Recommendation for a reasonably priced gaming PC for 12 year old.

[TheFellaLondon]

My 12 year old son wants a gaming PC for Christmas. He mainly plays Fortnite, though does play other games on a Switch. I am a Mac user myself, and know very little, other than gaming PCs are more powerful, have better graphics cards, more memory, etc. But they are also very expensive, it seems.

Can anyone recommend a decent system, including keyboard, monitor, etc. that won't break the bank, but will also do everything he wants it to do? I don't want to save a few quid for something that is under specced or will be out of date in a few months! Ideally something I can get within the next few days, and be around the £500 mark (monitor can be extra).

Thanks in advance.

 

[Toasty]

For £500 you want to be looking at a PS5 or Xbox Series X, no chance at all getting a gaming PC for any where near that price..

 

[TheFellaLondon]

What about something like this? Not much more, and seems to have good reviews! Or will it be rubbish? As I say he is only 12 and plays Fornite 90% of the time, although this might change.

PCSPECIALIST Vortex GR Gaming PC - Intel® Core™ i3, GTX 1650, 1 TB HDD & 256 GB SSD. £630, Currys.​

 

[Toasty]

PS5 and XSX can play Fortnite and have higher performance than that PC for only £360 - £450. They can be hard to come by, but they'll be far more future proof for gaming than that PC, which is already 130 notes above your budget before you think about keyboard, mouse, monitor, getting a decent sized SSD and possibly upgrading the RAM..

To put it into context, the GTX 1650 GPU is more comparable with the PS4 era than the PS5 era.

Is there another reason he wants a PC? Really not worth it for one game that is available on console..

 

[duncfunk]

That machine will play Fortnite ok but it's the kind of system that will be running modern titles at 1080p low settings to get a playable experience (30-60fps). The shortcomings of it are a 4-core cpu, only 8gb ram and a low end graphics card. It's not a machine that would be worth upgrading in the future as it also has a low end motherboard and probably a power supply in the 350w region (they don't even say on the specification).

I'd totally agree with Toasty in that the new consoles are in a different league to this for the price. What else is he going to be using if for that makes him want a PC?

 

[TheFellaLondon]

Good questions! I am not really sure, other than maybe some school work, watching YouTube videos, etc. We actually have a PS5, but his older sister has taken that over to play Fortnite on, so maybe an Xbox is the way forward. We have an old 360 that doesn't play Fortnite, and a quick look seems to indicate the Xbox X is not in stock anywhere. Not sure about the S model, as no disk drive, and it sounds as if it has lower specs as well?

 

[Cha1ky]

Good questions! I am not really sure, other than maybe some school work, watching YouTube videos, etc. We actually have a PS5, but his older sister has taken that over to play Fortnite on, so maybe an Xbox is the way forward. We have an old 360 that doesn't play Fortnite, and a quick look seems to indicate the Xbox X is not in stock anywhere. Not sure about the S model, as no disk drive, and it sounds as if it has lower specs as well?

Get a series S and a Chromebook. Still come in cheaper.

 

[eaglemmoomin]

It's a bit tricky if you think he's still going to end up wanting the PC. If he's going to be happy with a Series S and a Chromebook for the next five odd years then that's for sure the way forward.

If not it might be worth waiting to build up a bit more budget and build something without a GPU and use a type of processor called an APU instead. It's the GPU that makes PCs stupidly expensive at the moment. Even then building it yourself to save labour costs, an APU system with decent parts that will support a really good dedicated GPU later without blowing up, will cost about £750 including Windows.

 

[rb5201]

I bought my son a pc a few months ago, he used to play xbox and ps but wanted a pc for mouse and keyboard and to use mods on certain games. He is ten and plays mostly fortnite.

I spent about £1000 which got him a pretty good system. Unless you looking second hand I think this is about the minimum you need to spend to get something pretty good.

I got mine from palicomp and would recommend, maybe have a look at what they have or give them a call. They were very helpful and patient on the phone withy many questions as I am no pc expert!!

Still happy with what I bought and good value for money imo.