New gaming PCs - price sanity check and recommendations?
Hey Tildes, I'm super super out of the loop for gaming PCs. If I wanted to play AAA games like Stalker 2 on higher (!) settings, what kind of specs am I looking at, ballpark prices, makes that are good vs red flag don't buy? Everything seems way too expensive now I guess due to demands for AI and crypto stuff. Does it maybe make more sense to wait half a year or won't get any better?
Thoughts on GeForce rtx 4070? Need some kind of solid state hard drive, and it'll be a windows box it looks like for games. Or has Linux OS for gaming a good contender now esp when paired with steam ?
I should have done my homework well before cybermonday etc, but figure even weeks of work still isn't as good as copying you guy's homework. :) thanks in advance
Edit: Thank you everyone :D I've been leaning on the community for two big things this week (this, and learning to type software) and you guys really came through like eagles at Mt Doom.
Person I am asking for read all your comments, checked out a ton of sites you guys suggested, and
ended up finding a BlackFriday/Cyber Monday deal for a laptop with (reads sheet)
GeForce RTX 4080 Ryzen 9 7945HX 32GB 1TB SSD 240Hz 16" laptop
price was $2500 CAD ($ 1785 USD) + taxes. (non affiliated product link here)
many thanks again~
Website I usually use to check a few things is http://www.logicalincrements.com/
I don't have recommendations of my own but hope this tool can help you find what you're looking for along with the helpful comments of the other folks here =)
It is a very good starting point. In addition to this I recommend using https://pcpartpicker.com.
It allows you to create a custom build with pricing indicator, and it will show you if the parts you picked are compatible.
Logical Increments might recommend a specific brand GPU, but with pcpartpicker you can choose a different brand (same spec) for a similar and sometimes even lower price.
Not for chocobean, but just in case any Dutch or Belgian people are reading along, the tweakers pricewatch is the go-to tool for you. Most webshops in the Netherlands will have their inventory listed there and with the wishlist feature you can effectively put together your pc with a good price indication.
Something to keep in mind regarding different brands for same chips, especially for GPUs, is that they're built differently and it can make huge differences to reliability. I think a recent example was Asus or gigabyte GPUs with less good cooling or power issues
That's true, you shouldn't blindly pick the cheapest option and still do a bit of research of course.
Came here to say this. From what I've read, target the "Outstanding" level, which aims to stay just under the inflection point where high-end price gouging sets in
I don't have advice on prices. However, if I were to buy a graphics card right now, I would probably avoid Nvidia for the sake of Linux compatibility. Windows is generally trending towards ads and subscriptions - not sure how many more iterations I can last for.
Nvidia compatibility has come a long way on Linux, even in the last few years. I've used Pop!_OS daily for the past year with a 3080 Ti and haven't had any major issues. 4 years ago was a different story I had to switch back to Windows.
It does get funky for my setup, since I have 3 monitors with all different refresh rates, one of them being 4k and needs scaling. Switching to Wayland lets me run each monitor at their max refresh rate, and get a solid 165 FPS in Overwatch 2.
With Intel rumored to announce their next generation GPUs in a few days, any idea how good/bad their Linux support is? Of course, this assumes that the new generation of GPUs can actually compete.
I don't use Linux (Fedora) anymore but when I did, my Arc 770 LE worked flawlessly.
This. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are on the brink of releasing their next gens. If not by end of year, then CES for sure.
That's not what I am saying though, generational gains are not really worth waiting. I was just wondering if on Linux Intel is now also a viable alternative.
If I had to guess, the next gen GPUs will all be a mess in terms of Linux compatibility. Hopefully I'm wrong though!
If you want to play a specific game like Stalker 2, you can just look at the recommended specs. Stalker 2 recommends a 4070, so that will be sufficient.
I wouldn't bother waiting. No one knows how the market will move. Not to mention, if Trump actually does implement tariffs, prices will go up by quite a bit for GPUs.
