Let's make a gaming PC - The Bear and Badger

Cupatay

b0r1s wrote:

I like a bit of RGB but keep it to just the orange, not a fan of the unicorn vomit.

Huge Wolves fan eh.

Paul the sparky

Dundee United

b0r1s

McLaren

Unlikely

Not really a question about gaming PCs but I'll chuck it here as it's likely ~~fucking nerds~~ knowledgeable forumites frequent this thread.

We want to get E (who is eight) a laptop. Primarily this is for education but will no doubt also be used heavily for fucking Roblox. It needs to have a touchscreen but other than that (and the ability to run fucking Roblox) there aren't really many requirements. Educational stuff largely seems to be web-based and not system hungry at all so it can really be pretty basic. I'm thinking of a budget around £300 to £400 but have been out of the loop so long I've no idea what's what with PCs these days.

Any suggestions/advice appreciated.

SpaceGazelle

Aren't they all pretty good these days? I'd go with a nice OLED screen.

acemuzzy

I can dig out the one I got ours, which I think is Oled + touch screen + Roblox capable, but fuck knows if it's actually any good. Was roughly that price range though, and they haven't particularly moaned about it which I guess is reassuring...

acemuzzy

Was this, but it's not touch screen, so I think I have not helped

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3379972

SpaceGazelle

You can get one for £500 that's pretty good for watching stuff as it turns into a massive tablet too.

https://www.hp.com/gb-en/shop/product.aspx?id=800P2EA&opt=ABU&sel=NTB&source=google&channel=cpc&adcampaign=OLS-UK-PS-Per-Lap-Intel-Goo-Pmax-Alliance-Intel-CCF-Cons-Matched-211853&addisttype=xpla&kw=&adid=&infinity=ict2~net~gaw~cmp~OLS-UK-PS-Per-Lap-Intel-Goo-Pmax-Alliance-Intel-CCF-Cons-Matched-211853~ag~~ar~~kw~~mt~&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwn7mwBhCiARIsAGoxjaIM9z5srPY_GDWXOuoCy_kTwazwRcgNpKL2kEXbyUQRLp5TY93spn0aAgN7EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Ed_Flanders

Finally started building my new PC. It's a Ryzen 5 7600 with 32 gb of RAM on an mini-ATX ASRock B650m board. Nothing fancy, but it feels impressively fast after using an i3 laptop for 10 years as my only computer. Now I'm waiting for a good deal on a GPU and an NVME drive, so until then I'm making do with an old laptop HDD and the integrated GPU. I tried Nier Automata, which I'd never been able to run on my i3 4000m, and came out surprised. Turns out the ryzen igpu is much more capable than I had expected. The game ran beautifully on Proton experimental, even with a few bells and whistles. Since all my games are pretty old, I'm not in a rush to buy the gpu.
The building process was rather simple, except for one thing: the damn ATX power connector. It was so tight that I feared I was going to snap the board in half trying to connect the PSU cable. I got it connected after much pushing and sweating, but I reckoned I was going to need to detach it at some point, so I spent about half an hour pulling it out to make sure it wouldn't be too tricky. I eventually succeeded by wedging a small spoon between the header and the cable connector and then wiggling it until it came out. Not wanting to go through that ever again, I sanded the sides of the connector and now it's still snug, but it goes in and comes out much more easily.

Unlikely

acemuzzy wrote:

Was this, but it's not touch screen, so I think I have not helped https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3379972

Cheers. That but touchscreen is pretty much what I'm looking for. Gives me a baseline to work from (to be fair to myself, I've had a read through Which? and Techradar's lists).

SG, that looks pretty solid but it's more than she needs, really. Thanks though. I hovered over the buy now button for a bit.

Syph79

Currently in the gathering phase of building this PC for Syph jr. Other than the SSD, it’s been put together by entirely secondhand parts. Specs/parts are:

i5-12400F
32gb DDR5 RAM at 6200mhz
Gigabyte B760 motherboard
1tb m.2 Gen4 SSD
Cooler Master H500 case
Corsair AX860 psu

£360 so far. Just need a GPU now.

Blue Swirl

Syph79 wrote:

Other than the SSD, it’s been put together by entirely secondhand parts.

That's excellent.

Syph79

I would’ve gone second hand on the SSD too, but they’re very cheap now!

In theory, I should be well outperforming the Series X/PS5 for a similar price point, which was the aim - as I’d promised Jr a console and he said he wanted a PC instead. I am expecting him to change his mind at some point, so this will likely land with me in time.

Ed_Flanders

Fantastic price for some great parts!

Syph79

Syph79 wrote:

Currently in the gathering phase of building this PC for Syph jr. Other than the SSD, it’s been put together by entirely secondhand parts. Specs/parts are:

i5-12400F
32gb DDR5 RAM at 6200mhz
Gigabyte B760 motherboard
1tb m.2 Gen4 SSD
Cooler Master H500 case
Corsair AX860 psu

£360 so far. Just need a GPU now.

So I added a RTX 3060ti to this for another £210, taking the total spend to £570 - slightly over the PS5 budget I’d allocated to him.

I’ve popped it all together (that was a mix of stress, joy, and relief) and I’m currently staring at the BIOS menu while I make a bootable USB drive.

Syph79

So of course the first thing I stressed the new rig out with was Balatro. Really needed the grunt for those extra frames.

GMjnQoZW4AAF4Dj?format=jpg

Having never built a PC before, I’m surprised how simple it really is. There’s definitely a slight concern about clicking expensive parts together, but it was a fairly painless experience overall.

Diluted Dante

Yes. Simple.

Blue Swirl

Might want to double check your RAM is being correctly recognised; most motherboards want them in spaced out pairs, not next to each other.

Syph79

Blue Swirl wrote:

Might want to double check your RAM is being correctly recognised; most motherboards want them in spaced out pairs, not next to each other.

Cheers. I fixed that when the BIOS told me to. Buying things secondhand meant there was little paperwork with it, so I was going by gut and then tweaking as I went.

Just tried running Fortnite on the recommended settings and it had everything up to max, but capped at 60fps. I then dropped it down a little, uncapped and got 110-120fps, so I’m pretty sure this is going to be a runner for a while.

Blue Swirl

Syph79 wrote:

Cheers. I fixed that when the BIOS told me to. Buying things secondhand meant there was little paperwork with it, so I was going by gut and then tweaking as I went.

That's a clever BIOS. Not something I would've known if I hadn't watched a ton of stuff on YouTube before hand.

b0r1s

Nice one Syph. It’s really good building a PC. I’d love to build another one but don’t need to for quite a while.

Syph79

I kinda want to do it again now.

Unlikely

If you're moving into this sphere I'm on the lookout for a new desktop...

Paul the sparky

I'll be building one for Nate as a reward for not dying of that there cancer. He thinks he's a streamer in the making bless him

Unlikely

Is he clear now? Fucking hell, that's good to hear.

Paul the sparky

Not yet. But it's going well

b0r1s

That's a bloody lovely gift Paul.

Syph79

Paul the sparky wrote:

I'll be building one for Nate as a reward for not dying of that there cancer. He thinks he's a streamer in the making bless him

No better reason.

Syph79

Unlikely wrote:

If you're moving into this sphere I'm on the lookout for a new desktop...

We can talk. I’ve found buying parts under no pressure is the way to get the best bargains.

Paul the sparky

I'll be getting him a good un but I'll run it past you lot to make sure I'm not making a schoolboy error or having my eyes pulled out

Howdy, Stranger!

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