Hi Everyone,
Looking at getting my son a new desktop, does anyone know of any good black Friday deals coming up? or what I should be generally looking out for in the 1-1.2kish budget range.
Have had some offers from Asus and Cyberpower come through already but not sure what's good and what's not as its been so long since i last bought a PC, which was a pre-built from Scan, does anyone know if they be doing black Friday deals?
Thanks!
You'd need to post the specs/price for us to see if they're any good, afraid I don't keep an eye on pre builts any more.
Is building your own a no go ? Or upgrading the existing system?
not out of the question no, i just wouldn't know what components are good/good value anymore. For example looking at the pre-builts on Scan they all mostly use i5 cpus with 4000 series GPUs, but Cyberpower go with the gen 13 i9 cpus and a lower spec 3000 series GPU. The PC i have now is an i5 thats 12 years oldOriginally Posted by Rob_B
What games does he want to play, what monitor?
No point getting an uber GPU if its capped due to a monitor at 60Hz...
The 13th vs 14th gen differences are... Debatable... If you want to save some money then you have options.
what are the current specs, what are the uses of the PC?
You can get something waaaay under £1000 but it depends what you want/need and as Trig mentioned, what Resolution you're aiming for.
Pre-builts, and especially from those more specialist builders is pretty much always going to be a relatively expensive way of doing things. But, I'd also suggest caution about pre-builts from the bigger builders that shift thousands and thousands of machines. I mean the likes of Dell and HP. They might be a good choice if you want minimum fuss and it's a generic office-type PC but they seem to have a habit of using .... unusual ... component choices, like for motherboard, that can make them hard to upgrade.
One question is, if building, what components in his existing machine can be salvaged and transferred? Can the OS (presumably Windows) be transferred, or do you need a new OEM licence. Or, is the existing machine worth selling? Because if not, even case and PSU may be worth transferring. And a third option, depending on what it is, might be to upgrade the existing machine. That's esecially true if a GPU upgrade to the existing machine might offer better gaming than replacing the entire machine, which will necessarily imply a lot less of your budget going on the GPU.
Finally, and I'm no expert at this either .... what games is he intending to play? And as has been said, at what resolution and frame rate? rather than going for 4k, aiming at 1440 or maybe even 1080p might give a more satisfying gaming experience rather than higher resolution if that means lower frame rate.
I don't envy you this exercise, James, Trying to get your head around all the permutations is maddeningly confusing.
As for the initial question, Black Friday deals, no, I don't know of anything specific but, I have to say, I'm more than a little sceptical about how good they'll be. You might manage to find a genuine bargain, but I'd be very cautious and careful indeed.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
I know a few people who got pre builts from AWD IT and everything was fine, they bought at the time of the great gpu scalper times when pre builts were cheaper than DIY.
These days I would probably look at building your self using black friday / christmas sales.
I would spec out a system on pc part picker and then look for pre builts around the same spec see if its worth it.
This is key, really. If all he plays is Minecraft on a 1080p monitor, there's probably no point getting a really high spec'ed system; it'd be better to buy a more modest system & save a bit of money.
As Sarrecen said though, I'd avoid the big box-shifters like Dell & HP, as they do sometimes sell systems that aren't fully ATX compliant, which can make future upgrades to power supplies and motherboards etc difficult, or even impossible. And on the subject of power supplies, I'd personally be sure that the system has a unit from a top-tier manufacturer, as it should last long enough to cope with multiple upgrades (without damaging any of the other system components).
I very, VERY nearly did that, though the same points about carefully choosing the builder applied then. I'd go for one of the smaller more specialist companies, not an international behemoth.
My logic for doing it wasn't quite that it was cheaper than DIY, though. Not exactly. Though that was probably true, too.
It was that for a couple of years there, about the only ways to get your hands on a decent NEW GPU, at all, unless you got in extremely quickly when a precious few came on the market, was in a pre-built. Or at outrageous prices from a scalper and on principle, I wasn't doing that.
From my journalism days, I still have a few .... contacts .... and even they would struggle to get hans on a 'spare' GPU for me (at full price I might add), though one contact did indeed offer. My thanks to him. The reason was that decent-sized builders of pe-builts had advanced contracts for x-units per month, because they don't want to be buying hand-to-mouth and risk what happened - no supply.
Other than that, buying a new card meant buying from a scalper at what could well be double (or more, sometimes) the 'standard' price of the card.
The more reputable builders of pre-builts were milking card prices a little, but not usually to excess. They didn't have to, because given that they had supply (albeeit limited) they could sell full systems prety much as fast as most of them could build them. Happy days for them, and tolerable for consumers prepared to buy a complete system. Torrid days for consumers just wanting a GPU upgrade, though.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
That was basically it, I am the system builder for an extended friendship/family group and for years I could get a better deal and charge a build fee but for a time it was just buy a pre built, the good thing with smaller builders (like AWD IT) is they usually use off the shelf parts so later upgrades/changes are no problem.
The one thing I did spot is many base models use the cheapest motherboard to support everything but in many cases you can upgrade boards for a little extra.
I guess there probably is money to save self building now, even more so if you don't mind a used GPU, but there is still something to be said for a working system out of the box so it can still be worth paying a little extra if you see that value.
Of all the big name brands, Lenovo seem to be doing the best systems for the last couple of years, just for reference.
PCSpecialist would be my go to for med-sized OEM, but I'm sure there are others worth considering too.