Recommend:
4080 Super. You won't want to shell out for a 4090 ($2k). https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-4080-S-Super-vs-Nvidia-RTX-4070-S-Super/4156vs4154
AMD over Intel: latest Intel chips have bugs aplenty and unknown ETA to resolution.
Budget is a huge factor. 4080S don't come cheap either.
I'm quite out of the loop on this stuff too but those prices are just so insane to me. That 4080 Super costs as more than my entire PC. 5 years old and still somewhat decent.
You don't need anywhere near a 4080 Super to play on High/Very High/Ultra settings though. My previous gen 3070 Ti can still do that and get 120+ fps at 3440 x 1440 in most new games. And TBH, even a 3070 is a bit overkill for most people's gaming needs.
Piggybacking on this, here are some hobbies that can make full use of a state of the art GPU:
It's worth considering whether there will be an interest in engaging with any of these hobbies in the coming years in addition to videogames. If not, then I would definitely not go for a high end GPU (I personally never have, in fact).
Can confirm, my 3060 TI can manage most games at very decent settings. Though it does struggle a tiny bit here. But that is mostly recently and in most cases I can just choose most high settings without issue.
Edit: I should note that things like raytracing make the thing struggle. But there aren't that many titles where it makes that big of a difference that I play.
Yeah, that's the one major caveat to my generalized statements. I've usually had to turn raytracing off in all the very latest AAA games I've played recently too, since leaving it on causes a huge performance hit.
I know how you feel - I get motion sickness and can't play any first person games (eg most AAA). It's a whole world out there beyond what I need to play dwarf fortress or stardewvalley.
DF is the only game anyone needs, is my opinion. But also, it does require a somewhat beefy computer for it, if not a graphics card.
My forts become too much FUN! before anything too intensive happens....but yeah I do appreciate the occasional hand me down beefier systems. :)
Worth noting that the NVIDIA 50xx cards are (almost definitely) being announced/released at CES in January. They’ll be starting with the top end ones, so might not change what you actually buy, but if you can wait a month or so it could get you some discount on a 40 series card when they suddenly become “previous gen” overnight.
People have mentioned other websites for benchmarking, but one that I don't see is Tom's Hardware. I built a PC from scratch last year (black friday actually, so exactly one year ago today) and these CPU and GPU benchmarks really helped me narrow down what I wanted in terms of performance/price. I found them very intuitive to use and compare things on those nice charts rather than just looking at numbers like how other sites present their benchmarks.
Then once I found a CPU/GPU benchmark I liked (AMD) I went over to pcpartpicker and crafted the rest of the build. Found a motherboard that matched the CPU, then a case that matched the size of the MB. Then a power supply big enough for what I wanted to do. Then miscellaneous things like storage, ram, cpu cooler, and fans. Ended up getting ridiculous deals between amazon, newegg, and ebay (new, not used). Built my computer for around $500 but the specs would have been closer to 700-1000 if I hadn't gotten them all on sale. Just the CPU and GPU alone I think I saved like 200 total. And though I don't play many AAA games these days, I'm confident it could handle them with ease.
Edit: forgot to mention that pcpartpicker really helps with things like compatibility checking. If you've never built a pc, it really helps by letting you know things like 'hey your cpu might not be compatible with your mb' or 'looks like your gpu is a bit too long to fit in the case you selected'. Highly recommend it even if you know what you're doing. Could save you some headaches from something easy to overlook. I use it to keep track of my builds, so I don't have to open my pc to remember things like which fans or psu I have in there, or how many hard drive bays I have left in my case.
Edit 2: to specifically address your question about the RTX 4070, I looked at those gpu benchmarks on the toms hardware page and found that going AMD could save you a bit if you're looking for bang/buck ratio. The RTX 4070 seems to be going for around $500-$600 depending on exact model. The RX 7800 XT (which benchmarked a bit higher than the 4070) is going for around $450-$500, and if you're okay stepping down to the RX 7700 XT (which benchmarked a bit lower but still close) then they're available starting at like $380. That's an extra $100-$150 that you can spend on more ram or storage or something else in your build. Hope that helps!
