My son (13) has been saving up his $ for the new Xbox that’s coming out this winter. Now that he has his goal of $500 saved, he suddenly has decided he wants a gaming PC because… reasons, I guess. He wants to play Minecraft, Stolaris, Satisfactory (which is apparently the whole reason he wants it). He’s convinced himself that the Xbox X will cost over a grand and have an absurdly limited run so he won’t be able to get it anyway. I’ve seen no evidence that either of these things is true.
Anyway, this is the computer he wants. I dont know shit about PC’s, and less than shit about gaming PC’s. The reviews seem to be all over the place and immediately start using verbiage thats totally Greek to me.
I have a suspicion that he’d be blowing his money on something that doesn’t do what it advertises, or needs expensive components that aren’t obvious, or or or… I’m not a tech person (velcro is high-tech to me…), so I turn to the Dope, as usual.
That is absolutely not a good gaming PC. For the most obvious flaw, it uses integrated Intel graphics – in other words, it doesn’t have a graphics card and makes the CPU shoulder the burden of graphics. Maybe that works for Minecraft (if you don’t push the visual distance) but Satisfactory requires a dedicated GPU. It also has an underpowered CPU and barely enough memory to credibly run Win10, much less games.
When a new generation of consoles comes out, it’s always a better deal than a equivalent PC because the consoles have economies of scale behind them and Microsoft/Sony willing to sell at cost (or less) to gain market share. It takes a few years before a PC at that price point is really competitive. Your son will be better off with a next gen Xbox than spending that money on a gaming PC unless he needs the PC for other tasks or has long term plans to upgrade it and keep it for a good while. If he insists on a PC, something like this would be a good start for a $500 budget.
Scratch that recommendation, I misread the graphics. While better than the Intel graphics, he still won’t have a good time playing with AMD Vega 8 graphics. Every other aspect is superior to the one you linked though.
I wouldn’t touch the first one in your OP. Bear_Nenno has it right – and agree also that PC is a better choice than XBOX.
If I don’t mangage mess to mess up the link on our new boards here I’m gonna suggest something that only ups your budget a little bit. Found on newegg.com (a very reputable site) by searching for “cheap gaming PC”.
Acer Gaming Desktop Nitro 50 N50-600-UR1I
There are some others on that website that would also be good choices.
I’m a PC gamer and am always happy to see other new PC gamers but, if you have a $500-$600 budget, there’s nothing you’re going to purchase this fall that will come close to the technical specs of the new consoles. Of course, you can do other stuff with a PC but if you’re just going to browse the web, send email and that sort of thing you probably already own devices that do that.
Now, if he’s interested in PC gaming including the upgrades and tinkering that will eventually get him a more powerful machine than the upcoming consoles then, sure, you gotta start somewhere. Based on the prebuilt he wanted to buy, I’m guessing he’s not coming at it from a “learn about PC tech and make/maintain my own” perspective.
All THAT said, if he’s set on getting a PC then you certainly want to get the best one for the money. His best bet would be buying a used system but heaven only knows what’s available in his market and he’s not tech-knowledgeable enough to make a good choice. If going new, take a look at AMD products since they have a lower price to performance cost than Intel and are (these days) every bit as good.
This computer is still over budget but “only” by $150. The RX 570 is a budget GPU but at least this site claims it can run Satisfactory at 60fps on high settings and 1080p resolution and the Ryzen 3 3100 processor got strong reviews on release. There are, of course, things I’d like changed but that’s what happens when pricing a $600ish computer.
For comparison’s sake, about one year ago, my son and I built him a decent PC, used primarily for gaming. Not hugely expensive; we bought a relatively average cost GPU, about $300, which is what a decent one will cost you. The rest of the stuff adds up, if you remember to include the monitor, keyboard, mouse, mouse pad, etc etc. in addition to the power supply, MOBO, processor and hard drive. Oh, and don’t forget your Windows 10 license, which costs something ($100, but maybe cheaper sometimes). Ah, one more thing, we needed a wifi adapter thingy so he could get internet at his PC, since it’s way upstairs and reachable only by home wifi. (It works surprisingly well.)
Our final bill was about $1300. $500 would not have gotten us that much of a PC.
This is way more expensive than a console. However, on the bright side, he can use this PC pretty much as-is throughout his high school career, and do his homework on it, write emails, do projects, do video editing (his current passion) and writing code / doing mods. As a workstation it’s useful for producing content, not just for consuming it.
If he’s not 100% decided yet, just wanted to throw some thoughts in…
Some Windows and XBox games offer cross-play between PC and the Xbox, but many more games do NOT. What “Grr” said.
PCs require a LOT more upkeep and maintenance than the consoles, between device driver updates, OS upgrades, graphics card upgrades, random driver upgrades causing crashes, firewall issues, etc. Is your kid interested in tinkering with all that? It’s a lot better than the old days of having to edit configuration files by hand, granted, but it’s still a lot more work than simply letting your Xbox update itself while you sleep.
In terms of budget, you might want to talk to him about the total cost of ownership over 3-4 years. Namely, the Xbox X will likely not see another major upgrade in that time, whereas PCs will see major refreshes (esp. graphics cards) every year or so, and games will try to keep up with the latest & greatest. It’s an expensive hobby if you intend on upgrading every year or two. The alternative is to play newer games on lower and lower graphics settings. On Xbox, since the hardware is relatively stable, newer games still target the same specs and don’t require new hardware.
There’s also the cost of games themselves to consider, but I think the PC actually has the advantage here. Steam (the PC gaming storefront) offers a lot of sales, and there are a crapton of indie and older titles from places like humblebundle.com or greenmangaming.com that make amassing a library very cheap compared to the Xbox world. Xbox has a decent game rental library service though (Game Pass); it’s also on Windows, but with fewer titles for now.
If he’s not used to using the mouse & keyboard, many titles will be harder or impossible to play. Not all PC games support the Xbox controller, but more and more do.
There’s far less parental control on PC games, and any online game is probably going to subject your kid to all sorts of potential hecklers, though actual pedophiles etc. seem to be pretty rare (or at least were when I was 13)
Reiterating that PC upkeep is a general PITA, and he’s going to have to want to learn to maintain it if he wants to be able to keep playing over the years
To counterpoint this a little: These days consoles tend to lock in the amount of graphic fidelity you see in PC games since there’s not much value in the developers making the PC version 3x better than the console version. Rather the console version is “good enough” for the PC, plus maybe a few extra tweaks or options. So a PC able to run Xbox stuff on Day 1 is probably going to be pretty decent at running Xbox quality stuff on Day 600.
Some people definitely like chasing the newest hardware and running a game at 4k and 120fps but the card they have now could be running it at 1080p and 60fps just like a console would. If you have to upgrade cards during its life, you could go midrange card to three years from now’s midrange card and still have console-or-better experiences even if you can’t run 4k Ultra settings.
I’ll remind him that most of his buddies will be jonesing for, and likely getting, the new Xbox and that he would be able to play with them / talk about games with them.
I’m not much of a gamer (like, not at all) but once in while I get a hankering to play Tomb Raider or something, and I much prefer consoles to PC’s. Having the new Xbox would benefit me as well
Third option: from what I read, the Xbox X isn’t getting any exclusives for a while, but PS5 is. So he (and his friends) may want to get the console that could allow them to play more games.
That said, I bought a PC. But I’d never get a prebuilt at that budget. Build it yourself, and you could get a decent PC for your budget. I got about $430 for my build without a new GPU.