Yeah, good systems, and from friends, good company to deal with. My problem with them was that I knew exactly what I wanted in certain areas, like Seasonic for PSU, and that wasn't an option. However, most people won't be that fussy.
It's one of the differences, apart from the physical build process, in buying from a company like them is that customr service is generally very good, but, if it is then that has to be paid for somehow. I view it as a bit like an insurance policy - an expensive PITA .... right up until you need to make a claim, at which point you'll probably be hugely glad you had it. One guy I knew (about 40 years ago) was really cocky about how much he was saving by not paying for household insurance. Right up to the point he popped out to the shops (ironically, I thought, for cigarettes) .... forgetting he'd put the chip pan on to heat up. Yes, I mean a big pan of oil on a cooker burner, not a fancy thermostatically controlled fryer. On his way back he saw a couple of fire engines hurtle past, and wondered where they were goig in such a hurry. He soon found out and no, Mrs Idiot was NOT impressed. The pan, naturally, had flashed over, and the resulting fire burned the kitchen to a crisp and took about half the house with it. Expensive cigarettes.
Anyway, yeah, PCSpecialist are a good option but at least when I looked, certainly at a premium over DIY. i guess that's a choice, isn't it? "Insured", or not.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Sorry been working away!
Its an Asus VX278Q, only 1080p i believe. But it can always be upgraded at some point, so that its not a limiting factor.
Games will be like modern warfare 3, i want to try starfield myselfand he said he wants GTA 6 next year apparently.
Like i said the last PC i bought was a 3XS from Scan and has been very reliable but it struggles to run his Farming Sim 23 (Quite demanding?) without it being really choppy.
I'd love to build one myself but I think I've left it too late to do all the fiddly research and price comparisons before the sales endand having not been involved in the PC hardware since dad life took over i just don't know whats good and whats not, still can't understand how i5 is current CPU when it was 12 years ago haha.
So for example:
Scan Performance PBA, AMD Ryzen 5 7500F, 16GB DDR5, 8GB ASUS RTX 4060, 1TB M.2 SSD, Win 11 £979
Scan Performance PBA, Intel Core i5 13400F, 16GB DDR4, 8GB ASUS RTX 4060, 1TB M.2 SSD, Win 11 £999
PC Specialist £899 -
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X
Windows 11 Home
ASUS® PRIME B550-PLUS
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE 3200MHz
8GB AMD RADEON™ RX 7600
1TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2
CyberPower £1049
Case: CyberPowerPC Amethyst HAF ARGB Gaming Case - Black (features 3x ARGB 120mm fans)
CPU (Processor): Intel® Core™ i9-11900KF - 8-Core 3.50GHz, 5.10GHz Turbo - 16MB Cache, Ultimate OC Compatible
Graphics Card (GPU): MSI GeForce RTX™ 3060 - 12GB GDDR6 - HDMI, DP - Real-Time Ray Tracing, NVIDIA DLSS (Single Card)
CPU Cooling: MSI MAG Coreliquid M240 ARGB AIO Liquid Cooler, Ultimate OC Compatible
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Plus: ATX w/ USB 3.2, 2x M.2
Memory (RAM): 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4/3200MHz Kingston Fury Beast Memory
Video Capture: None Selected
PSU (Power Supply): InWin B65E 650W 80+ Certified Gaming Power Supply
NVME Drive: 1TB WD Green SN350 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD - 3200MB/s Read & 2500MB/s Write (Single Drive)
If i can figure out where i'm aiming for GPU and CPU wise i can cross-check individual component prices
Just been looking and for example that Scan i5 system, googling all the individual parts is more expensive than the whole system
Chassis GameMax Mini Infinity
Motherboard ASUS PRIME H610M-A WIFI D4
Processor Intel Core i5 13400F, 10C/16T, 2.5GHz – 4.6GHz
CPU Cooler CiT 240mm AIO - Black
Memory 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz DDR4
Graphics Card 8GB ASUS GeForce RTX 4060 DUAL OC
Power Supply Corsair CV550 - 80PLUS
System Drive 1TB Seagate FireCuda 530 NVMe M.2 SSD
Operating System Microsoft Windows 11 Home
Recovery Media Recovery USB drive with system image and diagnostic software
Warranty & Support 2 Year (Parts & Labour) Warranty - Return to Base, including 7 Day Support
Cheapest shopping on each part on google still comes to £1012
Those PCs all look much the same in performance terms.
I would edge towards the 7500F based machine in case I wanted to do a mid-life upgrade as the Socket AM5 should be around for some years and DDR5 memory is becoming mainline so should be easy to upgrade.
The PC Specialist machine should feel just as quick as the Scan ones, and £100 cheaper isn't to be sniffed at. If you are into VR, then I don't know if AMD have fixed their drivers but when I bought my 3060Ti Nvidia were a clear win there.
The Cyberpower one has an outdated 11th gen i9. Paired with an older 3060 GPU which is about 15% slower than the cheaper machines, I would expect that machine to feel 15% slower when gaming.
Lots of 4060s in there, also consider the 7600 as it's usually cheaper and is roughly as fast (unless you want RT in which case the 4060 is faster but still sucks at it) A quick looks on Scan shows ~ £60 difference and it's ~2% slower than a 4060 in raster.
Or if you want to spend roughly the same go with the 6700XT over the 4060 as the XT is about £5 more expensive and is way faster than a 4060.
Seems like Windows 11 is £110 from Scan as well, think about maybe going with Win10 from elsewhere to save a few quid?
Last edited by Rob_B; 21-11-2023 at 11:05 AM.
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