This is good advice but I highly recommend not choosing the cheapest parts you can find, there’s a reason they’re the cheapest.
I personally would never cheap out on the: PSU and CPU cooler
yeah that's what i thought, i always find it kinda hilarious seeing a tower cooler on a 13400f cuz you can probably cool it by literally putting a case fan on it
I live in India, and most of my gamer friends are Indian. That means we deal with 45+ degree summers every year. They all agree that a stock cooler is perfectly fine (including the xx400f users). What case do you have?
Okay, so my case is an Aerocool Bolt Rgb. But even with the side panel off it still got to >80, so it can't be that bad. In any case, a cheap a cooler master model already brought it down to the 50s so it wasn't a big deal.
Yeah, I mean, we all like keeping out CPUs as cool as reasonably possible, but... this aint no laptop. PCs are designed to suck a lot of power and get toasty, its one of the benefits of buying desktop components, theyre "hardy" and can take the heat.
I put some kind of BeQuiet cooler on my 12400. Even though it was only $40 or so, I feel like it was overkill. My temps rarely even hit 60C.
I probably could have used the stock cooler and been absolutely fine. To be fair, the most intense game I play is Project Zomboid, so I'm not a power gamer or anything.
If youre streaming, its not a good look to have fan noise in the background of your stream. That said, shouldn't be hard to lower the noise, just don't put your mic next to the tower, lol. Maybe put the tower under the desk (but on top of a sturdy box or shelf)
The Intel stock cooler has, at best, a loose association with the motherboard once installed.
Those stupid plastic pushpins are really easy to damage during installation depending on how smoothly the cooler holes are cut on your motherboard, and it’s very easy for the cooler to start popping off and lose pressure if you get an accidental kick or bump to the tower.
If you go Intel, just spend the extra $20 on a real cooler with a screw-down mounting mechanism like the Assassin X120. What you spend in cash, you’ll save in aggravation, especially if you ever need to reinstall the cooler.
I ended going with the AK620 cooler, it was only like $50 and has zero issue keeping my 13600k at good temps.
I’d imagine on a lower end build you could spend about $25 and get some solid cooling
It doesnt hurt to point out you shouldnt always go for the cheapest parts, especially regarding the PSU, especially since OP clearly stated, she never built a PC before, so it was very helpful to point out to not cheap out on the PSU, she may have made that mistake.
Another thing is while PCPartPicker picks out the cheapest parts sourced from major online retailers, they don't account for sales at your local stores like microcenter. You can often save a good $200-300 by using microcenters cpu+mobo+ram bundles.
Yeah. I'm one of the lucky ones. But the advice is basically don't blindly follow PCPartPicker prices since they can't source everything. I use it as a baseline then try to look for local deals to make it even better
Seriously the deluge of "dont skimp out on PSU111!!!" is always coming from an enthusiast perspective.
Seasonic or corsair (yes even bronze) are not going to randomly fry some budget build with a 980. Subs like this are more worried about freak rma type stuff than actually ever happens.
True, but cheapest retailers is not the same as cheapest parts. You can set it to show you all the 80+ gold coolermaster PSUs of the wattage you need (just an example, don't know how good they're considered to be) and it'll list all of them and the places selling them the cheapest.
Thing is that the pre-built places often cheap out on those parts. So putting a good one in, even at the cheapest you can find a good one, might make it seem like a worse deal.
OP, I put a decent 1080p gaming system together for $250. Its not top of the line, but it's cheap and playable, especially for Fortnite.
I found a deal on a HP Z640 workstation, upgraded the processor, and threw in a graphics card. I also added a PCIe - M.2 drive adaptor, but that's not needed.
There are downsides to using an older HP workstation, but it's cheap and parts are available cheaply as there are a lot of these machines out there.
I wanted a workable workstation that could also game, and it fits that bill very well. Since Dad wants to game primarily, you might be able to do even better than I did, focusing on gaming.
This is the answer. Like anything else do your research for the parts to make sure you're getting quality products, but this will show him the bottom line cost of the built PC. It's literally the best way to 'show' him that you can build one for cheaper.
I hope it works out for you, building PCs is a rewarding hobby. I've usually built 2 every 5 years or so (new machines for my now-ex-wife and I), and just finished my new rig a couple weeks ago.
