What is the best value, out of the box PC gaming solution?
What is the best value, out of the box PC gaming solution?
I have a Steam Deck that is connected to my TV 90% of the time. I'd like to replace this with a PC that has maybe slightly higher specs than the Steam Deck. Are there any pre-built solutions that are really affordable?
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Yeah, you have to define affordable. For some, that's $300, others $3000.
Quick answer is just go to pcpartpicker.com and look at other people's builds for your budget.
Bang for your buck... Just go midrange AMD cpu, don't worry about core count. Most games aren't cpu bottlenecked like they used to be.
Motherboard, just grab a reliable brand, don't overspend.
16gb ram, speed won't matter much and it's not that much more than 8gb.
1tb m.2 ssd drive. You can always get more storage later
Cheap case, good quality power supply probably 600 watt would get 90% use cases.
Don't forget to budget for windows or use Linux if you go that path, your monitor, mouse/keyboard, speakers or headphones.
After all that, than buy the highest end graphics card left in your budget.
While this is certainly in self-build territory, Logical Increments does a real good job giving balanced builds for various price points. People new to building often don't know how much to spend on a CPU vs GPU to get the best value out of a given build cost.
I’m mildly suspicious of how rarely it recommends AMD cpus.
Yeah, with the Intel 13th and 14th gen issues, it really shouldn't be recommending them as much. I think part of the issue is they only have one CPU vendor per tier. If they improved that, it would probably fix the issue. That said, if we are going purely off price/power, I'm not convinced their choices are bad.
For a beginner though, I really don't like just shoving them at PC Part Picker. It's too easy to get overwhelmed with choices.
At least it recommends almost exclusively AMD GPUs
Also don't go Asus. So much drama with their poor quality and customer service as of late. Gamers nexus and others have videos that go into detail.
And the advice here is perfect, exactly what I do when I build a budget machine for someone.