Gaming computers minimum requirements?

[TPMB12]

Can you buy a gaming computer for £700 that's worth having?  It would be an upgrade from a Nintendo switch in order to get more and better games for our son.

[davelodwig]

Depends on what you want to play, and if you already have a monitor / keyboard / mouse / etc.

I bought a machine from CyberPower during the lockdown for about £700 that certainly plays everything I want to play, though not at 4k.

[Canardly]

I would enquire with your local PC/repair retailers to see if they have any good quality second hand machines available with a six core processor and at least 16GB of DDR 4 memory. Lots of early adopters sell their existing kit so as to be able to buy the latest thing. Graphics cards in particular have become very expensive in the last few years and tend, for most modern pcs, to be the primary barrier to playing modern games at higher resolutions. For a youngster 1080p should be fine however, so running a budget end card should be fine. NVidea GTX 1650 or higher, AMD RX 580 or higher. Steer clear of branded pcs such as Dell due to their propriety construction which often does not lend itself to simple upgrades or generic replacement of bits.
Computer fairs have waned in recent years but if there is one held relativey nearby may well be worth a visit to examine offerings.

[lissotriton]

If you want a similar style to a Switch, what about a Steam Deck?
Quite reasonably priced - probably cheapest to buy the 64GB model, then upgrade the SSD yourself.
Most Steam / PC games will run fine on it, though some might need a bit of tweaking. And lots of options for cheap games. Or using emulators for other games.

[TPMB12]

He's mostly on fortnite and rocket league I think. He has the Nintendo xbox pass membership which he reckons will give him access to games on n the pc. No idea about that as xhox is a console not pc.

Yes looking at playing forward on it and other games not available n on switch.

I've seen game specific gaming PCs. The company does a £780 pc for fortnite and n£720 for minecraft which was his old game of b choice. Other games are nearer or over £1000. Rocket league the cheapest pc built to play it costs £1040 IIRC.

The thing is cheaper gaming pc setups might only run at 60fps. That's not good enough for gamers. He's fairly good at the games he's played but he knows the limit us switch and the controllers. Apparently gaming jeyboard and mouse allows a decent gamer to play quicker or better.  More things you can do.

He's got nothing so keyboard,  mouse and monitor is needed. I doubt his mum's old desktop monitor that she no longer uses will be his enough for a gaming pc.also his decent LG smart TV won't be great neither.  So any recommendations for that too will be helpful.

[cycleman]

I have been lusting over a  gaming PC to play train sim games on but the prices seem very high for a hobby that I would only use in the winter or wet rainy cold times. One day maybe. So I will follow this thread with interest 

[davelodwig]

He's mostly on fortnite and rocket league I think. He has the Nintendo xbox pass membership which he reckons will give him access to games on n the pc. No idea about that as xhox is a console not pc.

Yes looking at playing forward on it and other games not available n on switch.

I've seen game specific gaming PCs. The company does a £780 pc for fortnite and n£720 for minecraft which was his old game of b choice. Other games are nearer or over £1000. Rocket league the cheapest pc built to play it costs £1040 IIRC.

The thing is cheaper gaming pc setups might only run at 60fps. That's not good enough for gamers. He's fairly good at the games he's played but he knows the limit us switch and the controllers. Apparently gaming jeyboard and mouse allows a decent gamer to play quicker or better.  More things you can do.

He's got nothing so keyboard,  mouse and monitor is needed. I doubt his mum's old desktop monitor that she no longer uses will be his enough for a gaming pc.also his decent LG smart TV won't be great neither.  So any recommendations for that too will be helpful.

60fps isn't good enough for gamers?

No it's not good enough for gamers with endless money to spare, everyone else makes do.

Most of the top end stuff is silly money, you have to use what you can afford frankly and if you can't afford 4k graphics and the like then you don't get to play like that.

[Kim]

This whole thread is terrifying.  I don't think I've ever spent £700 on a computer in my life.  And I've spent half my life at a computer.

[grams]

Numbers above 60 fps exist mostly for willy-waving. Ditto most other demands.

When he gets a paper round / pro-gamer career he can buy himself whatever computer he wants.

[lissotriton]

I have been lusting over a  gaming PC to play train sim games on but the prices seem very high for a hobby that I would only use in the winter or wet rainy cold times. One day maybe. So I will follow this thread with interest 

Train Sim Classic doesn't really need high end specs. My PC is several years old now, works fine, maybe with graphics turned down a bit. Can be a bit slow to load sometimes, but OK if you are patient.

