Cheap "Gaming" PC..?

Technology and Internet
#1

G’day,

We’re all friends here, right?

I have lost.

My (14yo) son wants to buy a “gaming PC” to play games with his friends. Can’t really begrudge him, I guess… it was part of my own urge to own a computer back in the early 90’s - to play games. And the reason I upgraded from that first Mac Classic - to play better games! :slight_smile:

My problem is, I have no idea where to start. I know that on his budget (he’s got it in his head that $400 - $500 should get him started) he’s going to have to go second hand… (We looked today in JB, and his budget barely gets him a monitor… the 2 tower PCs they had were $700 - $900)… and looking over on eBay, I see he should be able to pick up a reasonable size HD-monitor for around $100. I realise he’ll probably want higher resolution, and we may need to investigate that based on the games he wants to play… but that should be a starting point based on $$.

When it comes to the box itself… what’s reasonable?? Again on eBay… $500 would buy an box with an i5 processor and Intel HD 530 graphics card and something like 16GB RAM / 512GB SSD. But no idea whether that’s good or not! I am thinking I may need him to talk to his friends and come back with some game titles, and then check their requirements, as a way to gauge what he needs???

He’s only saved about $150 so far… so have 3-6 months to figure things out.

Thanks for any advice.

Cheers

cosmic

#2

That’s a pretty small budget for a gaming PC, as you’ve already discovered. An option that you might want to look into is to find out what games he wants to play, and then see if they’re able to be played via GeForce Now or perhaps even Xbox Live Premium (both are game streaming services, GeForce Now lets you play games from Steam, Epic etc - whereas Xbox Live Premium lets you play Xbox games without having an Xbox, oh and it includes a whole bunch of games.)

#3

I suspect at that budget you would be better off looking at a XBox console. The console could be hooked up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Additionally, the XBox Live subscription FaultyTaco mentioned would give him access to a huge range of old and new games with titles being added regularly. Would definitely be the best bang for buck. It also somewhat limits his ability to get into any trouble. The current gen of XBox consoles are also great for emulation using the built in dev mode. So that opens the door to thousands more titles.

If you’re looking for a PC, second hand is your only option. For a monitor, aim for 1080p. For gaming, a higher refresh rate would be more beneficial (e.g. 1080p @ 120hz would be better than 4K @ 60hz).
PC component wise, the biggest cost would be the GPU. Prices are still quite high on those and integrated graphics won’t get him a playable experience on any recent titles.
I can answer any questions you may have about different PC components, so feel free to ask.

#4

Bit of a hard slog there with that budget. Even if you wanted a console (PS5 or Xbox) they are impossible to come by at the moment.
Do you know what games he wants to play?

At a minimum I would be looking for a used Nvidia 1080 GTX, but even that will cost your son his entire budget.
Before work provided me with my own machines I repurposed my 2009 Mac Pro (dual quad core 2.93Ghz) as a Linux/Windows box with a used Nvidia 1080 GTX that I grabbed of OCAU when everyone was upgrading to RTX2000 series cards. This worked quite well at 1080p for some simple gaming in steam.

My thoughts are that $1000 budget is more realistic, but even then it may not provide a satisfactory experience for the games he wants to play.

Good luck.

#5

Thanks @FaultyTaco @DogKnight @leon !

We have an XBox One S… which I gather is at least 1-2 full iterations old now. But it resides in the living room, and he’s wanting something he can use in his bedroom (as much to get away from his little brothers, that can’t play some of the “older” games that he wants to play, as anything), and I know in particular he and his friends are into Steam games.

Can you play Steam on XBox? Just did a google and it seemed the answer was yes? If that’s feasible - could potentially upgrade the living room XBox, and let him have the old one… then he just needs a screen, keyboard/monitor…

Otherwise…

I have asked him to check what titles in particular he / they are wanting to play, so we can then get some spec requirements.

Thanks for the advices, especially regarding screen refresh. I told him he would only be getting HD, but I hadn’t thought about refresh. Will keep an eye out for that.

He’s not being too unrealistic about what he’ll be able to afford. His main issue at the moment is that his small laptop that he uses at school isn’t able to even try to run some games.

Hmm… I wonder if my MacPro5,1 - with a better graphics card - may be another alternative. I love the idea of him still having to use a Mac, to play PC games… :slight_smile:

#6

Definitely possible with a better graphics card, but you would want to use bootcamp. You would need to take into account physical space requirements of the GPU and also availability of PCIE power connectors.

