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So. My PC, a good year ago, stopped being able to play newer games. Too obsolete. And the time has come to upgrade. The question is, do I invest in an uber-rig, or should I just get a PS4 pro?

By my calculations, to get a really good rig capable of doing Fallout 4 on the new high res settings or ME:Andromeda on the best settings will set me back about £50 a month for the next 4 years on a model bought on finance. Probably cost me a little over two grand all told.

On the other hand, I could just snap up a PS4 Pro for about three hundred quid.

It feels a little as if the price differential is absurdly vast, especially knowing that the PC will probably devalue by £500 within a year. So I'm torn. Is it really worth investing in an upmarket rig? Because I want something that can play games really well for at least another five years, but I also like money available for other things.

I think at this point, it depends on the # of games you're looking at... will you get more value playing on PS4? Or the PC?

I'm where you're right now... my gaming laptop is practically out of date. But, I still have my PS4 and finding myself playing on that more and more.

I've already bought/had bought most the games I want to play on Steam already, which is a definite point in favour of the PC. But with that price differential, I can rebuy every game and still have over a thousand pounds left!

 Ketara wrote:
I've already bought/had bought most the games I want to play on Steam already, which is a definite point in favour of the PC. But with that price differential, I can rebuy every game and still have over a thousand pounds left!

Heh... good point.

My opinion on the PC route... wait. The big thing right now is VR gaming and rigs... which are pretty pricey and the fact that it's still so new, I'm not sure if it's worth it at the moment.

Whereas, the PS4, sony will support it with tons of games for quite some time.

Admittedly, I can see your dilemma...

Are you looking for a laptop, or a desktop?

I've been reading up on gaming PCs a lot lately. I'm planning to build a not-console for myself soon, basically a gaming PC in a small case and connected to my TV, and I'll save my actual PC for things like design work. Just don't like gaming at my desk after working at my desk all day, but graphics and stuff are just so much better on a PC.

Anyways.. the biggest cost with a gaming PC is the video card.. and also the most important if you want face-melting frame rates. It also depends on what your needs are.. is HD / 1080p resolution good enough? If so that will help you save a lot. If you want 4k, you're going to need a Nvidia GTX 1080 card and they start at like $600. But if you just need good HD performance then a $100 GTX 1050 will be fine.

Also AMD's new Rizen CPUs just came out, but I heard newer Intel's are still better for gaming right now.

When it comes to PCs I usually like to buy more high end, and keep them for 3-4 years.. usually they end up lasting longer since I'll start swapping out parts as new stuff comes out.

I'm looking at a desktop. And that means something like a Geforce GTX 1080. Which don't come cheap!

 Ketara wrote:
I'm looking at a desktop. And that means something like a Geforce GTX 1080. Which don't come cheap!

As someone with a 1080, I'd recommend a 1070. Almost $200 less and it's quite close in performance.

I'm always going to be the guy who builds the PC over a console. I like having access to my steam library, I save money by building my own, and so on. So I'm pretty biased. You'd be out about 1k GBP for a solid gaming PC. My last complete replacement PC was built in 2007, and I finally replaced it in 2016 (with a video card replacement about 5 years in). I spend a ton of time on my PC and I make fairly decent money so it's an easy sell.

I recently got a new Laptop after my old one finally reached the point where it couldn't play new games at playable framerates.

My new laptop has a 6GB GTX 970M which seems to be able to run all the new(ish) games I've tried so far at 1080p with settings typically on high/very high, maybe some things up to Ultra. So far I've tested it on DOOM, Dark Souls 3, Skyrim SE, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 4, Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Of course for resolutions higher than 1080p you're gonna need a beefier card and I'm not sure how it'll hold up in a couple years time with regards to keeping the settings high (thank god for the slower replacement rate of consoles is all I'll say for keeping the minimum graphics settings somewhat down, but I'm not a massive graphics whore and often don't really notice the difference between medium/high/etc. when I'm actually playing )

Here's what I'm gonna be using for my not-console

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/landing/bulldog

It's $400 for the case, power supply, motherboard and liquid cpu cooler. Then I'll have to add in a CPU (intel 7700k) and 32 GB of Ram. And then take the 1070 video card I have in my PC now and stick that inside and then I just need to find a good game controller and I'll be all set.