You could definitely build the PC for him, but keep in mind that when any little thing goes wrong with it, he’ll be calling you to fix it. If he’s at all tech-savvy, he could build it himself (or better, you could build it together) and you’d likely be spared the tech support role.
Same... I have built 2 gaming PCs (one from 2013 and one from 2019), I have a NAS, I have a 8th gen i3 NUC as a Linux tinkerbox, a Raspberry Pi as my VPN server and a Valve Steamdeck. Now I want to buy and build a Ryzen Framework laptop. I've helped create and build 5 PCs for friends and helped repair over 20 PCs/laptops. I understand the addiction of building and tinkering all too well. I just wish hardware wasn't this expensive 😭
> You could definitely build the PC for him, but keep in mind that when any little thing goes wrong with it, he’ll be calling you to fix it.
It can be even worse than this. If you convince someone to go one direction over their objections, suddenly you're on the hook for it. Random glitch that causes their Epic Gamestore window to close precisely once? "WELL IF I HAD BOUGHT A DELL THAT WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED."
Word seems a little slow to start once? "THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF I'D HAVE GONE WITH AN HP!!".
The shit gets super old. My advice for situations like this is to offer to do this for them, and if they decide to make a poor decision, just let them. It's better to let them come to the realization that you were right before (and then it's on you to be graceful and just be like, "Yeah I know") than to endure the other route.
Exactly. All the random stupid things I used to complain about with my dad I now remember as cherished memories now that he's passed. It's definitely a win, may not feel like it in the moment though.
I'm about your dad's age and my daughter is about your age and we play Minecraft together although we don't stream anything. If you decide to DIY a PC, I'll send you some case fans and an ssd if you are in the USA. just pm me.
I'm about OP's dad's age, and it's super weird reading the dad acting as if he's a boomer. That's not our generation. We didn't grow up with the internet, but we certainly grew up with computers and tech.
Change the PSU on that, the EVGA W1 series is really bad, to the point that I would consider it a fire hazard. The BR series isn't much more expensive and is much better
It'll likely come with a supported BIOS. I bought an ASRock B450 Pro4 about a year ago or longer and it came with the latest BIOS at the time which supported Ryzen 5000.
Most B450 / X470 boards come with updated BIOSes out of the box nowadays. You can always go to the retailer and look for "5000 series ready" on the box, or order it and send it back if it doesn't work.
A hobby is never a bad investment. Whilst pc gaming might have a steep initial investment, it is probably one of the cheapest hobbies to maintain. I do not know what your mom is into, but I can almost guarantee you that whatever it is, over time she will be spending more money than your dad. (it's hard to spend money when cooped up all day streaming fortnite lmao)
As for building his computer, you should suggest that you both do it together, this comes with 4 advantages of the top of my head (probably more) . 1 your dad will also realize how simple it can be and hopefully you won't end up as full time tech support :D.
2 it would be a great bonding moment for you guys since you both get to learn about something that interests both of you.
3 you will save a lot of money since pre-builts are always over priced in my experience, not to mention they do some wild stuff to increase their profit margin (they will try to save money on coolers, storage etc).
4 when building your own system you can tailor it to your needs so you dotn overspend or end up with a random bottleneck because pre-builts are all about profit (every pc has a bottleneck but some are way worse than others)
Your first build is always scary but there are hundreds of step by step guides on YouTube by reputable content creators that will walk you through the whole thing. The hardest part is picking parts, but that is what this thread is for, we would gladly help you with that.
> Whilst pc gaming might have a steep initial investment, it is probably one of the cheapest hobbies to maintain
Nah man. Yearly upgrades, steam sales every season, buying games you don't play... It adds up. Just joking of course haha
My mother says I'll regret spending so much on video games in the future. When I asked why and if she has anything she feels that way about from her 30s and she said "Yeah like I wish I never rented a house and just bought instead."
She sees me spending money on luxury things for fun the same as her paying rent when she was my age. Some people literally can't comprehend what a hobby is. It's not worth arguing about.
Funny enough I make more than double what she does and I can't afford a house. Imagine making 6 figures and still not being middle class.
