Please help!!!

[Antyv73]

Hey everyone,

Im fairly new here ! Just signed up!!
I’ve been trying to get into PC gaming for a while now but I have no idea where to begin. Build/buy? Leaning towards buying since I’m very early stages knowledge of PC’s.

Any tips or advice on which PC to buy? I’m looking to spend up to 1,000$ (not including the monitor)

Anything helps!! Thank you

 

[Oussebon]

Welcome

That's the rough budget for the monitor?

You'll want the system's spec to be balanced for the monitor you have (and the price of the monitor correlates to the spec)

Any particular kinds of game you're looking to play? Any specific titles?

Any other interests like streaming your gameplay to Twitch, or video editing, or other professional software you need to use?

 

[Antyv73]

Welcome

That's the rough budget for the monitor?

You'll want the system's spec to be balanced for the monitor you have (and the price of the monitor correlates to the spec)

Any particular kinds of game you're looking to play? Any specific titles?

Any other interests like streaming your gameplay to Twitch, or video editing, or other professional software you need to use?

Hey! I would spend upwards of 400-500$ for the monitor !!
I know I must be able to play Battlefield 5 and Apex legends and Nier Automata
Definitely interested though In playing and discovering some rpg games as well stuff I can sink 100 hours into !
I would definitely consider streaming in the future but Probably not within the first year of me owning a PC

 

[Oussebon]

That's a good budget for a monitor - you'd be looking at 1440p 144hz (with freesync / adpative sync / gsync compatible).

For a monitor like that, an RX 5700 XT would be ideal.

Pricing and availability for parts is a little all over the place at the moment, especially PSUs (and monitors for that matter), but potentially something like this:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($124.99 @ Best Buy)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($76.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($104.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB THICC III Ultra Video Card ($401.36 @ Amazon)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $1068.30
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-02 11:08 EDT-0400

Self building will be cheaper than getting a prebuild, and tbh to afford a PC worthy of an upto $500 monitor you'd probably need to self build unless you find a very good offer on a store somewhere.

Apparently 1440p 144hz monitors can be had for $250 onwards:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/monitor/#r=256001440&D=100000,280000&sort=price&page=1

https://www.amazon.com/AOC-CQ27G1-DisplayPort-adjustable-Zero-Bright/dp/B07V39QHMY/

Though many are more like $400. Still, should fit into the ~$1500 overall budget.

 

[MaddMann]

Do you plan to be more mobile or just gaming at home? There are a decent selection of good laptops out there, but I always suggest going for a desktop as it can be expanded without having to replace the entire system. Personally I started out with a pre-built system that was designed to be expanded, I have since then changed to entirely self assembled systems. Depending on how handy you are, I do still suggest building your own if its in the cards. The system that @Oussebon posted seems like a great start to building! If you get a chance I suggest trying out PCPartpicker and doing some general comparisons with current systems using UserBenchmarks can help you get to know the lay of the land without having to dive through forums to get started. Otherwise, I most of us here on PC Gamer forums would love to talk builds with you until we are blue in the face. So ask away while you are going!

 

[Oussebon]

Agreed with the above - I too got a prebuild in 2012 that has seen many upgrades since then and gave me a platform of knowledge for the self builds I've done since then.

Though I do have to flag userbenchmark. Don't ever use userbenchmark(!) It's somewhere between garbage and poison. The data it offers is plain unreliable, as are its benchmarks.

Any website that pretends to give some kind of calculation of bottlenecks of Part A + Part B = C performance should also be avoided.

If you want a sense of how X, Y, or Z combinations might perform, there are better sources to look at, and I'm sure people here can steer you in their direction

A lot of sites like PCGamer, DSO Gaming, Overclock3d.net, and techpowerup do performance reviews of specific titles with GPU and CPU benchmarks. Reviews of hardware components will often feature popular games like BFV or maybe Apex too.

And there are specific articles aimed directly at issues like bottlenecks too:

Ryzen 5 3600 vs. Ryzen 9 3900X vs. Core i9-9900K: GPU Scaling Benchmark

Having tested 3rd-gen Ryzen processors with the RTX 2080 Ti extensively, our idea behind this new feature is to add mainstream and budget GPUs to the mix...

www.techspot.com

 

[Shadowclash10]

Agreed with the above - I too got a prebuild in 2012 that has seen many upgrades since then and gave me a platform of knowledge for the self builds I've done since then.

Though I do have to flag userbenchmark. Don't ever use userbenchmark(!) It's somewhere between garbage and poison. The data it offers is plain unreliable, as are its benchmarks.

Any website that pretends to give some kind of calculation of bottlenecks of Part A + Part B = C performance should also be avoided.

If you want a sense of how X, Y, or Z combinations might perform, there are better sources to look at, and I'm sure people here can steer you in their direction

A lot of sites like PCGamer, DSO Gaming, Overclock3d.net, and techpowerup do performance reviews of specific titles with GPU and CPU benchmarks. Reviews of hardware components will often feature popular games like BFV or maybe Apex too.

And there are specific articles aimed directly at issues like bottlenecks too:

Ryzen 5 3600 vs. Ryzen 9 3900X vs. Core i9-9900K: GPU Scaling Benchmark

Having tested 3rd-gen Ryzen processors with the RTX 2080 Ti extensively, our idea behind this new feature is to add mainstream and budget GPUs to the mix...

www.techspot.com

Right. Userbenchmark isn't reliable at all. You are better off looking at actual benchmarks, either from review sites like Tom's Hardware or even PCG, or Youtube videos.