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Which is the best off-the-shelf gaming PC

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jlucey

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 4:44PM

My 12-year-old son wants to buy a gaming PC - to play Minecraft, Age of Empires etc. We've looked online and at PC World but keep getting conflicting advice. He's got a budget of £600 and I can add to that to get a good quality model. His current laptop overheats and runs very slowly so he wants a PC that is quick with good graphics. Any suggestions of off-the-shelf PCs would be very welcome. We're not confident enough to build it ourselves. With thanks

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northumbria61

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 4:58PM

I am not a "Gamer" but a well respected/reputable firm and recommended by many on this Forum is Novatech - take a look here for "starters" (and prices) enter link description here

In my opinion any of the first 3 would be suitable and around about your budget.

Then I suggest you wait for further advice from the Gaming members to keep you right.

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Woolwell

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 6:38PM

Have a look at Chillblast

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KRONOS the First

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 6:49PM

Is it a laptop or desktop you are looking for? £600 for a gaming laptop will not get you a decent machine. Chill blast, as Woolwell quite rightly points out is a decent place to look for a reasonable specced desktop.

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Ian in Northampton

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 6:56PM

Having just been through this with my (rather older) son, I’d say that your starting point needs to be to find out what are the recommended specs for the games your son wants to play. I’m no gamer, but I don’t think either Minecraft or Age of Empires are particularly demanding. However, he might migrate to more graphically demanding games in future, so you may want to factor that in – give him some headroom.

For example, my son is into Battlefield 3, which is fairly demanding. For optimum gameplay, the recommended system spec is:

OS: Windows 7 64-bit Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU RAM: 4GB Graphics card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950. Graphics card memory: 1 GB

The graphics card alone would set you back around £150. However, as I mentioned, the spec above is well beyond what he would seem to need today.

What you may want to consider is buying a Dell/HP/Acer (i.e recognised, viable brands) etc. system with the appropriate baseline spec in terms of multicore CPU, memory, operating system and so on, and then get a good graphics card fitted (which will probably require the power supply to be upgraded – something not to skimp on).

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jlucey

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 10:12PM

Could someone please tell me what is the best proccesor, AMD or I7?

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Woolwell

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Posted August 19, 2012 at 11:01PM

You don't need i7 for gaming.

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jlucey

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Posted August 21, 2012 at 1:31PM

Thank you for the advice. Very much appreciated. If we were to buy from PC World which of the following two machines would be the better for playing games: ADVENT DT2313 Desktop PC http://tinyurl.com/c5ll5oh or HP Pavilion p6-2275ea Desktop PC http://tinyurl.com/9vb5opw.

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KRONOS the First

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Posted August 21, 2012 at 1:36PM

Your second link does not work.

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KRONOS the First

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Posted August 21, 2012 at 1:38PM

The first one has a rubbish graphics card in my opinion,and why PC World felt the need for 12GB RAM is a puzzle also.

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Woolwell

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Posted August 21, 2012 at 2:05PM

Second link

I think that you can do better elsewhere than PC World.

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