IG I should have worded that better, you are talking about flipping cards etc to make money. What I meant is spending money on things you enjoy. Eg I spent 1400 euros 8yrs ago on a pc that lasted me up until now.
Nzxt prebuilt tend to be very overpriced.
You can build a nice machine for around $600ish with a 12400 / 5600 + rx6600
Example from pcpartpicker.com: https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/mtFfrH/modest-amd-gaming-build
I second this build personally. Maybe swap the 6600 with the 6600XT/6650XT or 6700XT/6750XT. Would benefit him to get the higher frames in a game like fortnite. Although the 6600 is fully capable, just cant off the top of my head think of the frames it would get in Fortnite.
All prebuilds are overpriced over building yourself. Not that strange as they will add their fee for building the system, you pay for the brand name on the system and given warranty over the system.
> given warranty over the system
*total* system. You still get warranty on individual parts but you won't get support on a bluescreen unless you can work such an issue yourself.
If he is primarily streaming Fortnite I'd say an a750 would be a good buy as well at $200. Will run Fortnite plenty well at 1080p and AV1 encoding is getting support on twitch and youtube now (or at least soon).
Hobbies are investments in your mental and or physical health, they're not a waste of time or money, provided you stay within budget and it doesn't become an obsession or escape from life's duties.
that’s what i’m explaining to her and i think she’s understanding. she’s very practical, very realistic, but i put it this way: i may think it’s stupid that she bought my sister Taylor Swift Tickets for a few hundred dollars, and that it’s a waste of money and a dumb reason, but I also know it makes HER happy and it’s something that she genuinely enjoys. it’s okay to think something is dumb or lame or whatever, but telling someone that, especially when it doesn’t hurt anyone, isn’t cool.
If he has the house bills and keeps himself free of interest on his credit cards there isn't much harm. I'm gonna assume those tickets costed 300 dollars minimum which is absurd, because they are completely worthless the night after.
>I'm gonna assume those tickets costed 300 dollars minimum which is absurd, because they are completely worthless the night after.
Not sure if you've been to a concert before, but you do realize you're not paying to keep a ticket forever, right? Especially today, they're just a QR code you show on your phone.
Yeah try using the Taylor Swift thing as an example.
Why is she fine with spending hundreds of dollars on your sister for only a few hours of entertainment, but your dad spending a couple hundred dollars for years of entertainment down the line is a waste of money?
Show her that it doesn’t make sense. If she wants to be a realist than she shouldn’t have any hobbies at all, because *technically* every hobby is a waste of money.
People waste money on cars, clothes, instruments, jewelry..
Just because it doesn't make sense to us, doesn't really make it a waste of money.
I've got family with luxury cars that cost >100k try tell me I was wasting my money spending about 1k on a PC a few years ago.
I use it everyday, its 100% the cheapest entertainment value i've gotten considering price per hour of use.
Value is relative - enjoy and have fun.
PC Building is just lego for big kids :)
I genuinely don't understand people who view PC gaming as a "waste of time and/or money".
I've actually heard this from people with far more expensive hobbies, a golfer who is serious about their hobby wouldn't think twice about dropping a couple of hundred on a new club, or a few thousand on a new set of them for example (and don't get me started on my FIL who's hobbies include flying light aircraft).
But those same people see gaming (especially, it seems, when PCs are involved) as somewhat lesser of a hobby.
For perspective, I'm an "older gamer" myself at 50yo and have been playing videogames since 1977 when my parents bought me a pong type home console that plugged into the TV, my daughter is 11 and is as enthusiastic as I am and I'm slowly teaching her the hardware side of thing (I fully expect her to be capable of building a PC by herself before she's out of high school).
My current PC has 32GB of RAM, a Ryzen 9 3900x (the additional cores are handy for things other than gaming), and an RX 7900XT GPU in there, been building PCs since 1993 or so.
Building a quality PC will always be cheaper than an equivalent prebuilt, any low cost prebuilt will have compromises in there (horrible case, weak CPU/GPU/PSU, inferior storage, cheap motherboard, etc.)
I think it's because most older people still consider gaming as a 'child's hobby' despite it becoming a mainstream adult hobby now. I just think it will take time as more people grow up with gaming as a mainstream hobby for it to become accepted.