[davelodwig]

This whole thread is terrifying.  I don't think I've ever spent £700 on a computer in my life.  And I've spent half my life at a computer.

I usually don't buy them, employers give them to me and I re-purpose them when they give me another one.

But during lock down my hand was forced, as I was stuck at home with a dead workstation.

D.

[TPMB12]

I reckon even at £7-800 you'll get better than the overheating switch! Some days lag is bad!

[Morat]

Keep him away from flight-simming in VR.

[mrcharly-YHT]

*serious* gamers turn down the resolution to get higher frame rates.

[Feanor]

I'm not a gamer, so don't really 'get' this thing about frame rates.

What's the point of silly high frame rates?
Is it a visual thing?
I mean, filum runs at 24 fps, and analog video was 50fps interleaved. Digital video runs at 50 or 60 fps typically.

Can you actually 'see' these silly high frame rates?

[mrcharly-YHT]

I'm not a gamer, so don't really 'get' this thing about frame rates.

What's the point of silly high frame rates?
Is it a visual thing?
I mean, filum runs at 24 fps, and analog video was 50fps interleaved. Digital video runs at 50 or 60 fps typically.

Can you actually 'see' these silly high frame rates?

Response and update times.
If you are playing a first person shooter, and updates are shown faster on your screen than on your competitor's, you have an advantage over them.

[grams]

Those numbers were chosen to minimise perceptible flicker from movie projectors and cathode ray tubes, they don't represent the limit of human vision perceiving motion, and indeed motion can look slightly smoother at higher fps.

(though you can achieve some of the same affect with motion blur, which live action TV and especially cinema have lots of and gamers habitually turn off)

The other thing is games are interactive, and higher frame rates can slightly improve how quickly you can react to fast moving action, since you'll see it very very slightly earlier.

Unfortunately gamers are all petulant 12 years olds, so they'll insist these consequences are massive and that they'll be instantly "fragged" or "bombd" if they don't have 240 fps minimum and dad, daaad you don't understand and I'm going to my room ** slam **

[Feanor]

I get the point at a few tens of fps, but can we actually perceive any benefit at 240 / 360 fps?
I really don't know.

It just sounds a bit like the hi-fi perceived sound quality discussions from the 1980s.

[Kim]

Also, human reaction time to a visual stimulus is of the order of what, 100ms?  That's like 5 frames of video.

ETA: More like double that, apparently.

I accept that higher frame rates make computer-generated images with no motion blur look better on a progressive scan display.  But that's about aesthetics.

[Lightning Phil]

It’ll take between 150 to 300 milliseconds for you to react according to a neuroscience article I read.  Improved game play is generally through getting better at predicting and doing things rather than seeing then doing things.

[Jaded]

A while ago internet latency was the key. I had ISDN and others didn't, so I won a lot of fights. 

[Kim]

Latency can still a thing, if you've got a crap internet connection.

Hence people who are about 12 talking about using WiFi cables to improve their ping times.   

[Pickled Onion]

I'm not a gamer, so don't really 'get' this thing about frame rates.

What's the point of silly high frame rates?
Is it a visual thing?
I mean, filum runs at 24 fps, and analog video was 50fps interleaved. Digital video runs at 50 or 60 fps typically.

Can you actually 'see' these silly high frame rates?

There are plenty of motion artefacts at 24 fps, eg reverse wagon wheels.

It was chosen as the rate you wouldn’t see the dark 1/48 s while the film was moved on to the next frame. It wasn’t possible to go much faster than that with film shot in a studio without literally frying the actors with the lighting.

Interestingly when feature films were first filmed on video some directors didn’t like the more realistic motion and copied to film stock and back to video to get the proper cinematic feel.

[Kim]

Interestingly when feature films were first filmed on video some directors didn’t like the more realistic motion and copied to film stock and back to video to get the proper cinematic feel.

And then the video people realised they could achieve the same effect by using a computer to throw away every other frame, muck about with the colour curve and add a load of noise...   

[philip]

When you are playing a game that involves connecting to a server one of the numbers that matters is how often the game server sends updates. This varies from game to game, and some games have constant rates while others vary according to load. It probably makes sense to use a PC that allows a framerate faster than the server rate, otherwise some server updates will simply not be shown.