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It's really not that hard to understand this market imo. Keeping it really basic for ease of use over accuracy:
cpu - raw thinking speed
motherboard - aka mobo, think of it as the bit you screw everything else onto, just like a lego board
ram - short term, fast access memory, the cpu needs this as it can't cope with everything you throw at it, it's like the computers notebook or what it uses to juggle
gpu - graphics speed and self explanatory at this level of explanation
ssd/ hard drive - long term memory / like a library of all your stuff
Now here's the thing. RAM is always fast. More of it is better. Faster RAM doesn't really matter. Just make sure you have enough and that the motherboard has slots / supports what you need. 8GB is probably fine. space for 16 is sensible. You want a board with DDR3 RAM not because its so much faster than DDR2 or DDR (!), but because it is what is / was used in the mobos /cpus you will want.
CPU it's Intel or AMD. Several years ago AMD were not competing high end. In the used market you are going to want an Intel at the moment. They are all numbered by year, if overclockable they are more exp. and have a k on the end of the code name. You are going to want a 2000, 3000 or 4000 series probably. You want a quad core, not dual core. You can compare speeds by googling the component name against another e.g. "i5 2500k vs i5 4650". If overclocked it's like making your engine run faster. Think of it in percentage terms versus base clock and factor that in to your comparisons. Overclocking requires nice fans and heatsinks (large bits of metal with lots of fins connected to the metal plates above the CPU / GPU chips. Better fans/heatsinks also means a quieter PC when it's not being used for gaming.
GPU. The easiest component to upgrade. So long as the mobo has a PCI-E x16 slot to put it in you're fine. Just check the case is big enough to take it. Cases are easy enough to replace though esp. if your son is keen to do it himself. They're AMD or nvidia. Again, they follow a fairly easy to follow naming convention each year, e.g. Nvidia..... gtx 700 series, gtx 900 series, gtx 1000 series, rtx 2000 series. The second part of the nvidia code is e.g. 40 50 60, 70, 80. Enthusiast is anything at or over '70' e.g. gtx 780 or 970. Lower than a 70 is cheaper and inferior, sometimes over several generations. More than a 70 is very expensive when launched, i.e. for really well off folks. Add Ti means it's a turbo edition of that card basically brought out in response to competition. Top/popular models from previous nvidia years are gtx 780, 970, 980 1070 etc. These are the good ones that cost a few hundred pounds. They are all still capable cards whereas every year nvidia and AMD still churn out new budget cards that are much slower than the proper cards of yesteryear. On a budget you are going to be looking at gtx 970. The AMD cards of yesteryear (I have the 390) are power hungry.
On a budget your PSU (power regulator) is probably going to be low quality so I would stick with Intel and nvidia as these are more power efficient. Over time, a good PSU will pay for itself by not ruining your expensive components with voltage spikes etc. But don't worry too much for now.
SSD- get a 240GB SSD, preferably Intel for reliability. I like the 520 series as they're server grade. There are faster these days. But they're all so fast, it doesn't really matter. The SSD will mean the PC is nicer to use than a modern tablet etc. Without an SSD, it will just feel old, and nobody will want to use it.
You'll also want a 500GB hard drive or bigger to begin with.
Monitors matter, but they are all a lot better for the money these days, and are easily upgraded. Also the differences aren't enormous imo. Gamers talk about speed/refresh rate and used to like TN panels but they must have been blind as they look awful with color shifts etc. I'd go for a used ips screen for eye comfort and general use. IPS screens can be okay for gaming, but it's model specific so check for lag. Dell are very popular so easy to find used / i.e. worth researching by model name as you have a chance of finding whichever ones you prefer.
Get a nice keyboard and mouse too, old ones can ruin the experience. I prefer Logitech wireless mouses with back/forward button on the left hand side, and a small keyboard like the Microsoft Arc. These days the kids like gaudy keyboards for gaming I think so might want to allocate some presents from family for such upgrades. |
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Author: jouster
2-12-2019 03:21:13