Advice on buying a Gaming PC

jonnygee2

well i did say up to ~400 (but you cropped that bit off the quote)

Well yes, true, but I just meant to add that for the OP really, to discourage them from buying a 60hz one. I've seen people do this and it feels like such a waste!

I do agree they should be able to sit quite comfortably inside the £2000 budget though.

JamoLew

good call on the frequency - i usually look at the refresh rate as well.
A personal observation about using different monitors - I would recommend at least having the same screen size, I tried that initially and the "screen bump" got very very annoying

[Deleted User]

 I realise i am late, but, If it were me, for something i could be staring at for a long time, but also factoring in cost (cos she needs 2) i would be advising her to actually try a 60hz and a 144hz monitor before buying. I personally can not tell the difference. And thats of course before you even consider what actual framerate your GPU is going to deliver whilst running your game/appplication. No point getting a 240hz display if your only getting 60fps ingame.

I often play Doom Eternal, which is a fairly fast paced game, on a 27inch Benq 1920x1080@60z. (getting 90-120fps) And its perfectly fine. I am rather old though

BTW, m.2 is just a 'form factor', it can still be sata, ie 550mb/sec. Perhaps you were thinking of m.2-nvme(3500mb/sec)?

However, if you look at numerous sites, you will see that despite such a large difference on paper, unless you are transferring huge video files from one drive to another (nvme to nvme), so just like with the 60hz to 144hz monitor, you probably won't notice any difference

Finally, if building your own, i would get a pre-configured 'bundle' like OCUK do, which guarantee's that the main components of your kit WILL actually work together (plus you usually get a tiny discount over buying seperately).

Narola1976

Wobbly_Bob said:

 I realise i am late, but, If it were me, for something i could be staring at for a long time, but also factoring in cost (cos she needs 2) i would be advising her to actually try a 60hz and a 144hz monitor before buying. I personally can not tell the difference. And thats of course before you even consider what actual framerate your GPU is going to deliver whilst running your game/appplication. No point getting a 240hz display if your only getting 60fps ingame.

I often play Doom Eternal, which is a fairly fast paced game, on a 27inch Benq 1920x1080@60z. (getting 90-120fps) And its perfectly fine. I am rather old though

BTW, m.2 is just a 'form factor', it can still be sata, ie 550mb/sec. Perhaps you were thinking of m.2-nvme(3500mb/sec)?

However, if you look at numerous sites, you will see that despite such a large difference on paper, unless you are transferring huge video files from one drive to another (nvme to nvme), so just like with the 60hz to 144hz monitor, you probably won't notice any difference

Finally, if building your own, i would get a pre-configured 'bundle' like OCUK do, which guarantee's that the main components of your kit WILL actually work together (plus you usually get a tiny discount over buying seperately).

Thank you very much for your feedback. I have no idea what you just said but I am sure it will mean something to her lol

jonnygee2

but also factoring in cost (cos she needs 2) i would be advising her to actually try a 60hz and a 144hz monitor before buying. I personally can not tell the difference

How can anyone not tell the difference!  The difference is huge! A £2000 computer running at 1080p is definitely going to be able to output more than 60fps. If you only want to play at 60hz /1080p you could just but a much cheaper computer.

However, if you look at numerous sites, you will see that despite such a large difference on paper, unless you are transferring huge video files from one drive to another (nvme to nvme), so just like with the 60hz to 144hz monitor, you probably won't notice any difference 

When it comes to gaming, the disk speed is more for recording streams than transferring files. 

dan958

The difference is definitely huge. The people that say they cannot see a difference make me wonder if they accidentally have their monitor set to 60hz.

MinuteNoodles

jonnygee2 said:

Make sure she understands the different SSD types and gets an M.2 SSD, not a SATA one, especially if she is recording streams because SATA ones might not be fast enough. 

SATA SSDs are plenty fast enough for recording streams. Even 4K HDR 60FPS is within the limits of microSD cards so it's well within the ability of a SATA SSD. The Samsung NX1 for example records at 80Mbit/s.

therightdeal

I think I spent around £400-£500 on parts 5 years ago, and built a top of the range PC which would have retailed at far more.

I paid someone £40 to literally put it all together, and the PC is just as good today as it ever was 5 years ago. I will easily get another 5 years out of it, perhaps more. 

Takmon

therightdeal said:

I think I spent around £400-£500 on parts 5 years ago, and built a top of the range PC which would have retailed at far more.

I paid someone £40 to literally put it all together, and the PC is just as good today as it ever was 5 years ago. I will easily get another 5 years out of it, perhaps more. 

£500 of parts would have certainly not built a top of the range PC 5 years ago. A top of the range graphics card in 2015 would have been something like a GTX980 and that alone would have cost around £500.

MinuteNoodles

Takmon said:

£500 of parts would have certainly not built a top of the range PC 5 years ago. A top of the range graphics card in 2015 would have been something like a GTX980 and that alone would have cost around £500.

Yes it would and no they didn't. I bought a Asus Strix 6GB GTX1060 from Curry's for £230 in 2016. They were reasonably priced before the Bitcoin mining craze took hold a year or so later. From a Tomshardware review in June 2016 when they were released...

"Now we’re getting a third Pascal-based board in the GeForce GTX 1060. We already know that Nvidia’s partners will have versions starting at $250."