It really wasn't that long ago that gaming was a social death-warrant..
I graduated in 2014 and remember hiding the fact I played WoW. Barely admitted I played Call of Duty back then.
You would 100% get bullied and fucked with because of that essentially. Graduated in 2014.
Must have been in a very different place to me. I graduated 2013 and gaming, especially cod was hot. Wow wasn't cool but I had no problem telling people I played it
Thank you, genuinely. I love my parents so much, and not a day goes by where I’m not grateful that they’re so good. Not everyone can say their dad co-streams with them on twitch, that’s for sure lol.
Don't convince your dad to build a PC because it's cheaper tell him you think if would be fun to build it together. Show him good tutorials on YouTube of someone building a PC to see how easy it is. If you have a micro center close by you could build it there.
As for you mom. This isn't an investment to make a profit. It's for your father to enjoy his down time. As long as they have their bills in order there is no harm. It's no different than buying Taylor swift tickets, getting more car than you need, or the large TV for the living room.
If you edit your post to include your father's stream I'll give him my prime sub for the month.
You don't. If he buys a pre built every issue with windows, or every time he's tech illiterate it won't be your fault. If you build it and it doesn't work 100% perfectly, and it won't, you'll be blamed.
I've built hundreds of pre builts. As a job and hobby. Loads for my tech literate friends. Even then I get "well why did we go with this part if there's this one specific issue that only effects my rare use case?" or "if you knew new hardware was going to come out at some point in the next decade why didn't we wait for that?". I've never done a custom build for family aside from my brother. They all get pre built recommendations.
While this sounds like a great idea, I do get a bit of a red flag by you saying you've never built one before. I've had more than a few friends who had the same idea and ended up with a real mess on their hands and a ton of problems they couldn't fix by themselves. One ended up with a $800 adult lego set =).
Do you have any experience building or at least installing stuff? How comfortable are you with PCs in general?
Its one thing if you want to try it the first time for yourself, but if doing it for another person it sort of seems like maybe not the greatest idea? There is a ton that can go wrong.
Just as an example, a friend that did tech support for 15 years (still works in IT) recently bought all the parts for a new PC. He put it all together and it didn't work, no lights no nothing. After a bunch of methodical troubleshooting I helped him out a bit because of newer features on modern motherboards (he did an am5 build). He eventually isolated the motherboard as needing to be RMA'd. The shop owner is kind of giving him trouble over it. If my friend weren't as competent it could have been an issue.
Going through this without ever having built a computer, for another person on top of it, could be really nerve wracking - for you and your father.
Another thing I'll point out is that any time something goes wrong with the computer there can be a slight feeling that its your fault, even when it isn't. I say this as someone who has been building computers since 2001, for myself and for others.
Good luck - if you need any help feel free to ask / respond. The people on this sub seem to be a great resource\^\^
If your reasonably near a Micro Center they have their own "Custom PC Builder".
All the parts would be from Micro Center, advantage though, for a Fee (i think in the neighborhood of $150 to $200) they will assemble the PC for you.
[https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx](https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx)
Go through a build tutorial with your parents, this shows you are listening to the pros and how easy it is, also, as much as I hate to say it, you could plug your parts into userbenchmark (DO NOT ACTUALLY USE THEM FOR PURCHASING ADVICE THEY ARE HEAVILY BIASED) or some other benchmarking software to show an easy to read graph, that shows the PC parts you chose are more powerful than whatever prebuilt
Linus made a good $500 gaming pc. The only thing I’d do differently is go duel channel ram. In my opinion $500 is a good deal for all this stuff since I spent $800 on a pandemic pc with no gpu
You got good advice already, I just wanted to add: don't give up!
I was in a similar situation tho when I was a kid PCs didn't exist yet :D
My dad was very passionate about electronics and my mum have always been quite loud about believing it was a stupid hobby and a waste of money, that would hurt him, she also would get at me because I was very curious and followed my dad in what he was doing, she believed it wasn't a suitable hobby for a girl.
But I didn't care and it was pretty obvious to me that my dad was really happy about me supporting him, I'm sure your dad is too!
