Need help please. Father here needing to buy 14 year old son a gaming PC for 240FPS Fortnite!

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Aug 1, 2020
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Thank you very much in advance for your advice folks. It's my son's birthday in a couple of weeks and he has asked for a gaming PC. Since I have a friend who works at Dell, who can get me a decent discount, I'd really like to get an ALIENWARE desktop. My son's request is that it needs to be able to run Fortnite in 240FPS. Will this one be enough?:

ALIENWARE AURORA R11 STANDARD/RTX INSTALLED

10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 10700F
Windows 10 Home (64 bit) Japanese
16GB (16GBx1) HyperX® FURY DDR4 2933MHz XMP
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 SUPER™ 8GB GDDR6 (Supports overclocking)

Should I get the option?:
CPU cooling option
Alienware ™ high performance water cooling system.

And how about RAM, is 16GB enough? Will 512GB SSD HD be enough?

Thank you!
 
16gb RAM is perfect - more makes no sense for gaming.

But get the RAM as 2 x 8gb so that it is dual channel. And get 3200MHz or 3600MHz RAM if they sell it.

If the better cooling is not too expensive, then it's worth considering.

If money is no obstacle, consider the i7 10700K rather than F, as it is faster out of the box and can be overclocked further as well.

Although you are getting a discount, make sure to check other stores for similar specs, as Alienwares can be very expensive such that even with a bit of a discount, other options might work out cheaper.

What monitor is your son gaming on?

What settings do they play at?
 
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Aug 1, 2020
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16gb RAM is perfect - more makes no sense for gaming.

But get the RAM as 2 x 8gb so that it is dual channel. And get 3200MHz or 3600MHz RAM if they sell it.

If the better cooling is not too expensive, then it's worth considering.

If money is no obstacle, consider the i7 10700K rather than F, as it is faster out of the box and can be overclocked further as well.

Although you are getting a discount, make sure to check other stores for similar specs, as Alienwares can be very expensive such that even with a bit of a discount, other options might work out cheaper.

What monitor is your son gaming on?

What settings do they play at?
Thank you! I don't know what settings he plays at, currently he plays Fortnite on a PS4. I wish he wanted a PS5, life would then be a lot simpler and cheaper!! But he really wants a gaming PC.
Do you think it would be better to build a PC, would that be cheaper?
We live in Japan, so it is very easy for us to go to Akihabara and have a PC built.
But I have no idea what parts would be best :(
 
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Thank you! I don't know what settings he plays at, currently he plays Fortnite on a PS4. I wish he wanted a PS5, life would then be a lot simpler and cheaper!! But he really wants a gaming PC.

The settings matter, in gaming generally, and specifically in competitive games like Fortnite. The higher the settings, the beefier the graphics card you need to drive them.

In competitive games, players who are playing to really try to win and eke out every competitive edge they can will usually play on mostly low settings. This is to keep framerate as high as possible - and in some cases because the extra visual effects are distracting. You can often get away with a less outrageously beefy GPU as a result.

You said your son is targeting 240fps. What monitor are they gaming on?

If it's only a 60hz monitor, there's no real point to 240fps. Because the monitor only refreshes 60 times per second (60hz). So he'll want/need a 240hz monitor.

If he's playing at very high settings rather than on 'competitive settings' though, it's kind of debatable whether it makes sense to target 240fps. Because if you turn up the eye candy, you're clearly not trying to maximise your framerate, in which case does it really make sense to spend huge premiums on top level hardware for relatively small performance gains.

i.e. you can probably get a less expensive computer. Or, aim for a higher resolution monitor for better visual fidelity.

I'm sure there are people who play at 240+ fps on a 240hz monitor at 1080p at the Epic preset but that's not how you usually play competitively.

Do you think it would be better to build a PC, would that be cheaper?
We live in Japan, so it is very easy for us to go to Akihabara and have a PC built.

It could well be cheaper. It would usually be cheaper in the UK and afaik the US, but I've no idea about what the market in Japan is like for these things, in terms of price or availability. Apparently hardware is quite expensive(?) (even allowing for tax). Also if you pay someone to build it for you, there's that cost to factor in too.

If you were going for a build for fortnite competitive settings, something like:
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-10600K 4.1 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100x 57.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z490 VISION G ATX LGA1200 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (¥10393.24 @ Newegg Japan)
Storage: Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (¥15427.88 @ Newegg Japan)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB SC BLACK GAMING Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS SGX 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply (¥21663.50 @ Newegg Japan)
Total: ¥47484.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-02 22:41 JST+0900


I did a partpicker list because it was easiest but partpicker for Japan only seems to list imports from Newegg, and if going to Akihabara I imagine you'd buy off the shelves anyway at whatever prices are there.

i.e. an i5 10600k - no real advantage for the i7 10700k for gaming, though the i7 10700k could make sense for streaming.
A Z490 motherboard that isn't trash.
16gb fast RAM
RTX 2060 Super should be more than fine.
SSD doesn't really matter - ideally a mid-range M.2 NVMe SSD, the most expensive aren't worth it, while the more mid-range ones are barely more expensive than Sata SSDs.
Decent CPU cooler - e.g. 240mm AIO cooler suitable for overclocking
550W+ gold-rated PSU - decent model from a decent brand.
Case with mesh at the front - not solid plastic or glass.

If looking to spend less, an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU + B450 motherboard (if buying in person make sure it has the sticker to say it supports 3rd gen Ryzen). And even the stock cooler with the R5 3600 is fine, though you could get any old tower cooler with a 120mm fan if you wanted.
 
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I think building a PC will help. It cost less, and you can customize to your standards. Try a motherboard that use DDR4 RAM should at least accept 128GB ram 3200 mHz (RAM are on sale most of the time on Amazon). Windows 10 . Most higher tech motherboards don't have an on board graphics card. I suggest AMD for the graphics and CPU. 8-16 core AMD Ryzen CPU (I will just stick with the 8 core). Zalman reservoir it is a liquid cooling system very large, very good cooling, though I think a radiators better. Graphic cards just buy any graphics card. Buy a solid state hard drive.
 
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It's great that new people join to share perspectives :)

Not wanting to be unwelcoming, but given the potential dangers of saying nothing, I have to say this advice isn't very helpful and nobody should pay it any attention.

if the OP isn't buying a motherboard that uses DDR4 RAM they are buying the wrong thing.
128gb RAM is irrelevant here and to the vast majority of people.
Yes, Amazon sells RAM...
No common consumer motherboards have onboard graphics these days (it's the CPUs that provide onboard graphics where there are any).
The Zalman reservoir ... is not relevant here. None of Zalman's "reserators" are relevant, pretty much anywhere.
"Just buy any graphics card" - is crackers.
 
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I'm sorry I didn't know for this circumstances that it was relavent or not. Please let me clarify. I gave you basic scopes of a PC. Just like how I built mines. Excuse me! If you thought I was being rude. Please tell me next time these specs have nothing to do with what you are talking about. Sorry.
 
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