Advice: new gaming PC and monitor

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duckDecoy

873 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#295351 23-Mar-2022 11:43

I have a laptop that has been having overheating issues when playing some games. I've paid nearly $500 having some of the cooling stuf fixed but its made basically no difference, so I am starting to worry about throwing more money at it.

Both my son and I use this laptop for games, he plays Fortnite and minecraft, I play TF2, but he's 10 so will likely get into more and more games soon.

Given how irritated I am when my game overheats the laptop (it starts stuttering and makes it hard to play) and how likely it is my laptop wont cope with his upcoming gaming needs I think we should look at getting a new computer rather than spending even more money figuring out the laptop's problems.

Can someone point me to some gaming PCs that would fit the bill for being good for gaming and future proofed enough to handle his future likely gaming needs. As games get better I know things might need to be replaced on it, which would be fine, but I don't want to be doing that too quickly or often. I guess I am looking for that sweet spot between price and future proofing. He's probably going to get into other shoot em up games, and maybe those first person adventure games I see advertised that seem to have amazingly realistic graphics.

We'll also need a monitor, I have an oldish dell one but its not very good and definitely should be bigger. People seem to be saying get a good refresh rate, but I don't know if this is a real thing or just an icing on the cake thing.

Does anybody have any advice or links to contenders? I would only use PBTech as a last contender if it was a smoking hot deal, I have been burned by them in the past trying their hardest to screw me out of refunding for a clearly faulty product so i'd rather they don't see my cash.

I need both a PC and a monitor, I have a keyboard and decent mouse already that will suffice (he can spend his own money if he wants fancy led flashing keyboard/mouse)

On a thread from long ago someone suggested building the PC rather than buying it premade. If that is a good option too then I am open to it, although i've never built anything like this in the past (I have no idea how easy/hard it is to put a PC together, but would be prepared to give it a go if it's possible for beginners).

Thanks in advance

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166 posts

Master Geek

#2890568 23-Mar-2022 12:12

Might worth wait for a while, graphic card price has dropped a lot recently. 3080 12gb is about NZ$1500 in China now, can take a while for the price reach NZ(or never consider NZ is always more expensive than other country)

Hatch

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SpartanVXL

1268 posts

Uber Geek

#2890572 23-Mar-2022 12:15

What model is your laptop? $500 seems incredibly excessive unless you were mostly paying for labour, of which if they were a specialist would have told you explicitly why you were having the issue and what the remedy would be. (Insufficient heat dissipation, bad thermal contact etc.)

Recommendations will depend on what games your son will likely to be playing. Theres two approaches, one is follow his current trend of games (Fortnite, Minecraft) and assume he will play mainstream, mass appeal games which do not have high requirements to run.

Games that fall into this category (Valorant, Dota2, League of Legends) are specifically designed to run on as low specs as possible to cover a majority of the market. (Can’t advertise well if most of your players can’t afford to play your game)

In which case you can opt for something like GGPC built machines with a 2060/3060 GPU. I realise you’ve already mentioned your past experience with playtech, but take the specs of those machines and use as a baseline reference when comparing to e.g. Playtech systems where they have Samurai built machines in the same category (affordable).

Now if your son wants to play different games, AAA new release type games then requirements will go up a bit. You’ll want 6-8 physical cores with HT/SMT for the CPU and likely a 3060ti minimum, possibly a 3070/ti for 1440p resolution. This may require GPU upgrades every 3-5 years depending on game requirements.

Monitors also a bit of a minefield if you want to get perfect quality. For the average gamers only two specs matter, resolution and refresh rate (possibly a third, variable refresh rate VRR).

The lower your resolution the less your GPU needs to work, but also with less clarity. The higher it is the better the GPU needs to be, so factor this in when buying a machine.

The higher the refresh rate the faster responsiveness is to input, this is important for games which require quick reactions. If your son likes Fortnite/Valorant then he’ll appreciate the responsivness/smoothness. High refresh rate needs both a good CPU/RAM along with GPU.

If you’d like to build it yourself then it’s a good activity to do with your son, but if you’re not confident with technical issues or otherwise then best to have it pre-built by a shop. Todays market is a bit excessive with GPU prices, to the point where consoles are a better value proposition for most casual gaming.

duckDecoy

873 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2890574 23-Mar-2022 12:17

Hibino:

Might worth wait for a while, graphic card price has dropped a lot recently. 3080 12gb is about NZ$1500 in China now, can take a while for the price reach NZ(or never consider NZ is always more expensive than other country)

OK, thanks for that tip. How long do you think it will take to trickle through into NZ?

duckDecoy

873 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2890575 23-Mar-2022 12:20

Someone posted that I should wait for the 3080 12gb to come to NZ at a better price.