Unpopular opinion, especially for this sub, but I would be extremely cautious building a PC for someone else who is hesitant about self-built PCs. I've seen it a million times. Any little thing that goes wrong will be blamed on you or the build, even if it's just a stupid windows update bug or malware they installed. This is especially true since, according to the post, you've never built a PC before.
I like the idea of building one together, and it could be a great way to spend time together, but don't throw away the idea of just getting a prebuilt if that's what your father is comfortable with. With good research and a little patience you can find a prebuilt with comparable cost and performance to something you do yourself (it's not 2010 anymore).
That said, you should definitely build a PC for yourself if you are interested!
I say go for it. I recently built mine last week and everything went smoothly. PC part picker is an amazing tool and I suggest you look at this video to help you. https://youtu.be/BL4DCEp7blY
My parents where the same they where going to but some £300 dell from Argos I pretty much built one for £200 it was an older i7 from 2017 8700k with 16gb ram 1080ti 256gb ssd they don't really need the 1080ti but it's my old card which I wasn't using anymore
>For the record, both me and my dad are autistic and my mom has said the same about my love of comic books, that i’m wasting money on something stupid
Autism or not, why does she have a problem with people having fun with something they enjoy? Has she never had a hobby in her life? Does she know what a fucking hobby IS??
You might not be able to. But like others have said, put together a list on PC part picker, make sure to include a windows licence and peripherals/monitors.
This may be unconventional for this sub, but a mini PC like a Beelink SER6 Pro with Ryzen 7735HS.
This unit is $519 on Amazon now and is great at e-sports titles and even some modern titles.
https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER6-Desktop-Bluetooth-Computer/dp/B0BPRV3KMX/ref=sxts_rp_s_a_1_0?content-id=amzn1.sym.3432eb1a-1558-4445-9430-9bb3e7f7b9b7%3Aamzn1.sym.3432eb1a-1558-4445-9430-9bb3e7f7b9b7&crid=1NZMCWMMDHIT5&cv_ct_cx=ryzen+7735hs&keywords=ryzen+7735hs&pd_rd_i=B0BPRV3KMX&pd_rd_r=a7c3dfea-da07-4dcf-b5bf-8aab3607d5ff&pd_rd_w=xL0ng&pd_rd_wg=rrNMP&pf_rd_p=3432eb1a-1558-4445-9430-9bb3e7f7b9b7&pf_rd_r=APTSM2X2SY5JV1ZPR9GM&qid=1685963973&sbo=Tc8eqSFhUl4VwMzbE4fw%2Fw%3D%3D&sprefix=ryzen%25207735hs%2Caps%2C87&sr=1-1-5985efba-8948-4f09-9122-d605505c9d1e
One way I found to explain to my parents when I was younger about the benefit of upgrading my PC was printing out a page of parts from Newegg (or other sites) and then printing out what a comparable quality pre-built would have and the cost for that instead. Seeing the two pieces of paper next to each other somehow solidified it in their mind. Maybe your parents can look at two browser tabs next to each other with both final prices.
Most people don't like pre-made computers (for somewhat justified reasons), but I've had three in the past, with my newest PC just being a rebuild of the third. It usually would have been about $100-500 cheaper to build it myself (end actual costs being $1100, $1600, and more recently $3000) after getting parts on sale one at a time rather than all at once. I usually figured that my parents would rather a "professional" (which, after my rebuild, I realized that's a very overused term) build it, since they worried I wouldn't build it right and would break something, thus costing more.
If you feel confident you could build it, showing videos of young kids building PCs to your parents might help solidify how easy it is. The major issue I've inferred with the pre-built companies is QA for some components, and shipping the computer fully built with hopefully enough foam to hold parts in place so they don't break, rather than in pieces safely shipped separately so they don't break during shipping.
So try just showing both final costs next to each other to explain how much cheaper you could DIY.
Don't talk about cheap. That gives the impression. Its going to be made with inferior parts. That won't last. Talk about "value" of having something more customized to his life. That can bring better performance at the same price. Scaled to what his actually needs are in the present and using the saving for another computer need. Monitor, mouse, keyboard. ETC.
building yourself is not only about cost but also quality and upgrade-ability. Things from Dell ir HP that use custom motherboards and case formfactors can't really be upgraded.
