My sister in the country is looking to get a games PC for my BIL this year for Christmas. Too far away for me to help them so looking for a PC builder that people have had good experience with.
At the moment she's looking at these people:
I haven't had any experience with them but think her son bought a PC from them.
Appreciate any thoughts.
Only drawback is support and delivery timeframes, which makes it a risky venture for someone inexperienced in diagnosing faults as well as coming up to Christmas.
Otherwise they'd be my first choice, I've already bought 3 PCs from them
If you want a no fuss, quality build Aftershock is the best choice.
If you want cheap but a small possibility of issues, try TechFast or BPC. Both searchable on here, read the comments.
I'll probably point her this way. I think my nephew was happy with his but best to get some feedback. I'm a long way to assist and even though I build my own (and particularly given the issues with my latest build and the Ryzen processor) I'm not really interested in building one for her and having to support it.
So one other question.
With the price of GPUs being insane at the moment the base model video card in the system is a GTX 1650 4GB. Is this actually usable for any modern games? I don't do PC games anymore so no idea.
The next upgrade is $380 for either a RTX 2060 6GB, RTX 3060 12GB or RX 6600 8GB.
And I don't really know what games my BIL will be playing. He's not likely to be super anal on having the settings maxed but obviously would like good quality on a 32" monitor.
The GTX 1650 will be useable yes. how good it will look depends on the demands of the game and the settings he has to tweak to get a game to play smoothly.
Is it the best choice? Well this is subjective and depends on the budget. Personally, I would buy the best I could afford to ensure compatibility with anything I want to play now and in the future. Of course the beauty of a PC is you can upgrade later, but some say we will never see a return to true pre-pandemic prices.
If you want to compare synthetic benchmarks (not necessarily real world use) you can check here..
What I can say is that he should be gaming in 1440p on a 32" monitor, otherwise he will be able to see the pixels. This may or may not be an issue for some people.
What resolution is the 32" monitor? That will make a lot of difference. If it's 1440p and he's sitting close to the screen, the 1650 is only going to manage 1440p on lower graphics settings. Trying to run 1080p on a 1440p screen isn't going to be a great experience, I would imagine.
In normal times, the 1650 is a sub $200 card that provides very basic gaming. You'd be vastly better off buying an Xbox Series S for $500 (or playing the waiting game on a PS5/Series X). It would deliver a great 1440p gaming experience similar to a 3060. You could pay for 12 months of gamepass, a couple of decent games, a gaming keyboard/mouse (they work with consoles these days), a few bottles of scotch and still have money left over compared to buying the system.
She hasn't got the monitor yet, but I was going to suggest a 1440p. I've recommended she go with the 3060 upgrade.
Funny you mention this. He's been into X Box recently (the last 15 years or so) as got sick of continually upgrading PC components. But now wants to go back to PC. I agree with you though. My son (finally) got a PS5 last week and it's incredible.
I will ask her why he wants to go back to PC. Maybe doesn't realise it's a $2k buy in minimum.
He definitely picked the worst point in history to switch to PC, personally I spent a couple of grand on my gaming rig this year, but most of the games I play are via Game Pass with an Xbox controller… I have regrets (granted, it's a work machine too, but I spent more on my GPU than an entire console costs).
There's still the benefit of cheaper games, more games, things like Epic freebies and Steam sales but right now it's hard to make up that $1000+ difference.
I think I'll recommend she upgrade to the GTX 3060 if it's in her budget (point is moot if she can't afford it) as that's $380 extra, rather than $700+ if he tries the 1650 and finds it's shit. I did look at the GPU benchmarks and it's very "underwhelming" to say the least. If he wants more after that at least he'll get some coin for selling the 3060. Can't see the 1650 being worth much 2nd hand??
Final update:
Thanks everyone for the great advice. I've spoken to my sister again and I think she's decided to defer the PC change for a year and get him a PS5. Hopefully she can get one for him before XMas although her son has a mate working at JB so probably won't have a problem, and stock does seem a lot better now.
TechFast OZB deals are most of the time pretty good, and people generally are giving good feedback. Pricing is also quite competitive when compared to most of those mainstream PC building brands.