The New PC Recommendation Thread

Life Technology
1

Currently I have a ten-year-old Asus desktop but I want a new up-to-date PC. I want to be able to play single-player RPG type games (think Elder Scrolls and whatever modern ones I don’t even know about) and possibly record playing, without lag.

I also use my computer to do basic stuff like surf the internet, watch YouTube, do basic word processing/spreadsheet stuff, and edit my photos and videos. Actually my current computer does most of that fine except the game part.

I need advice/suggestions on what to get to meet the above needs.

I’ve seen threads about building your own system but I’m not that tech savvy and would rather just get something already built.

Here’s my current computer’s info, if that helps

pc info
pc info685×863 99 KB

pc info 2
pc info 2406×582 80.8 KB

Any advice on what to ask for when I go to a computer place is greatly appreciated. For example, is there a certain level of graphics card that I should make sure to have? See, I have no idea what I’m talking about :woozy_face:

EDIT: In my mind I’m thinking $20,000NT, but I really have no idea what a good price is for what I want to use the computer for.

2

Yea

If you are going to play Cyberpunk 2077 you need a good PC. But it’s all based on your budget. Unfortunately past gen GPU has gone up in price because of COVID and is not really a good deal anymore, so depending on your budget get a good GPU. I suggest Geforce RTX 3070 if you can afford it, or maybe 3060 or something if you can’t. You don’t really need RTX class cards to play Cyberpunk but it just means the game looks better and runs better.

Anything below that will be more than enough. I play Cyberpunk with i3 8100 and Geforce 1050 and while the game isn’t that good looking and framerate isn’t high, it isn’t bad, it’s playable, and the game still looks pretty good. And that is more than enough to play TES, Fallout series, etc. as they’re older games and so don’t have as much requirements. Final Fantasy XIV practically requires no graphics power and would even run on an intel GPU.

2 Likes
3

If you want to play modern games and record, the GPU alone will be more than your budget.

4

Bear with my ignorance. Is GPU what is also referred to as a graphics card?

So for example, if I wanted to play Red Dead Redemption II (I have no idea if I would want to I just picked it out of thin air), I’m told I need this:

requirements
requirements1011×791 181 KB

GPU would be graphics card on this list, right?

5

Do you have a budget?

6

I’m thinking I don’t want to go more than 30k, and of course less would be better. I have no idea if this is reasonable or not.

7

That’s going to be next to impossible at $30,000 or less.

8

GPU would be graphics card. Stands for graphics processing unit. And do NOT go by minimum requirement. Minimum requirement is to be able to run the game at all (without it crashing) but it will not be a good run. Like Charles say in RDR2: “A man can live a week without his scalp, but it will not be a good week”.

You want 2x recommended to have a good experience in the game.

3 Likes
9

tl;dr if you

  1. Don’t want to open up your PC .
  2. Don’t plan to make upgrades of individual parts on your own.
  3. Don’t want to deal with installing anything (from the OS to the drivers).
  4. Can’t/don’t want to fix any problems you run into (either software or hardware related)

Get a laptop. Look into ASUS Zephyrus, Lenovo Legion, Acer Helios, HP Omen, TongFang(XMG, Eluktronics) products. Anything from these lines in the +/- 30k NT range are more than capable of what you’re looking for with some compromises.

The price will largely depend on the resolution and refresh rate of your monitor, the games you want to play, the in game settings you want to play at, and the FPS you want to play at.

  1. Does your budget include peripherals (monitor, keyboard/mouse, speakers/headphones) and Windows?
  2. Can you assemble and set it up on your own or are you looking at a pre-built PC?
  3. What’s the resolution and refresh rate of your monitor?

If you can’t assemble it on your own, I’m pretty sure you can buy the parts individually and let the guys over at Guang Hua assemble and set it up for you for a fee.

TES V Skyrim is quite old and will run smoothly on low end current gen parts, so no worries there.

whatever modern ones

Let’s use Cyberpunk 2077.
Do you want to play it at 2k or 4k at a constant 60+ FPS on ultra settings? No chance at 30k NT, not even close.
Do you want to play it at 1080p while sacrificing quality/frame rate? How low can you go? Medium? Low? 30 FPS? Doable at the 30k range.

You can use this website as a rough guide.
The Great, Superb, Excellent, and Outstanding tiers are all able to comfortably play Cyberpunk 2077 if you are able to make compromises in either the graphical quality or at the frame rate, so you either play at high settings with low frame rates, or low settings with high frame rates.

Assembling one on your own can seem a bit overwhelming but it’s just like making lego.

  1. Decide on a monitor (resolution and refresh rate[frames per second in games]).
  2. Use this website as a rough guide.
  3. Use this website to “assemble” it virtually and see if there are any incompatibilities.
  4. Order and wait for everything to arrive.
  5. Ask the guys at Guang Hua if they’re willing to assemble it for you.

You will end up with a better, cheaper, higher quality PC than any prebuilt you can find out there.