Steam on XBox probably isn’t a viable option. What articles are referring to is a service called GeForce now. It allows you to essentially rent/subscribe to a PC provided by nVidia. On that PC, you can run steam, purchase games, and play them. But this is game streaming, and it happens through the consoles web browser (MS Edge on the XBox consoles). Technically this approach can be done on most computers as well, including Macs.
Unfortunately streaming a game does introduce latency, especially with the average Australian internet connection. And even in the best case scenario is not ideal for any games where quick reactions are required.
And to clarify, my previous comments about using a XBox were in relation to the current ‘Series’ consoles. I am not sure about capabilities of the XBox One models.

The benefit of going a PC is that at least he will be able to save up and upgrade it over time. Will be the start of an expensive hobby most of us know well.
For that budget, you’ll be looking at something around a 4th - 8th gen i5 or i7 or maybe first gen AMD Ryzen. GPU wise, maybe a GTX970, GTX 1060, RX570. 16gb of RAM hopefully. Will probably come with a mechanical HDD. If it does though, a SATA SSD will be a nice cheap upgrade. A system like this would allow him to get into gaming albeit probably with lower graphical settings depending on the game. A 1080p display will make it easier to run games compared to a higher resolution monitor as there are less pixels that require processing.

We all need to start somewhere and he will probably just be wrapped to have a computer to call his own.

#7

When I upgraded my 5.1 Mac Pro I had trouble installing Windows for some reason. I tried following numerous guides but I gave up in the end. It could certainly be an option though if you can find someone on here who knows how to do it.

#8

I run Windows 10 on my 4,1 and 5,1 Mac Pros. I have also recently converted by 5,1 to a Ubuntu 20 LTS machine. I did install Steam into Linux but would occasionally run into issues running some games that I could never sort out. Not sure what the problem was.

Ubuntu on the Mac Pro was a little bit of a pain to get set up with the GTX 1080 as there aren’t boot screens. I’m trying to remember what I did exactly, but I think I used a GTX680 with a Mac Pro ROM to give me boot screens and set up Ubuntu. Once it was all running and I had Nvidia drivers installed I think I shut down the machine, swapped in the GTX 1080 and rebooted. Linux was the only HDD in the machine and it would therefore boot by default.

To power the GTX I had a dual 6 pin to single 8 pin power cable. Has been running rock solid for years and Power supply doesn’t seem too stressed out.

#9

Now I’m potentially moving on to a Mac mini, my son is getting a bit more excited about inheriting the MacPro5,1 as his “gaming PC”. I just realised the other day this is going to involve me needing to buy Windows again… that’s twice in one life time… Yikes! (Had it on my MacBookPro almost solely for doing my taxes…)

Would this Samsung TV be suitable for gaming?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/544316-REG/Samsung_LN40A650A1FXZA_LN40A650_40_1080p_LCD.html

I think I saw this model at an op-shop on the weekend for $80. If it’s the same model, then it’s HD, with 120hz frame rate… It has HDMI inputs, or what I’m guessing would be an inferior VGA input. I have the 32" model myself since 2010, and used it short-term with my G5 tower. But I wasn’t gaming…

Even if not… am tempted to go and get it for myself! :slight_smile: As far as tv’s go, I’ve always been impressed…

–
Actually - was just considering the size of that screen - that would be HUGE!

#10

I asked over on MacRumors, and someone pointed to a video on YouTube of an Aussie guy who used a high spec Mac Pro 5,1 for this purpose just recently… The high end machine with heaps of RAM and a $400 graphics card still struggled to render smooth results for game play - at least until he reduced a lot of the quality settings…

I was playing Halo (ie 2001) online last night on the Pro, and whilst gameplay is pretty smooth (I think lag is the main issue rather than CPU/GPU) - the resolution settings I use are hardly competitive with modern games…

When my son was using my 2009 iMac for playing Steam games (under MacOS), he was enjoying the bigger screen than his lil Lenovo school laptop… though did say that a lot of the games just wouldn’t run - either cos it was a Mac, or because of the speed - too laggy.

My plan at the moment as such is to go ahead with the MacPro idea. I’ll help him to find a second hand monitor (which he can then of course use later with a real PC), and then just set it up to boot under Windows and see if he can at least get to play the same games he could on the iMac. Given the specs, I am hoping the MacPro will perform better and give him some more options.

Then when he’s saved up some more money again, we’ll look for an actual ‘gaming pc’.

#11

What graphics card is in the Mac Pro? Just the standard one? And what operating system is it running?

#12

Yep - standard graphics, and it’s on Sierra.