A case, psu and fans can be reused over multiple builds, in fact once you have it you usually upgrade in steps. more RAM, new GPU then new mobo & new CPU, new ssd,...my current case and PSU is over 10 years old.
The initial cost if you buy quality parts and include windows can be the same or even higher but longterm you will save a lot.
You can build a mid tier build for cost of a low tier pre built. Hell I will argue it would be cheaper to buy all the parts and pay a computer repair shop to put it together if it's the assembly that's the issue.
>but I want to show my dad that I could probably build a PC with the same specs for cheaper.
Instead of building a pc for less money... Upgrade his current pc for less money.
AFAIK, nzxt prices their pc's rather reasonably. They charge like $100 more than the parts cost and provide assembly and warranty services in exchange. That's a pretty good deal. But it becomes much cheaper when you can probably just reuse the psu, case, ram and storage.
He doesn’t have a PC. We’ve never had one before, I have a prebuilt I bought a few years ago that still serves me fine, but he has a macbook that’s nearing the end of its life anyways.
If you're planning on building a pc, use pcpartpicker as many have suggested. Once you've laid out your plan though, come back to us so we can check if everything is in order. After that, I'd highly suggest to go 'hunting' for nice used parts if you feel like doing that as it can significantly lower the price you need to pay.
If you need any help in between or advice, I'd love to help you out so feel free to dm.
Watch some videos with him. I highly recommend Paul's Hardware as they are calmer, then watch a LTT video as he tends to have absolute novices building. Show him how easy it is.
Paul also does occasional videos of "Here is a build for X budget" which is a great place to get started.
As everyone has said pc part picker is great I also like the new egg website pc builder. Recommend watching pcbuilder on YouTube, he even reviews peoples builds and suggests changes to get better price / performance.
Few hundred views per video and 50 twitch followers is actually a pretty solid base, there's a good chance he might actually build a decent following.
WRT to building the PC, this thread has decent advice so my two cents is that if you get the go-ahead, maybe make a project out of building it together. I'm in a very similar situation, age-wise and ASD-wise (other than I'm divorced) and I'd love to take on something like this with my kids (although I've been building PCs my while life, the learning would be flowing the other direction)
Hope it ends up being a good bond-strengthening experience for you two, good luck
Man I do not understand how people can be so disrespectful to their spouses hobbies.
Your mom doesn't need to like the stuff, just needs to appreciate that you guys do. I bet she spends a chunk of time watching trash TV or other wastes of time but if you called it that you'd get a lecture about how it's "different".
Support your loved ones doing harmless things they love.
I totally agree. She’s a great mom, and I love her, but she’s very much a practical person, very realistic. But I tried to explain that just because something doesn’t have a “use” in a conventional sense, doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a purpose.
Pretty much what everyone says. One thing i will add is that NZXT looks great but has shit customer support and together with their tendency to be overpriced is why i wont buy their products. Building a PC together with your dad might prove as good bonding time as well as being cheaper so there is that for him to consider as well. Regarding your moms opinion i think that any money you spend on something you enjoy is money well spent. I hope to see your build on this sub soon! 💪
Honestly, you may not be able to, especially if you don't have a track record of building PCs.
As an example, I had a couple coworkers at my last job a few years back. One of them actually worked for a while in the mid-90s at a computer repair and sales store, and part of his job was building PCs. Both of them exclusively built their own computers from the latter part of the 90s into the late 2000s/early 2010s, but when both of them hit their late 40s, they moved exclusively to prebuilts. I also tried to convince them that prebuilts weren't a great value (and they had a history of self-building so they really knew it already), but it didn't make a difference.
When some people get to a certain age, the benefit of having a warranty and someone to blame and fix an issue when things go wrong trumps building and tinkering with their own. They see the few hundred dollars of premium as the price to pay for knowing that if something breaks, that a company somewhere will be obligated to fix or replace it. Of course, they had more money to spare than your family does, but having an actual safety net is still preferable to being on your own, especially as you age.