Someone already suggested http://www.logicalincrements.com/ and I would recommend using it as a starting point.
When it comes to PC part prices, I feel like waiting is always a fool's errand. The latest and greatest GPU may be a few months away (and the previous gen price dropped), but by the time you wait for that the next CPU may be a few more months away - rinse and repeat. That being said, it seems relatively likely NVIDIA will release the 5080 and 5090 in January/February-ish.
It also kind of depends on what you want. Some questions you might want to consider:
In terms of the 4070, I have the 4070 TI Super (with a 7800X3d AMD processor), so a bit of a step up. I play in 1440p and newer released and graphically intense games usually run 90-120 FPS with DLSS on, usually with an additional 30-60 FPS with frame generation turned on. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is still considered one of the best looking games with ray tracing and I think I was hitting that 90-120 FPS range with full path raytracing, though I did not play more than an hour or two of it (just wanted to see the visuals - I do not much care for the game even with the changes).
Linus Tech Tips released a relevant video yesterday that you might be interested in:
The PERFECT PC at Every Price
0:00 Intro
1:03 $500 Options
4:00 Secret $800 PC
6:07 $1000 PC
9:27 $2000 PC
They release the same kind of video every year at around this time to help with Christmas deal shopping, and their recommendations have always seemed solid to me. LTT knows what they're doing when it comes to building PCs, especially gaming PCs.
p.s. Check the video description for details on all the builds, which includes Amazon links to all the parts.
Probably a great recommendation, although I find it odd they don't have a $1500 price bracket. As for the longest time that would give you the most bang for your buck without going for silly stuff like RGB and other aesthetic choices.
Still it is a good reference.
Having helped my buddy build his new comp just a few days ago, it's (sadly) actually often more expensive to buy totally RGB free parts these days. :/ But I agree a $1500 tier would be nice for them to include, since the jump from $1k to $2k is big one.
It takes a bit more effort maybe, but it is certainly possible and still cheaper.
I tweaked the build a bit to include no RGB and managed to get a lower price and even pick better memory (lower cas latency). I did opt to go for air cooled rather than liquid cooled as it is more reliable, cools just as well and frankly is about as quiet these days. But, if you wanted to keep the AIO, the same version is available without RGB and is cheaper.
In total this brings this build really neatly on $1500 (ignoring rebates and discounts), a $178 cheaper ;)
Edit:
Looking at it a bit more, the motherboard probably can also be selected to be much cheaper. But I also realized that this build seems to be actually picked for RGB and white aesthetics? Which in itself will simply make it much more expensive.
Yeah, my buddy wanted a white PC this time like I have with my current one too. So it could definitely just be that white parts without RGB are more expensive (or even non-existent). Good to know if I decide to go back to black and RGB free (like I normally do) for my next build. :P
p.s. Thanks for taking the time to tinker with the build.
Yup, going for aesthetics certainly is a bit more expensive. I am really glad I never really went down that rabbit hole. It also has the additional benefit that I can just have my PC out of the way as I never really look at it anyway ;)
Yeah, it's an expensive rabbit hole to fall down for sure. But before this PC I hadn't even bothered with tempered glass cases before. All my previous personal builds were just plain black full-metal cases since I never cared about RGB and always had my tower tucked away too. This is the first time I've gone for aesthetics, and put the tower on display. It's awesome looking, but I honestly don't know if I'd do it again, especially since most of the time I have all the RGB turned off anyways. :P
that's awesome that it's an annual series! Going to be so handy for myself in future years, when inevitably my dad wants a new computer (I'll take the $500 category, Alex!)
For most games yes. BUT if you're playing competitive multiplayer then forget about it. Non-competitive multiplayer games are hit or miss.
People will say that you should go AMD for linux, but I think Nvidia is getting a bit better? I have an AMD card anyways.
Regardless of all that, Linux is free so it costs you nothing but time to try. Make sure in steam you go Settings>Compatibility> and turn on "enable steam play for all other titles".
You can compare parts and check compatibility with pcpartpicker.com. There's several sites for comparing benchmarks, I'd use those to evaluate comparative performance vs measures like raw clock speed, core count, etc.