My desktop just died again. It's had a motherboard problem for going on a year, but either the RAM or hard drive has blown now. And I don't think I have the energy to take it to pieces, source components, and spend a day doing diagnostics again. Considering it was a second hand piecemeal machine I put together five years ago for £200, I think I've had my money's worth out of it, but it's probably time to move on. It still uses DDR2 RAM for christ sake.

I've got this beaut lined up and the finance approved. Haven't clicked confirm yet so I can show around and see if I can get a better financing deal elsewhere. But I'm almost decided on a gaming computer.

ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Turbo 8GB GDDR5X
2TB Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive
AMD Wraith Spire LED CPU Air Cooler
Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR4 2400MHz Red
ASUS PRIME X370-PRO Motherboard
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Corsair CS650M 650W Power Supply
AMD RYZEN 7 1800X RYZEN Processor (3.6 ghz)
ASUS XONAR DGX PCI Express Sound Card
300Mbps Dual Aerial Wireless Card

Any comments/advice on the build whilst I search?

Doesn't appear to have an SSD, which these days is pretty standard, especially if you're going to rock a top end GPU and CPU. You certainly have enough RAM, hell, even 16 is more than enough these days for even the most intense games.

The GPU/CPU combo is actually matched well though, no real bottlenecks, which is good for a pre-built.

If I was to build a PC in that vein, I could probably shave off 16GB worth of RAM to throw in a decent SSD, but that PC will crush just about any game you can throw at it.

Why would I want one? I mean, I know that they're a little faster and more durable, but is that really worth the x5 cost per gigabyte? Serious question, I know something about computers, but not a vast amount. What I know I've learnt 'on the job', as it were.

 Ketara wrote:
Why would I want one? I mean, I know that they're a little faster and more durable, but is that really worth the x5 cost per gigabyte? Serious question, I know something about computers, but not a vast amount.

They're generally best used for things that want loading quickly. Most people will use a smaller SSD solely for a system partition, for example, so the computer boots faster etc. A good amount of gamers prefer to put larger games with lots of load time on them to avoid sitting watching rotating sprites and the same line of hint text for five minutes between areas.

Basically, it comes down to how much the speed at which things are done is important to you. A system SSD is never really a bad idea, but outside of that it's more down to preference. Do you want a small number of games on a smaller, more expensive storage medium in order to cut their loading times? Or are you perfectly fine tolerating loading times if it means getting more storage at a much cheaper price?

 Ketara wrote:
Why would I want one?

An SSD? For one thing the load times aren't exactly marginally faster, they're rocket ship faster. I don't play the heaviest games but I do play MMOs, and there it's pretty nice if you can recover from a crash fast. Not that I suffer from such frequently, but on the occasions I've had WoW freeze totally the SSD means I'm back from a full reboot in well under a minute, even if I stop to set up my TS3 too. If you only play single-player games then yes, it's more a quality of life upgrade than a necessary one.

I run my WIN 7 Operating System and utility programs (web browser etc) off a 120 Gb SSD, it was a good decision. Boots the PC up very fast, 5 - 10 seconds to Desktop. Web browser (Opera) is very fast, when the Wifi isn't taking a vacation or being overloaded by my parents and brother's Ipads, laptops and smart tvs. In fact I regret not getting a bigger SSD as its usually maxed out (12 Gb free currently). Should have gotten a bigger hard drive too for that matter. (1 Tb, 82 Gb free currently. Had to delete Rome 2 TW and Shogun 2 TW to clear space).


I am (relatively) clueless with computers but I was able to build a reasonably decent budget gaming PC two years ago in 2015 following a youtube guide by Jackfrags. I followed this build exactly (my first experience manually building a PC), but with the addition of an SSD (as mentioned above) for the OS. Still holds up reasonably well today, and I can play Battlefield 1 smoothly at medium - high settings at an average of about 40fps. This build cost me about £600 in 2015 (with an SSD extra), but is probably a lot cheaper now.

I'm the sort of Gamer who prioritizes gameplay and utility over graphics, so I care more about maxing out the draw distance (e.g. Planetside 2) or getting a smooth and stable framerate (Battlefield) than I do about playing with Ultra High graphics.




Somewhat amusingly, the game I have most trouble with is Minecraft, which slows to 1 or 2 fps at max Draw distance (but thats probably more to do with Java and the poor optimization of Minecraft in general than my hardware).

 Ketara wrote:
Why would I want one? I mean, I know that they're a little faster and more durable, but is that really worth the x5 cost per gigabyte? Serious question, I know something about computers, but not a vast amount. What I know I've learnt 'on the job', as it were.

