecretAzure]

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@NoMoreE46 wrote:

@wasCB14 @Anonymous @SecretAzure 

Thanks everyone.  That PC has two slots for RAM so I knew that  I could upgrade later.  
But geeze,~ a 10 year old card?  I had no idea.

Xbox One X  it will be then.   This should be a beast from what I just read.  Hopefully, it will be around $600 when released.

Praying that my Panasonic Plasma will last for this hookup.

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I do want to ask, does your son have other friends he games with? Perhaps any cousins? If so, I would see what console they game on. It may not be best to get him an Xbox if all his friends/family are on Playstation. If they're all on one console, they can party up and play other games together. Both Sony and Microsoft often offer free games (monthly) and while Fortnite allows for play between consoles, most games do not.

Another thing to note, both consoles require a subscription for online play. Currently, you can get the PSN subscription (first-timers only) for $45 for the entire year. Although, you can get them for $35 on eBay from a fairly trusted seller as well.

One last thing I want to say is that while the Plasma may still have some life left in it, any form of gaming with a persistent user interface on screen will be the death of it. You will see burn-in fairly quickly lol. But it doesn't bother most youth. Kids are so much more adaptable and less finicky than adults can be. They'll just be happy to be playing.

[Anonymous]

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@wasCB14 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

You really don't want to buy some no-name brand when buying prebuilt PCs. It is often next to impossible to get warranty service and they cheap out in ways that are very impactful (like using a single stick of RAM to save $10, crippling memory bandwidth severely in the process). 

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So what are the good brands for prebuilt PCs? I've mostly bought Dell out of familiarity.

Is HP still good? CyberPowerPC? iBuyPower? Acer?

Brands to particularly avoid?

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I personally only recommend Dell to people. While their customer service is somewhat lacking, their warranties are tough to beat and they even let you extend them before they expire if you wish. They also have killer holiday sales and whenever I need a cheap laptop, Dell Outlet provides a good deal. I have had laptops from Dell, Toshiba, Alienware, and Sager. I had to have my Toshiba and Sager serviced in the first year (multiple times for Sager) and I have never had to send my laptop to Dell that I can remember. They actually went ahead and shipped me a new fan for my Alienware and let me install it myself rather than have to send the machine to them. 

Both of my Dell laptops and my Alienware I bought right after Dell bought them were tanks, even the cheap plastic one I bought for like 300 bucks in 2011 was still working well when I gave it to a friend of mine back in 2014 and that thing had been knocked over, had stuff spilled on the keyboard, etc. The Alienware I bought in 2009 just needs a new hard drive because I stole the 500GB it came with when a buddy of mine needed a new hard drive so it's got a super slow 80GB drive I pulled from my PS3. I had to replace one cooling fan that got a bit squeaky as well. 

Avoid CyberPower and iBuyPower. They regularly ship out machines that have obviously not been tested because they don't POST. Customer service is very poor. Gamers Nexus actually did videos on them IIRC and they both failed.