I'm working with my brother on a build right now. We're looking at about $1050 for a pretty high performance machine. What we were finding is the Nvidia 4070 for $500 is probably the best price performance trade off at that price range, a 4070 super on sale for 550 would beat it. I was trying to see about using AMD stuff since I tend towards Intel Nvidia but I just couldn't make the price performance ratios make sense. I'm recommending him the Intel i5-12600K for $150 (plus a thermal assassin fan at $17). The 12th gen don't have the issues the 13 and 14 do while also being a better price performance trade off.
I'd usually recommend waiting or buying piecemeal to help mitigate cost, but I'm not sure waiting is going to help what with the expected tarrifs.
I'm using an Nvidia card on Linux and it has been mostly fine, did have an annoying bug when I started that has since been fixed. Otherwise Linux gaming has been pretty nearly there, even non Steam games are well supported thanks to programs like heroic launcher and lutris, but be willing to tinker somewhat for edge cases and ditch most competitive multiplayer games.
I got a WD Black SN850X M2 drive and it was worth the extra couple bucks, this thing is wicked fast.
Edit: best case for waiting would be to pick up a used 40xx card after the 50xx come out. I managed to snag a used 3070 for some $300 after the 40xx came out.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ (also has gpu and other data) is a wonderful option.
I will back anyone who says to opt for Linux unless you're looking at multiplayer. I also swapped to AMD after being a diehard Intel/Nvidia fan for decades in 2020. It may or may not have to do with me finally leaving Windows in '19. All that being said, Linux has a lot of options that are as simple as Windows if you want things to just work, but also lots of multiplayer anticheat require access that Linux typically is not okay with.
I have commented here and there in this post, but I just realized that nobody asked you the important question. Do you have a budget in mind? Or at least an upper spending limit?
Oh no you caught me >..<
TLDR - about $2500 USD?
The system recmomendation is for a very not spendy person, so the upper limit is "really? It costs this much nowadays?". And the Canadian dollar being in the pits right now doesn't doesn't help. I was pulling out a random I thought quite high number of $2000 CAD ($1427 USD) but found out almost immediately that wasn't anywhere close. So I'm doing the reverse thing and listening to everyone else, to see how much it'll cost for what's considered "good enough to play Stalker 2" this year, then encouraging them to buy it.It's quite hard to justify spending that amount of money on games, when the system will be outdated the moment one sets it up at home and people already have their old perfectly functional 6+ year old PCs. On the other hand, the person is really really really not spendy and has been saving up by living very responsibly, games being probably the only area of even slight indulgence.
Oof yeah that makes a big difference. $2500 will get you the bee's knees.
Take @creesch's advice, go a bit under and perhaps spring for a good monitor in addition to the pc to fill the gap. Any monitor with a high refresh rate with VRR will look better than one with a lower refresh rate.
OLED monitors have come a long way too.
That actually isn't really the case anymore, pc development isn't going that fast. I build my PC in 2021 (yup I paid the shortage premium) and it still is going strong. As I said elsewhere, I can still play most games on mostly high settings with a 3060ti.
Anyway $2500 USD already brings you in ridiculous upper spending territory. Here is an example I quickly threw together: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/creesch/saved/Fb4ndC
It features the arguably best cpu for gaming right now, good memory and a 4070 TI super which people will already argue is too expensive for what it does. A 4080 would bring it up to 2500 easily but without much gain.
Basically what I am trying to say is that you can easily do some tweaks to the above and still end up with a pc that will last you for years to come. For example going for a non 3d cache cpu, pick a cheaper motherboard without wifi, go for a 4070TI or AMD (Radeon RX 7700 XT).
Unless you have cash to burn I don't think there is a reason to go for a build that costs more than $2000.
For an example see the conversation I had with cfabro elsewhere.
Edit: This is by all accounts still a extremely capable computer and I was able to do it with a budget of $1300 https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rqZkdb
Disclaimer: I quickly threw this together so don't go out and blindly buy all parts. But with some refinement this is more realistically what you can be looking at when building a new pc.