SSD's aren't a little faster, they're a lot faster. They also have the advantage of being able to wipe your OS drive if you have an issue without touching your data & documents drive.

If you're financing it and on a limited budget, I would again recommend downgrading your 1080 to a 1070 and using the savings to get a 256gb SSD to install windows onto. I say this as someone who owns a 1080 - it's not worth the premium over a 1070. You will have a noticeably better experience with your daily computing.

Yeah, you need a SSD. On even an older PC, if you reinstall windows on a SSD you'll see a big boost of speed. What I would suggest is just get a 128 GB M.2 SSD and stick it on your motherboard, all new boards support them, even the little ITX boards. 128 GB will cost like $50-60. It's small and won't take up any extra space in your case. Install Windows on that and any important apps, and then use the bigger hard drive just for storage.

Personally, if I can afford it when I do my system, I'm gonna do all SSDs. In this day and age, unless you need buttloads of storage, I don't think old fashioned mechanical drives are even necessary. SSD prices have come down a lot and will continue to so if you can afford it I say go for it. Right now I'm planning to do a 128 GB M.2 for the system, and a 512 GB for storage, and I can just add on another one later if I start to run low on space. That Bulldog case has room for 3 2.5" drives and 1 M.2 slot on the motherboard.

Even though SSD's are more standard these days, you hardly NEED one, it's probably the first place I'd try and save money if buying a new gaming PC.

Unless you're buying an SSD big enough to install games on, it's not going to help your gaming performance in the slightest, and even if you do it's simply going to reduce load times, not smooth out the gameplay itself.

An SSD will speed up Windows boots and speed up the load time on smaller applications that you install on them, but once a program is open it just sits in the RAM anyway.

I've always wondered if people get deceived by a perceived boost in performance when going to an SSD because they're going from an old bogged down Windows install on an old HDD to a new Windows install on new SSD.

If you're looking for advice on your PC build, I'd go over to a place like [H]ardforum or something, I've found the people over there pretty helpful when presenting them ideas for a new PC.

In general over my last 15 or so years of PC gaming, I've learned not to care about whether I play games at max settings and just buy slightly cheaper computers these days So few PC games push PC hardware to the limit these days anyway that you can get something that plays 95% of games at 100% settings and the last 5% you just drop down to 95% quality and you're good to go. I've been gaming on my GTX960 for a while now and have no tremendous desire to upgrade. It still looks way better than a console

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Unless you're buying an SSD big enough to install games on, it's not going to help your gaming performance in the slightest, and even if you do it's simply going to reduce load times, not smooth out the gameplay itself.

Well yes - even a 256 SSD will be big enough to install your heaviest game (or two) on. What it does for performance will ofc depend on the games you play. I've found it to be an incredible help especially in MMOs and other games where you group up with others over the net. With your game on an SSD and access to quality bandwidth you will never be the one people wait for. As said, even with a total system freeze (not an issue for years, tbh) I reload Windows, start my TeamSpeak3 and get back in the game I'm playing in less time than some others wait to restart their Windows.

Yeah some games really benefit from being on an SSD, but it all depends on the games you want to play. You could play 20 different games none of which benefit from being on an SSD, and then get 2 in a row that do. I could imagine some MMO's benefiting from being on an SSD, online FPS I think it depends on the game, I've had some that even when installed on an SSD I didn't seem to get in to the game any faster, it always seemed like it was the connection speed that slowed people down there as I distinctly remember some people whining about being the last one in to the game in spite of having an SSD Even installed on a HDD most online FPS games have a countdown before the game starts and I've never had a HDD so slow that I didn't get in the game before that countdown finished.

Mostly I gave up trying to install games on my SSD because I can only have 3 or 4 games installed on it at once and having to move games around between my SSD and my HDD is way more hassle than it's worth for most games A couple of games it's worth it though, the original Witcher game has hideous load times and gets a lot faster on an SSD (though in the end I created a RAMDisk for The Witcher ) and as you say, probably some MMO's it's worth while.

Total system freezes have never really been a problem for me in the 15 or so years I've been PC gaming. Not to the point where I consider it as part of my PC purchasing habits

That said, I'm not saying DON'T buy an SSD, I'm just saying if I were trying to save money on a gaming PC, the SSD would probably be the first thing to go.