(That’s the last OS that supports Final Cut Pro 7… which was my tool of choice for editing…)

#13

I’ve decided to sell my Mac Pro (and my Pismo but that’s another story) and I’m going to put it back to a stock configuration. So I will be selling the Mac Vid Cards Nvidia GTX 980 4GB card separately. I don’t know if it would suit your requirements but if you are interested just let me know. I have some other stuff you might be interested in as well.

Just for reference, I am running Call Of Duty Black Ops (I know that’s not a new game) on this on full highest settings…

#14

Great card to get a Mac Pro playing games. Last Nvidia card with supported drivers for Mac. You may be able to get some slightly faster AMD cards, but likely to cost even more.

#15

Samsung LCD Monitor 24" S24E450B
$79 on eBay second hand… 5ms response time, only 60hz, but hopefully that’ll get him a start with the Mac Pro.

@richard - Thanks for thinking of me/us. :slight_smile: PM coming your way.

#16

That looks like a bargain…

#17

Yeah - from what I’ve seen in the completed sales on eBay over the past few weeks, it seemed to be pretty good. It’s taken about 1/3 of my son’s savings, but as I explained to him, he’ll be able to continue using it when he gets a ‘real’ PC too.

Hopefully this week I’ll get the 2012 mini sorted out properly - have the JBOD on its way for all of my drives, and will get IT to sort out my connection to the remote server, then I should be good to remove the MacPro from my setup. (gasp!)

Then have the can-o-air ready to clean the Pro up, new PRAM battery to see if that fixes the unexpected shut downs. I’ll pull the SSD from the iMac that died and put that in the Pro, so I can keep my Samsung Evo, and track down a 2nd Sata cable so I can put it into the mini.

I see we can ‘trial’ Windows 10 for free with only a few limitations. If he then decides he needs Windows 11, well he’ll have to buy it, cos I wont lol.

#18

I don’t know if Apple is “frustrating”, or if I’m just too far behind.

Rightly or wrongly, I’m keeping a MacOS instal on one of the drives in the MacPro5,1 that my son is now using.

It had El Capitan installed, which was running efficiently with a number of games on Steam, however - Steam would not let him do anything online with friends as it no longer supports El Capitan. So, I set up a new drive, with 1 partition for Mac OS Mojave, and 1 partition as ExFat, that could be for storage of PC content when we get Windows set up.

First odd thing - El Capitan can’t see the Mojave partition. Not sure why? But when booting under El Capitan, the Mojave partition just doesn’t appear to exist.

By holding option on startup, I could however choose the Mojave startup, so booted into that. And - Mojave on this particular Mac Pro was treacle. Useless. Games all crawling and the interface also sluggish, even though there was no indication in Activity Monitor that the CPU was struggling. Guess it’s more a GPU issue.

In order to meet half way - find an OS that is usable, higher than El Capitan because Steam is not happy with it - I download the Sierra installer. Try to run it - but Mojave says it’s too old to run. GRRR. That’s presumably Apple attempting to block users from downgrading their OS? Just like they can forceably do in iOS?

So now I’m going to have to boot back in El Capitan, use the Sierra installer after I sort out the partition issue (not seeing the Mojave partition)… then reboot under Sierra to see if that is Steam-happy, and usable…

THEN I’ll be back on the course for trying to sort out Windows…

I did try last night - blank DVD, went to burn the Windows 10 64bit installer - but it’s too big for a DVD…! Also after reading, saw a bunch of stuff about needing to make sure it’s a bootable USB…

As I said - maybe I’m really just not up to date enough with my OS’s and hardwares and everything… but this issue of “just” installing an OS has been very frustrating the past few months…

#19

Cosmic, I think from High Sierra onwards the OS partition needs to be APFS or it won’t install.
I think HS can be cloned onto an HFS+ but the installer won’t work or will want to convert the partition to APFS during the install.
This is also why El Capitan can’t see the Mojave partition. - It doesn’t understand APFS.

Old installers have time expired. - You need to be sure you have one with the current certificates. Hope this helps.
Current installers for old systems: Go Here

Another path is to install onto an external disk partition using another old machine to do the install, then clone it back onto your target machine.

I’m using Parallels to run old Mac OS’s in VM’s for software that is not supported by more recent OS versions. - Start and stop the VM, without rebooting the machine, and you can run down to 10.7 Lion in Parallels.

1 Like
#20

Ok, well - for now - I have Sierra running. Much smoother than Mojave. Son is happy from that Mac side at least.

I have formatted a USB as exFat, and copied over the Win10 instal files from the MS website. As noted - wouldn’t burn onto a disk as it was too big. Then, it wouldn’t write to FAT32 as 1 of the files was too large. No idea if it will boot or not - will try it on the weekend…