Have you considered laptops? Given that you won’t be taking advantage of the pros (fixing/replacing/upgrading parts on your own) of having a PC in the first place.
If you don’t want to go through any trouble of setting up anything, not even installing Windows or installing/updating drivers, then get previous gen or current gen laptops (just announced last week, some will probably be available for demo at Taipei Games Show this January, will surely be on sale anytime this first quarter of 2021).
The NT 34500 model you see in that link can comfortably run Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p *if you’re willing to make compromises.
It will blow the water out of any Elder Scrolls game you throw at it, even at ultra settings.
Cons of a laptop:

  1. Bad price/performance ratio compared to PCs (but you’re getting a prebuilt PC, so you’re already paying a preium)
  2. Hard/impossible to fix/replace parts on your own (but given that you’re looking at prebuilts, I’m inclined to believe that you will end up sending your PC to a repair shop if you run into any problems)

To add to the laptop’s case, it’s easy to forget the fact that they come with a monitor and a keyboard, so factor that into the cost as well. 2020 and above releases are also portable (light, <=15.6", can charge over USB-C) while beefy enough to run the games you mentioned.

3 Likes
10

My son wanted a laptop and we realized that even buying a Taiwanese brand (Acer) it was about US $300 to order from Amazon (which is doing free shipping to Taiwan now). We tried to figure out a desktop but the cost/space was just too much for us. Lots of good laptops available for cheap now.

11

Here is my recommendation:

CPU: A core i3 or i5 in the latest generation (10xxx series or something, I am not up to date on this).
GPU: A mid range nvidia or ATI offering, for example nvidia 3060 or something. Cost of that should be in the 4000-6000nt range.
RAM: As much as you can get, I would have 8G minimum, 16G is better!
PSU: Make sure it is up to it. Otherwise you’ll have BSOD and even magic smoke!
HDD: I find this isn’t as important as the others if you have enough RAM but make sure your system is clear and free of malware when running games. Cyberpunk on my computer runs ok if the HDD isn’t busy but runs like shit when it is. SSD may improve things.

Everything else doesn’t matter, do what you want there.

I built my system in 2019 for about 16,000NT. At 30k you should have something good. BUT MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH RAM!! I can’t say this enough. One reason why I freaking hate laptop is because they never include enough RAM in it, and they can’t be expanded or upgraded at all.

1 Like
12

Don’t use HDDs for the OS. Not using an SSD for the OS is certified masochism.

4 Likes
13

I’m not sure it makes a big difference. Laptops these days almost always use SSD now and because they have so little RAM, they’re still slow as fuck. SSD is nowhere near as fast as DRAM. Slow HDD can be tempered with a lot of RAM.

14

I just built a PC for myself. I would suggest that you either go for one of these.

1- GTX 1660 super (GPU)+ Ryzen 3300(CPU):

  • Cost around 20k
  • Suitable(ish) for 1080p

2- GTX 3060Ti (GPU) + Ryzen 3300 (CPU):

  • Roughly 30k
  • Easy 1440p on Ultra settings
  • If you want to splurge you can get a Ryzen 5600x as well but that would be overkill if you don’t use the pc for things other than gaming.

I can help you decide the rest but first you should choose which GPU and CPU you want.

Also I suggest coolpc. They will build the pc for you free of charge.

2 Likes
15

I’m sure you see the difference between SSD and HDD if you compare. An OS on SSD is… Unbelievably more responsive. Of course you’re right that RAM is very important, but from my experience an SSD is the single most helpful upgrade for any older PC.

Even the OPs PC might feel much faster after such an upgrade.

Actually… Maybe simply adding 4GB RAM (or even better replacing by compatible 2x8GB), a modern midrange gfx card and an SATA SSD might already result in an usable PC ^^ The only thing really outdated in that PC seems to be the DDR3 RAM, but enough of it should be good enough even today. I run a similar setup for my secondary PC, perfectly fine for gaming in Warzone and other things.

2 Likes
16

I certainly have a lot of abbreviations to learn!

I think I’ve decided to go with building my own since someone has kindly offered to help me through it. It seems I can get more bang for my buck that way.

2 Likes
17

Oh boy… Obviously you don’t know what you are talking about.

1 Like
18

? Either you mistyped, I misread, or computer architecture changed last night. The OS is stored on secondary memory, like SSD or HDD, but after boot secondary memory has nothing to do with the OS.

The biggest bang for buck remains as much RAM as your bus can handle, no?

19

I’m just saying that, if you could buy a regular HDD, and used the money saved for a better GPU or more RAM, it would make a much bigger difference for game framerate than running the game on SSD and having insufficient RAM. I seen too many laptops including only 4G of RAM, and despite it running on SSD it’s still slow as hell.

20

The OS files are stored in a hard disk… or in an SSD if you have one. The files need to be read before being loaded/executed. the I/O speed of your storage device will determine how fast your computer will start up. Also not all the OS files are loaded in RAM, otherwise you would really need a huge amount of RAM for running Windows (for example).

RAM is a bottleneck, so I/O speed in your drive is. When I swapped from HDD to SSD my old laptop was super fast.

1 Like