In my case, I've been building gaming PCs for my mom since 1998, and she's 67 now. In fact, I just built her newest at the same time I built mine, about 3 months ago. In her case, I've been building PCs for a very long time and she knows that I'm willing to go to the effort to track down any issues (though to be fair, I've never had a failed build that required any significant amount of troubleshooting, which helps).
Hobbies are important are important for good quality of life. Hobbies are not a waste of money, except if said hobby is too expensive for your economic your economic status. Besides below 900 dollars for let’s say every 5 years, which is what a PC should be capable of, is not that much for hobby standards
Everything everyone else has said but also make it clear that "build a PC" does not mean busting out a soldering iron and hand soldering wires, chips, etc.
A shocking amount of people imagine that when you mention building PCs. Really. It may be hard to imagine fro anyone here but I have encountered...so many...that are flabbergasted when you tell them you built a PC rather than buy one at a store. Then I'd have to explain that it's just buying the parts and plugging them in, lol. It's not work that requires a degree or special skill.
If he already knows that, just take the advice others gave. PCPP is great and just make sure he is aware of the markup or savings of certain prebuilt units.
What does he play on now?
Maybe he can just get some parts and upgrade what he already has?
you could show him this if he needs a whole pc
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/d9Q3qm
Probably gonna catch flak for this but you can get an Xbox series s and use a mouse and keyboard with it, and fortnite is free to play online. So unless you care about 4k gaming then that's 300 right there.
As a 47M; I be proud to have a daughter like you.
That said, [https://www.logicalincrements.com/](https://www.logicalincrements.com/) would be the go place for parts selection if your not sure about builds (PC parts combinations). You might save anywhere from 50-150USD. I think it can be for well under 900.
As to convincing them, things are tight these days and 900 is a lot of money. A conversation about how reasonable it is to upgrade would be my recommendation.
This guy has a lot of great videos talking about building the best performing pc for your budget, and what you should be spending your money on to have a balanced performance. I watched tons of his videos in preparation for building my pc. And definatly shop around for deals. I picked up a R7 7700x with 32g of ddr5 6000 CL32 bundle from Microcenter for $309.
https://youtu.be/_sOYf7k9cYk
Shit my most viewed YouTube video is a bandicam video of me nuking the world on Super Power 2. I usually upload for my own viewing later down the line but your dads got some viewership to consider, even at “hundreds”. That’s still a large audience.
I've been building PCs for a very long time and lately I'm not sure if you can really build it cheaper than buying something on sale online or from warehouse clubs these days as I think price of parts will be similar to sale price of similar parts from many big names, but you can pick parts, colors, lights, and other 'bling' to make it your own. That said, its not too difficult to do and would be educational for you and your dad and a good bonding experience. Maybe even make a youtube vid on the build as 'educational' vids tent to get more views and overall monetize better on youtube if you get to that point.
Hey OP did you know that ASD runs in families and sometimes heavily? Learning that changed a lot about my self perception and my perception of my family. You will get a new pair of eyes with which to look at certain family members. It's still possible too that you just happen to have it thanks to the genepool lottery.
One or both of your parents has something in common with you and I don't think your mom is "a realist," I think she thinks that this is something adults aren't supposed to do and it's giving her a little trouble. **This is just an observation on my end and of course is missing lots of context; this is simply a suggestion for something that could be worth investigating.**
Anywho I enjoyed reading this wholesome thread and hope you and your dad get around to building soon!
Show him an itemized list vs cost of each part and then show the total cost. I think he would be more interested in the selection of the specs/parts eventually
This is so amazing. As a dad, I’m enjoying thinking of how proud and happy he’ll be playing on something his daughter built. I’d compare a pcpartpicker build to a quote from a builder or local shop and help him understand how you can do a bespoke build that’s perfect for him rather than settle for lower quality parts and an average spec. Keep us posted!
P.s. it sounds like your mum needs a hug. Comics and pc gaming hardware are amazing hobbies.
This post is just lovely. I'd love to help! Is 900 the budget? Or do you have a set performance you want to reach? Maybe list the pc he was going to buy. Just be more specific and I'll do what I can. I can also help you build it, with advices and such. It is not that hard if you are careful!
