Posted: 7/29/2026 8:07:56 PM EDT
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I know nothing about PCs. I am a console gamer. But my oldest wants a gaming PC for his birthday. Hes a good kid and I want to do this for me. I know I am in for some $. I do not necessarily have a budget but I am also not made of money. I dont want the absolute best but I also dont want to get him a junker. Help me out. |
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Originally Posted By mak0: Do you have a micro center near you? Their in house brand PowerSpec is pretty decent. A Ryzen 7600X3D or 7800X3D paired with a 9070 XT gives you the best bang for the buck right now and should run anything he wants to play. We sure do. I dismissed them as big box and not worth looking at. Thank you. |
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I got a really decent Alienware PC from Bestbuy. It was onsale at the time. Pricey at $1600 but it has some great hardware. Not bleeding edge, but enough to play the games I like |
"Hey Teacher, if my kid is misbehaving, slap the kid next to him." -diesel1 (May 2024)
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Originally Posted By WilsonCQB1911: We sure do. I dismissed them as big box and not worth looking at. Thank you. You can get away with 16GB of RAM for gaming. 32 would be better, but adds a lot to the cost. I'm currently gaming with an older setup. AMD Ryzen 7 5800x, AMD Radeon 9060XT 16GB, and two 2TB SSDs, but I got a bunch of it before the prices got stupid. It's an older DDR4 system, but honestly, the slower RAM doesn't matter, it seems, my GPU is still my bottleneck for performance. You're gonna be around the $1500 mark, depending on options. ETA: Keep in mind the quality of PC gaming is well above console gaming. Even a mid level system is going to perform better than a console. The only downside is the OS (if you're gonna run win 11) that will eat more resources than the OS of a console. Oh, monitor... If you get him a 1080p monitor, a mid level system will give better frame rates than if you're using a 1440p or 2160p monitor. Make sure the monitor has at least 100hz refresh rate. I can run Forza 6 on my system with a solid 100Hz frame rate at 1440p with fairly high graphics settings. To me, the quality looks fantastic. Not sure what type of games he's into, but FPS generally are harder on resources, I'm just into racing games, mostly. And even that, I'm not setup for full on sim racing. |
Award: 24/365 Most likely to be an appendix.
"Dealing with Congress is like trying to have an adult conversation about the credit card with your alcoholic bi-polar Ukranian import wife."
"Dealing with Congress is like trying to have an adult conversation about the credit card with your alcoholic bi-polar Ukranian import wife."
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Originally Posted By WilsonCQB1911: If i were to go into the $2-3k range would you guys still recommend Microcenter? Yes absolutely. That price range will step you up into the high end market. You can easily get something with a 9800X3D, 5070Ti or 9070XT, and 32GB of RAM for probably around $2200-$2300. |
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Originally Posted By mak0: Yes absolutely. That price range will step you up into the high end market. You can easily get something with a 9800X3D, 5070Ti or 9070XT, and 32GB of RAM for probably around $2200-$2300. |
Award: 24/365 Most likely to be an appendix.
"Dealing with Congress is like trying to have an adult conversation about the credit card with your alcoholic bi-polar Ukranian import wife."
"Dealing with Congress is like trying to have an adult conversation about the credit card with your alcoholic bi-polar Ukranian import wife."
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Originally Posted By WilsonCQB1911: Thanks guys. I didnt realize that gets me into the high end range. I figured it would require much more $$ The high end keeps getting higher as prices keep rising so I'd get while the getting is good. Microcenter is great, I build but they have good deals and if you need everything you are probably getting a better deal on a pre build compared to doing the assembly yourself. |
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Originally Posted By Network_Daddy: The high end keeps getting higher as prices keep rising so I'd get while the getting is good. Microcenter is great, I build but they have good deals and if you need everything you are probably getting a better deal on a pre build compared to doing the assembly yourself. |
Award: 24/365 Most likely to be an appendix.
"Dealing with Congress is like trying to have an adult conversation about the credit card with your alcoholic bi-polar Ukranian import wife."
"Dealing with Congress is like trying to have an adult conversation about the credit card with your alcoholic bi-polar Ukranian import wife."
| you have to factor in peripherals like mouse, keyboard, headset, and monitor as well. Monitor is important if you are building a higher end PC nothing worst than building something fast and you are using a cheap slow refresh monitor cause you over spent on the PC it's self. |
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Another plus 1 for micro center! Younger brother did a full top shelf pc build with them last year, no issues at all and amazing customer service. Built by nerds for nerds! I have a pre-built Alienware and I am also very happy with it and Alienware customer service but next PC will be a micro center build. |