Building A Gaming PC - Parts Advice Needed

I thought it would only complain if you changed the mainboard. Never underestimate the power of a good old fashioned restart though.

I'm in a similar boat, the HP Pavilion laptop I bought in 2019 before Lockdown is showing it's age. We have both agreed that it's time to get an upgrade.

Rather than go for another Laptop, we will go back to Desktop as we don't use the Laptop for anything that's mobile.

I am going to go and have a mooch at the Scan showroom in Bolton this week, armed with a tape measure so I can get an idea on how bloody big they can be. Also aiming to get a decent curved monitor as well.

It doesn't have to be cutting edge anything, just enough to be futureproofed and we can swap out motherboards/RAM/GFX cards at a later date.

I use an HP dock that has no problem providing enough power to my laptop. But it struggles to connect to two monitors so I still have to run one of them straight from my laptop by usb-c.

Edit: I think my monitor issues are because the usb porta on the laptop are slow.

What are the usb wattage requirements for the laptop?

It should work, but depends on the dock. My Dell one (refurbished thunderbolt 3 model WD19TB) does 120hz output on my 1440p monitor over HDMI (and presumably would do 144 too if I used a displayport cable)
It charges any laptop I've used without any low power warnings too (it's 180w apparently)
Not all docks are equal. Chances are the one work gave you is well under spec.

If you're going to be sharing the space with your son, it sounds like it'd be quite handy to only have a single cable to use whenever one of you rocks up with your laptop.

and how is it ?

I'm still waiting on my ram before I can start the build. Fans arrived though. 30mm chonkers and got a lovely weight to them

One week before the 2024 version launches, I can finally run MSFS 2020 above 60fps in VR.

I don't think I've turned on my PS5 since I finished FF7R. That will come to PC eventually. The only game I can think of that hasn't come to PC is Demons Souls remake (so far). Xbox has a slight adavantage in terms of backwards compatibility, there are certain games that are stuck on that platform that cannot be replicated on PC, but emulation is picking up.

Speaking of backwards compatibility and emulation, PC is way ahead of the game. Emulation (especially at the spec you're talking about) is amazing.

I can play most of these at 4k60.

Then you also get the option to do producitvity tasks.

I think PC is a great value proposition vs consoles these days.

Just out of interest, can you really just 'plug and play' with a console these days? In my experience, a diminishing number of games offer this experience. Some not even starting until you download a hefty patch.

Derblington a mini itx form factor pc can be really powerful and will give you pretty much everything you need for a 'laid back' console type experience when hooked up to a big TV.

I don't currently have Bluetooth on my pc (nor WiFi) so I'm either usually m+k or Xbox pad via cable. I do have the usb dongle to take the pad wireless if needed. I'm not sure how a DS4 or 5 pad would fair via Bluetooth because if use mine I'm still using a cable when on laptop (works ok via steam deck mind so should be good)

You can easily make the pc self login and also get steam to load up in big picture mode by default straight away so you have a native feeling console experience. If emulation is your thing then get emudeck loaded up and integrated into steam or if you picked a bunch of free shit from other stores, just install and import into steam for launching. The install of stuff via other stores will require you to m+k because they won't have the console interface that steam has. Plenty of guides how to do it and again they can all be launched from steams UI making everything simple.

Most modern games usually support some form of pad but I will not lie, it is not all roses. There will be some random edge case every now and then where you have to abandon the pad briefly to interact with windows in some way to coax things along but these are usually few and far between or for much older titles. Running in big screen mode there are ways to force a mouse cursor while using the pad (or trackpad on a dual shock) but keyboard is not as easy as it is with a steam deck. You might need a wireless mini keyboard with trackpad around for these situations.

Most games will probably just work with their own in built optimised settings based on your hardware, Nvidia/amnd have their own apps that can apply optimised settings as well but I guarantee (as much as people say they don't want to tinker) you will tinker because the absolute freedom you get to minmax a game to how you want is far to liberating a prospect to ignore. Dial down the shadows and postprocessing & drop the textures a smidge etc voila, 60fps. You won't be able to help yourself and you'll very quickly get accustomed to what your machine can do and by default you lock in those settings and just play.

Holy fuck that's a block of text, let me just add some paragraphs

It is still a way off, but I very much expect the PS6 will be the last console that is comparable to the console we know now (well, Nintendo probably would carry on). As soon as they reach a tipping point of people with compatible internet speeds, console makers will want to go full hog on game streaming. Maybe they will have enthusiast level consoles that will allow local play, but expect those to come with a hefty price tag, comparable to what we are seeing with the PS5 Pro.

So, if you want to stay away from that dark future, PC is likely to be where you want to be, as I could see it keeping the old torch burning. At the very least, I would see there being a vibrant indie scene of developers that wouldn't want to be tied into a Microsoft/Sony service.

As for the here and now, PCs are certainly far from how they were in the 90s with you needing to delve into command prompts and the ports are not as bad as they were in the 2000s. They come with their own issues (stutter being the big one), but those issues are normally fairly minor. The games are rarely unplayable, albeit the issues are also ones that you likely can't fix without the developer sorting it out. Plus, it isn't really that different on consoles, with plenty of games that run at low frame rates in certain sections or have poor frame timing or whatever it might be.

That isn't to say you will absolutely never have to do the odd tweak here and there. As Crash says though, those really are edge cases and most games will give a plug and play experience.

Outside of Nintendo, you won't miss out on any games these days. Everything Xbox comes out same day on PC. Sony is a bit more hit and miss whether they will be available the same time, but all games do appear to be arriving on PC eventually. Spider-Man 2, for example, is out early next year, so a little over a year delay on that reaching PC. I could see something like Astrobot not coming to PC, nor do I expect Demons' Souls to make the move. Same goes for the old games from PS4 that haven't transitioned yet. Unless there is a PS5 remake (like Until Dawn), I don't expect to see those arrive.

If price isn't a blocker (and the initial cost of building or buying a pre-made PC is higher than buying a console, even a PS5 Pro), then I don't see much reason to not go PC nowadays.

I can relate and sometimes I don't want to go sit in my office to play stuff. I went the route of remoteplay via steam deck and hooked it up to my TV. I have gigabit ethernet feed from office to TV so it works like it's native and can run stuff at 4k easily.

I am considering just get a dedicated steamlink box for peanuts off eBay because the one thing I lost when they shuttered the TV app I used to use and had to go via steam deck is the remote install. Steam deck streams the games whereas the steamlink app actually controlled steam meaning I could kick off a download on the pc.

I'll have to take a look at that. It's what GoG galaxy kind of promised when it launched, but that seems to shit itself whenever you RDP to the machine which pretty much stopped me using it.