Oh phew yes that's a much much more comfortable amount thank you !
That second one is a beast - it’s also closer to what I’d probably build than the first (64GB RAM is a meaningful nice to have for non-gaming use, and in general I don’t see X3D chips justifying their cost, especially when the 9700X is a generation newer) - but it does look like the page marked the GPU price as zero, so it’s more like $2000 all in.
Very much with you on the overall specs, though! Around $1800 - $2000 seems a good ballpark for a really, really nice machine and going much past that gets into pretty rapidly diminishing returns for gaming.
Oh yeah you are right. With a bit of tweaking you can get a still very capable PC for 1500 or so I wager. Probably downgrade the GPU a little bit and maybe go for a different CPU.
Edit: Here with a still very capable GPU bringing it to $1700 https://pcpartpicker.com/list/s6gYTM . If you go for a previous gen CPU you can drop te price even more for very little performance loss. Certainly because motherboards for that generation are cheaper.
I didn’t see anyone else comment about an alternative:
Look at just a game streaming service, if you have fast reliable internet. Nvidia Go is a common one, and relatively cheap if just looking to play games.
But I really recommend Shadow.tech. It is a desktop streaming service. You get a whole windows machine, so it can be used for games (including your whole Steam library), software development, artist software, Microsoft office, whatever.
I started it about 4 or 5 years ago. At the time, in 2019, I had a 2014 MacBook Pro laptop. Yet I was playing the latest games with maxed out settings at higher frame rates than my peers with their own fancy gaming computers. And I could do it from a quiet laptop. I have since bought a Mac mini M2 Pro, an excellent gaming machine if only publishers would make games for it, but I still have Shadow. In the intervening years, Shadow pays for the hardware upgrades and I just keep paying the subscription. If your budget is $2000, and the subscription is I think $20/month right now, that’s about 8 years to break even. In 8 years you’ll certainly need a new pc to be at parity.
With Shadow and 300mbps internet, I have a tiny desktop pc that can play any game I own, any Mac or windows software, is absolutely silent, and requires no upgrading on my part.
that's such a cool option - I might do this for myself when my current desktop finally gives up the ghost. And at that price per month, phew, that's 8 years of having top of the line processing power. I'll bookmark this for future reference :D
Gave up on getting a Steam Deck, I take it?
:D Oh the Steam Deck is still plenty of gaming for me. I know it sounds like the lame "asking for a friend", but in this case "for realsies" because I get motion sickness and can't play Stalker 2. And not my type of game anyway, not enough fluffy wamblers
I remember you were thinking about getting one, but I can't recall talking about it afterward. That isn't saying much though, because my memory is awful these days.
Did you upgrade the base model, or spring for the higher-tier version? The biggest selling point for the 512GB Gen 1 model to my mind was the anti-glare display, since the storage is so easy to upgrade.
OH? how do you mean so easy to upgrade? people can add additional memory on their own?! but that'd void my warranty so maybe I'll wait a year.... :)
I remember you also recommending ifixit kits. I'm thought about getting one for christmas, but the array is dizzying, esp since I don't have an exact project in mind yet.
Yes I ended up getting a refurbished Deck - just the low end 512 with the regular non-OLED display. And I'm very happy with it! Thanks for talking me into it :) travelled well, plays nicely, and docks so easy for when I need it on the desk with a bigger monitor
More storage, yes. The solid-state drive is an off-the-shelf component that's remarkably easy to replace. 2TB drives are going for around $150-$180 USD on Amazon right now, depending on brand and model. I have no idea how tariffs might impact pricing in the near future.
The biggest downside is that you'd be starting from a fresh install of SteamOS, which might mean some data loss depending on how you've used your Deck. Both the hardware and software installations are simple and straightforward, and well documented on iFixit and Steam.