All my recent computers have had SSD's, but that's because I also use my computers for work related stuff and have specific software that benefits from being on an SSD. In spite of having an SSD my computer actually boots quite slow because I have so many HDDs and for whatever reason they initialise in sequence rather than simultaneously

Thanks for the advice gents, I'll swap out the hard drive for an SSD version. Didn't realise the difference was substantial enough to be worth the cost, but you've educated me otherwise.

And Ouze, I'm looking to get The new Fallout 4 high res pack running and be prepared for 4K gaming when it comes along. So essentially, I'm looking to be able to match whatever is running on the PS5 when it hits the shelves. It appears that the 1080 is at that level according to what I'm reading online, whereas the 1070 is /almost but not quite there. The goal here is to make a machine that will last me another six or seven years of high-quality gaming. With that in mind, would you still say that the 1070 is sufficient?

 Ketara wrote:
The goal here is to make a machine that will last me another six or seven years of high-quality gaming. With that in mind, would you still say that the 1070 is sufficient?

I'd say in 3 or so years you'll want to replace the card either way.

Graphics cards are easy to replace, buy the one you want now rather than the one you think you'll want in 3 years because in 3 years you can just buy another one

I have both an ssd and a hard drive.

Windows OS and certain applications e.g web browser on the ssd

Games, photographs, documents and non essential applications on the hard drive

Does this sound like a better layout?


Kolink Avaitor Red Trim ATX Mid Case
AMD RYZEN 7 1800X RYZEN Processor
AMD Wraith Spire LED CPU Air Cooler
ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 Dual 8GB GDDR5
Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR4 2400MHz Red
500GB Samsung 750 EVO 2.5 SSD
Gigabyte GC-WB867D-1 PCI-e Wireless & Bluetooth Card
ASUS XONAR DGX PCI Express Sound Card
ASUS PRIME X370-PRO Motherboard
Corsair CS650M 650W Power Supply

After finding more opinion corroborating what Ouze said, I downgraded the graphics card. I also stripped the RAM down to 16gb, as most places seem to think 32 RAM doesn't do much more. I've upgraded to an SSD though. All in all, I've slashed about £200 off the cost too.

You'll probably still want a normal HDD in the 1-2TB range for movies and games that you don't care how fast the boot time is.

Otherwise looks great.

Yeah, you really don't want to be dumping photos, games and other big files on your SSD.

I already have about three other terabyte harddrives I can easily plug in. So that's not a concern.

If you don't have a 4K display yet, and won't for a while, it might be cheaper to get a lower card like a 1060 for now, and then buy a bigger card when you get your 4K monitor, then sell the old one on ebay. You'll get great HD performace on a lower card, and in a year or so the 1080 cards will be cheaper because the next big thing will be coming out.

 Ketara wrote:


ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 Turbo 8GB GDDR5X
2TB Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive
AMD Wraith Spire LED CPU Air Cooler
Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR4 2400MHz Red
ASUS PRIME X370-PRO Motherboard
Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Corsair CS650M 650W Power Supply
AMD RYZEN 7 1800X RYZEN Processor (3.6 ghz)
ASUS XONAR DGX PCI Express Sound Card
300Mbps Dual Aerial Wireless Card

Any comments/advice on the build whilst I search?

That is heavily upsold.

GTX1080 ok, its a nice grapghics card but you can get food perfrmance from the GTX1060 to the point where you wojnt notice much difference. Are you going for 1440p display, if so then copnsider the 1080 otherwise drop in spec. Also there arent any games that actually use 8Gb graphics at the moment, most use 4GB, again you can use this with 1440p, but that is just an extravagence IMHO.

Second drop most of the RAM, you can do ok with 8GB, and buy another 8GB later to minimise financing.

Third, all that rig then you put Windows 10 on it.

Fourth, get an SSD for the OS and hungrier games..

Noticed while typing that some of the above points have been covered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Adendum, dont replace the HDD with ann SSD, take both. SSD's have a shortwer lifespan so it helps to place media and temp files etc and all internet stuff on the HDD, its also far cheaper.

250Gb SSD is about right
1-2TB for the HDD.

 Ketara wrote:
I also stripped the RAM down to 16gb, as most places seem to think 32 RAM doesn't do much more.

Short of doing heavy-duty graphical modelling or video editing etc. 32gb is most definitely overkill. I might go as far as to say even 16gb is a little excessive, and if you're looking to shave as much of the cost off as possible, I'll echo Orlanth's suggestion of starting off with 8gb and and getting more at a later date if you feel it's needed.