Help me build a gaming PC

[mark]

Bunch of pussies.

Build it!

Avoid Alienware (Dell) like the plague!

We should talk. Don't buy a pre-built. The education you and your son will get is well worth it.

[Doctor Phibes]

The concern with building your own at the moment is video card availability. Make sure you can get one at reasonable price before you spend any money on other stuff

[George K]

Get a ....

Never mind.

What, exactly, qualifies a PC as a "gaming PC?"

Better video card?
Most processors are pretty similar, if you're up-to-date, aren't they?

[Doctor Phibes]

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

What, exactly, qualifies a PC as a "gaming PC?"
Better video card?

Pretty much. You'd expect at least an i5 processor or AMD equivalent and 16 gig of RAM. Frequently it's marketing gimicry such as lots of LED bling and what-have-you, but really it's the GPU that's important. I guess you also want a decent number of USB ports and a motherboard that supports overclocking the processor, although I must admit I never overclock.

[Aqua Letifer]

@doctor-phibes said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

What, exactly, qualifies a PC as a "gaming PC?"
Better video card?

Pretty much. You'd expect at least an i5 processor or AMD equivalent and 16 gig of RAM. Frequently it's marketing gimicry such as lots of LED bling and what-have-you, but really it's the GPU that's important. I guess you also want a decent number of USB ports and a motherboard that supports overclocking the processor, although I must admit I never overclock.

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

[George K]

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

[Aqua Letifer]

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

Very many are not.

[Klaus]

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

Some are, and I assume in the near future most of them will be - due to the advent of modern JavaScript and HTML5 they'll run in your browser.

[Doctor Phibes]

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

Very many are not.

Also, even if they're compatible, the game designers are unlikely to optimise for Apple's GPU's, and looking at them, they don't look as though the ventilation is really designed around gaming. Modern video cards often take a fair amount of cooling.

I think a better answer for gaming if you don't want a PC is probably a Playstation or Xbox.

[Aqua Letifer]

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

Some are, and I assume in the near future most of them will be - due to the advent of modern JavaScript and HTML5 they'll run in your browser.

Jon should not buy a mac for gaming.

[Doctor Phibes]

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

Some are, and I assume in the near future most of them will be - due to the advent of modern JavaScript and HTML5 they'll run in your browser.

Jon should not buy a mac for gaming.

Indeed, pay no attention to the German with his lame browser-based gaming solutions! You need, and what's more DESERVE freaking ray-tracing and DLSS.

[Klaus]

@doctor-phibes said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@george-k said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@aqua-letifer said in Help me build a gaming PC:

Also, shouldn't be a mac.

I've heard the M1s are pretty good in terms of graphics.

Are online games cross-platform?

Some are, and I assume in the near future most of them will be - due to the advent of modern JavaScript and HTML5 they'll run in your browser.

Jon should not buy a mac for gaming.

Indeed, pay no attention to the German with his lame browser-based gaming solutions! You need, and what's more DESERVE freaking ray-tracing and DLSS.

Did you ever take a look at Google Stadia and the like? You can get all the ray-tracing and 4K resolution and whatnot, and all you need is a $5 processor that can turn a network video stream into an HDMI signal. They even have an impressive handle on the latency issue.

But in any case, there's a lot of evidence that the future of gaming is cloud-based and the clients will be lightweight JavaScript frontends.

[Aqua Letifer]

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

But in any case, there's a lot of evidence that the future of gaming is cloud-based and the clients will be lightweight JavaScript frontends.

Yes because everyone knows you buy gaming gear based on where the future of the technology is probably going, not at all based on games you want to play right now. Do you even play, Klaus?

[Klaus]

No. Whenever I try, I'm bored to death after 20 minutes. But I know the technology and have an informed opinion about the engineering and marketing considerations of game design.

I'm not talking about Jon's specific needs right now - I'm sure he'll get a good number of concrete suggestions from the usual suspects - but about the future of computer games in general.

[Aqua Letifer]

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

No. Whenever I try, I'm bored to death after 20 minutes. But I know the technology and have an informed opinion about the engineering and marketing considerations of game design.

I'm not talking about Jon's specific needs right now but about the future of computer games in general.

You do you, Ax!

[jon-nyc]

What do you guys think of this? I found a source that has an NVIDIA 3070 available.

Iy'll go over 2k, but it was a soft limit anyway.

[Doctor Phibes]

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

No. Whenever I try, I'm bored to death after 20 minutes. But I know the technology and have an informed opinion about the engineering and marketing considerations of game design.

I'm not talking about Jon's specific needs right now - I'm sure he'll get a good number of concrete suggestions from the usual suspects - but about the future of computer games in general.

You might be right, but it's worth noting that the obsolescence of gaming PC's as we know them has been just around the corner for about 30 years now.

[Doctor Phibes]

@jon-nyc said in Help me build a gaming PC:

What do you guys think of this? I found a source that has an NVIDIA 3070 available.

Iy'll go over 2k, but it was a soft limit anyway.

I'm not really an expert, but it looks alright to me. The one I bought a couple of months back is pretty similar to that, except it's an Intel i7 processor, and it runs everything I've thrown at it on full detail, except for VR, which it still runs well, just not quite at full beans. For regular stuff, it's as fast as all heck - boots in a couple of seconds.

The problem with pre-builds can be that the cooling often isn't nearly as effective as it ought to be, and they sometimes try and use sub-standard components, such as power supplies. Also, pre-installed bloatware can be excessive. The Powerspec PC's seem to have pretty good cooling, and just about zero bloatware.

[Klaus]

@doctor-phibes said in Help me build a gaming PC:

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

No. Whenever I try, I'm bored to death after 20 minutes. But I know the technology and have an informed opinion about the engineering and marketing considerations of game design.

I'm not talking about Jon's specific needs right now - I'm sure he'll get a good number of concrete suggestions from the usual suspects - but about the future of computer games in general.

You might be right, but it's worth noting that the obsolescence of gaming PC's as we know them has been just around the corner for about 30 years now.

There's a well-known "wave" in computer science that applies to all kinds of applications, not just games, namely the "thin client" vs "fat client" model. Every decade or so, the two change roles. To take the example of games, the "thin client" model was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s in the form of text-based multi-user dungeon games. For games, the cycle back to "thin client" took a bit longer than for other forms of applications due to the emphasis on graphics and the required network bandwith and latency requirements. For other application domains, we saw a return to thin-client based on HTML in the early 2000s, and now we get back to "medium-thin clients" based on JavaScript, and that seems to become the sweet spot for a while.

[Doctor Phibes]

@klaus said in Help me build a gaming PC:

To take the example of games, the "thin client" model was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s in the form of text-based multi-user dungeon games.

I think "very popular" is maybe overstating it a little

I used to play text-based adventure games, and I was in a very small minority.

It's going to be interesting to see where cloud-based gaming goes. I've heard quite a bit about it, but currently I don't believe it really works as well as having everything on the local PC.