Having said all that, you might just be better off buying chonky microSD cards. I've been pretty impressed with the loading times and performance on games stored on SD. As long as you don't have the base 64GB eMMC model, you probably don't need the upgrade all that much. The use-case for a storage upgrade from the NVMe models would be if you used it as your primary gaming console and were playing multiple resource intensive titles at once. Say you were bouncing back and forth between Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baldur's Gate 3: you'd want them both on the internal storage drive because those are both loading-heavy titles and you'd need the better performance to make the experience tolerable.
As for the iFixit toolkits, this is the one I recommend. That plus a fixed #1 Phillips screwdriver will cover maybe 80% of common electronics repair jobs, and that percentage would be much higher if it included certain cleaning tools. The thing that recommends it over the Essential Toolkit is that the pro kit has the full 64-bit precision driver kit instead of a small selection of bits. This is the standard driver kit I've used professionally for the last decade, and I have nothing but praise for it.
I edited this to remove the link to the essential toolkit, because I didn't want to confuse things. You can find it easily enough on their store page, if you want. It's also a good kit, just not as complete as the other one.
Hmmm I see, I think I'll stick with the microSD for the time being :)
Just going to respond to your previous comment, as well as this one. For reference, I've had my 256Gb Deck for two and a half years now.
You can buy a matte screen protector on Amazon that will do the exact same job as the matte on the 512. I've had mine on my Deck for going on two years now and it's been great; of course, with any matte protector (this will also apply on the 512), your colors will look a little less vibrant.
I've also just upgraded to a 2Tb SSD, which can be done with zero data loss. I wanted the extra space on mine, but really didn't want to lose all my configs and random stuff I've installed, so I cloned my original disk and then restored it to the new drive. I did this completely on the Deck itself; created a Clonezilla bootable USB in desktop mode, booted into it, cloned to a plugged in portable HDD (I did need to use my USB Hub for all this) and bobs your uncle.
The longest part was the cloning and then checking for parity. The restore took under an hour after I got the new SSD in, zero data loss.
Yeah, there are ways to mitigate data losses or avoid them completely, and it may be a more or less moot point anyway if the only thing a Deck has been used for is Steam titles with cloud saves. Might as well just reinstall and save the headache of cloning.
I think it's a testament to the quality of the machine and its OS that while hardware upgrades are straightforward enough for someone with an interest and minimum kit to perform, they're mostly unnecessary. The SD card really does do "good enough" in most cases, and really enthusiasts are the only ones who'd care enough to squeeze that extra juice anyway.
I'm not usually one to fanboy, but as I'm right at the intersection of tech repair dude and lifelong sucker for videogames, it's hard not to feel like the Deck was designed specifically for me.
Sounds like we're pretty similar in that regard.
Honestly, believe it or not, cloning was extremely easy and quick. I wanted to challenge myself to do it entirely on the Deck itself and it went off without even a hiccup. The only ass pain was waiting for my new drive to arrive, so I tried not to play stuff installed on the cloned disk that doesn't also upload to the cloud. I did have one exception, but I just needed to transfer the save over to my server and then transfer it back before installing the new disk.
I would agree that a microSD is a much easier answer and one I've done myself in the past, upgrading from 256gb to 512 on that front already, but the new NVME was considerably cheaper ($135 out the door) over a 2tb MicroSD and it was a way for me to have more fun opening up and screwing around with the internals of the Deck (I've also repasted mine).
It'll be interesting to see how Valve handles hardware versioning. I haven't looked into interoperability between models, but it seems to me that Valve considers the OLED version more of a sub-generational iteration than a second generation itself. Thus far, the system seems amenable to third-party display and control replacements, and I hope Valve manages to maintain that as much as possible going forward. I inwardly drool at the idea of a Deck with robust, long-term modular component upgrade support. That would truly earn the name they cribbed from Gibson.
When comparing GPUs nothing can compete with actual benchmarks of the games you play but some time you just need a single number for performance to directionally compare price to performance in a table. If you search for any GPU + UL the first result will a page with the time spy synthetic benchmark score. Can be useful to compare two gpus that don't have the same games benchmarked or identity if it's worth investigating too spend a little more or less to get a better bang for the buck.