If waiting is what I should do rather than buying something now, maybe a list of things it should have for future searches. E.g. this graphics card, this much RAM, this much HD and of this type etc. That way when prices come down I can find something that matches this list and assume it is good.

SpartanVXL

1268 posts

Uber Geek

#2890588 23-Mar-2022 12:45

duckDecoy:
Someone posted that I should wait for the 3080 12gb to come to NZ at a better price.

If waiting is what I should do rather than buying something now, maybe a list of things it should have for future searches. E.g. this graphics card, this much RAM, this much HD and of this type etc. That way when prices come down I can find something that matches this list and assume it is good.

You will still need to list your budget and/or possible usage requirements.

We can recommend you a 3080 build at $4000+ which will do mostly anything solidly. It meets your future proofing requirement but may not meet the ‘sweet spot price’ requirement.

duckDecoy

873 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2890651 23-Mar-2022 13:13

SpartanVXL:
duckDecoy:

Someone posted that I should wait for the 3080 12gb to come to NZ at a better price.

If waiting is what I should do rather than buying something now, maybe a list of things it should have for future searches. E.g. this graphics card, this much RAM, this much HD and of this type etc. That way when prices come down I can find something that matches this list and assume it is good.

You will still need to list your budget and/or possible usage requirements.

We can recommend you a 3080 build at $4000+ which will do mostly anything solidly. It meets your future proofing requirement but may not meet the ‘sweet spot price’ requirement.

Possible usage requirements is unknown really, I'm not a gamer myself so don't know much about the normal kid-to-gamer path (not helpful sorry!). Give it will be me buying the games I suppose I could steer him away from super graphics card requirements.

Budget wise I was hoping to be around the $3k mark, but was willing to take advice from GZ if that was not realistic.

When you said we can recommend, is this something your company does? Or was it the royal we.

Assuming the later I see computer lounge has a bunch of premades, perhaps something like "if you want the mainstream mass appeal games this looks good", and "if you want the super high end games, this looks good".

https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/ready-to-ship#!categoryId=419&page=1&q=&scid=-1&isListMode=false&PriceRange=1299&PriceRange=4674&Filters%5B0%5D.Key=Sort&Filters%5B0%5D.Value=1

Ive just noticed that some dont have wireless or bluetooth, i suppose I need to check on that stuff. We need 4 usb minimum, and wifi and network cable and bluetooth too.

Thanks for all the help to date

WyleECoyoteNZ

1048 posts

Uber Geek

#2890655 23-Mar-2022 13:19

If you can, wait a little bit. Prices, especially on Video cards seem to be dropping in price.

When i asked about this proposed spec, the price of the 3060 was around $1000 NZD, now, today, you can have a 3060 for around $700.

Also, I saw you said you'd avoid PB Tech, but they've got a good sale on at the moment. When I looked about a month ago, the price of my proposed spec, slightly different to that of the link was around $2,450, but yesterday, it was closer to $2,150.

Either, prices are falling, or PB are having big sales before the end of the tax year.

Lias

5579 posts

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#2890658 23-Mar-2022 13:23

duckDecoy:

Someone posted that I should wait for the 3080 12gb to come to NZ at a better price.

If waiting is what I should do rather than buying something now, maybe a list of things it should have for future searches. E.g. this graphics card, this much RAM, this much HD and of this type etc. That way when prices come down I can find something that matches this list and assume it is good.

To a degree there's always going to be something around the corner worth waiting for, and equally it's hard for us to tell you what you should buy in the future without the aid of a crystal ball. Can an offer some guidelines thou (bearing in mind this is subjective opinion and could be invalid tomorrow if something shakes up the market).

Accept that unless you have an unlimited budget, everything is going to be a compromise in some way, but it sounds like you are least going to be playing with a reasonable budget if you are considering a 3080.
Get 16gb of RAM minimum, ideally 32gb.
Get a motherboard that supports at least 2x PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD's, use a 256 or 512gb for the OS and a second larger one for games. Chuck in a HDD if you want additional storage for things where access speed isn't important (e.g. photos, videos, etc)
Case choice is mostly down to "do I like how it looks and will my bits fit in it", but check reviews because some cases have really bad cooling designs.
Power Supply is more important than you think, don't skimp, and if you have a fixed budget, a lower wattage PSU from a reputable brand is always a better choice than a higher wattage from a lesser brand.
CPU and GPU are going to come down to "what's the best bang for the buck for what I'm prepared to spend on the day"
Again, depends on your budget but I'd say for a gaming monitor you want to at least be 1440p if not 4k, and at least 140hz
Don't forget good gaming peripherals! Decent keyboard/mouse/headset etc.

*edit* Also I'll recommend Computer Lounge as somewhere you should consider. Other's will also probably recommend Playtech but I won't cos I think the owner's a jerk :-)

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

duckDecoy

873 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2890659 23-Mar-2022 13:25

WyleECoyoteNZ:

If you can, wait a little bit. Prices, especially on Video cards seem to be dropping in price.

When i asked about this proposed spec, the price of the 3060 was around $1000 NZD, now, today, you can have a 3060 for around $700.

Also, I saw you said you'd avoid PB Tech, but they've got a good sale on at the moment. When I looked about a month ago, the price of my proposed spec, slightly different to that of the link was around $2,450, but yesterday, it was closer to $2,150.

Either, prices are falling, or PB are having big sales before the end of the tax year.

Thanks, i have added myself to their email list as I see they have a PC sale coming up

gbwelly

1238 posts

Uber Geek

#2890665 23-Mar-2022 13:37

Buy a nice new monitor and second hand PC. Only upgrade when you need to. No point dropping 4 grand on a machine to play minecraft, fortnite and TF2. A 2017 era gaming machine will probably play those games at 1440p at 80+ FPS.

Prices are stupid at the moment, don't encourage them.

SpartanVXL

1268 posts

Uber Geek

#2890684 23-Mar-2022 14:20

Yes I did mean the helpful people here at GZ :D

For $2100~ budget machines with a 3060 from computer lounge/playtech/pbtech will be good for minecraft/fortnite, but as gbwelly and previous comments iterate, you don’t need a powerful machine to play these. (Computer Lounge Comet, Chaos, Militech)

$3000 machines with a 3070 will do better and play latest titles well, may struggle in 3 years time. You can’t know how future games will run too accurately. (Computer lounge Kendachi, Blizzard, Ultraviolet)

3080’s jump up to $4k machines, the cost increase is basically the GPU right now due to market. It is coming down but will take a while, or a long time until new gen releases. If the 1080ti is any indication, these cards can do well in performance up to 5 years or so.

gbwelly

1238 posts

Uber Geek

#2890709 23-Mar-2022 14:47

SpartanVXL: Yes I did mean the helpful people here at GZ :D

I know what you mean, I enquired about building a new entry spec gaming machine for approximately $1000 on GZ once and people lost their minds, saying I'd need to pay double that. In the finish I hit my price point on my own. Ended up with an unlocked Pentium D G3258 overclocked to 4.6GHz and a R9 380x in a butt ugly case but I did it, got me playing GTAV at a decent framerate.

SpartanVXL

1268 posts

Uber Geek

#2890804 23-Mar-2022 15:26

I wasn’t being sarcastic, just replying to the ‘royal we’ part from OP.

In the example you just provided I wouldn’t recommend OP try to overclock a budget part given their experience level or needs. Plus for a ‘future proof’ request you can’t really go into second hand market either.

Delphinus

611 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2890849 23-Mar-2022 16:35

Monitor, this is a 27" 1440p 165hz with Freesync and Gsync and currently 35% off:

https://www.dell.com/en-nz/shop/dell-27-gaming-monitor-s2721dgf/apd/210-axbc/monitors-monitor-accessories

Reviews well too.

duckDecoy

873 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2891281 24-Mar-2022 11:19

Thanks for all the replies.

Im leaning towards the 'mid' point future proofing options (the 3070) and that will probably give me the best outcome without breaking the bank given I have to get a monitor too. I can see some on trademe with 3070 and 3080 but they dont seem to be discounted enough for me to risk it given they will effectively be warranty free if something goes wrong.

Onto the monitors, someone suggested a good Dell option for $600. But are the cheaper budget models going to be OK for gaming? Assume we get a 3070 graphics card and a decent CPU.

I think I should look at 144Hz and 1ms response time based on a comment above. I have seen some Kogans (dick smith), Titans (pbtech), Viewsonic and Acer (computer lounge) and a Gigabyte (trademe). Are "budget" monitors OK if they meet those 144Hz and 1ms specs ? All we really want to do is play games, not TV or movies or anything.

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