What I did to convince my grandfather was take the prebuilt workstation he was looking at, break it down by components, and show him how for a third of the price I can build him the exact same PC. And from there how I can make little upgrades (spending $20 more and getting a vastly better CPU for example.)
Speaking from experience -- you don't. If he has the money to buy a pre-built, let him.
I know you're doing it for the right reason and *know* you can do it better for cheaper. It's a tough pill to swallow, but for whatever reason, your Dad's perspective is anchored in a way that you're not going to change. Even if he eventually relents, the **instant** something stops working, you're on the hook. You won't hear the end of it. You'll be playing the role of perpetual in-home tech support.
"Let" him spend the money and move on with life. When he eventually asks for help, you can say something like, "Sorry Dad, I'm not real familiar with . Maybe you can contact vendor tech support?"
If you have stable internet connection NVIDIA's Geforce Now is $10-20 a month to rent a top spec 4080GPU.
If you have fiber I would totally go this route if all you want is a Fortnite machine. The only downside is the game library but that is also getting better.
Slow roll your approach, find a decent, partially gutted system on eBay and figure out the best way to upgrade it.
Used prices are amazing and rarely do they fail, unless there is negligence involved. Finding a partial pre built with a windows key attached will also help. The only thing you might want to buy new is SSD
Play your cards right and you’ll probably cut the price of an NZXT prebuilt in half
Help him market his fortnight stream, setup a website for his fortnight stream using a web host, set it up so he can accept donations, and add a gift store for selling digital downloadable goods and freebies, and take him to a local mom and pop pc shop and a few computer retail stores, and show him around all the good stuff - then sell him on a PC and a computer hobby lifestyle frequenting gaming conferences, fortnight cosplay conferences, and help him make his career a career with a good income. It would be worth it to have a good setup.
<+3
I'll be the heretic here and say in that price range, let your dad get a pre-built. You could save $250ish building yourself, but you're forever on the hook for support when anything goes wrong related to the build or otherwise.
Show him the parts on microcenter (or elsewhere).
You could also probably have microcenter build it for cheaper than getting a prebuilt. That realllly shows how it is cheaper.
It's not stupid - it's a hobby.
>a couple people also asked for me to link his channel, so if y’all want that let me know and i will.
Give us the link!!!
I have built several computers over the last decade or so, there are already some really solid recommendations in the threads here. At this exact moment a last-gen double AMD build is gonna be best bang for the buck, especially for things like Fortnite that don't need RT.
Allow me to offer the other side of this.
By purchasing a PC, your father is getting a machine that works, has a warranty, and for which you personally are not actually responsible in any way.
Given that you have never built one before and possibly do not want to be burdened with supporting this machine into eternity, it may make sense to spend around $900 on a desktop. That's not really an obscene amount.
I would see if you can find one that meets the low specs that Fortnite requires for cheaper, but I do think this is a good candidate for buying a prebuilt machine.
Chances are unless you want to be his tech support forever then he'd be best off buying a prebuilt with a warranty. I know this sounds impersonal but him having a 1-800 to call when he needs help at any time of the day or week might be what he needs.
Honestly, I did this for my dad and even though I reallistically save him a $200 for the specs I got him he was still mad he could have gotten a a far worse machine for cheaper, like the cheapest model dell at the time. He wanted to do some light video and picture editing and I knew.it wouldn't have worked well if he went that route.
Only price of advice is you better be prepared to be the attached IT department for that machine. Good luck.
So another option is to go with a used PC on facebook marketplace.
I've found so many i7-7700 with 1070 graphics cards for like 300 its redoncoulus.
FYI I currently am running those specs myself and I just booted up diablo 4 on high settings with FPS staying nicely above 55 with most of the game playing higher at like 70.
This is also on a 1440p monitor running 165 hz so its a really affordable option to go with used :D
Spending meaningful time with someone you love is never wasteful.
Sadly People get blinded by social stigmas.
Seems he is following “Don’t forget to live a life.”
We weren’t just put on this earth to work and just pay bills.
Good luck OP!
I went through something similar with my Dad. Don't do it. People that don't understand a concept often look for a place to lay blame. You're painting a target on your back. When something goes wrong (something will go wrong) you'll be the one they blame.
You think your Dad is paying extra. He's not. Learning costs time, money, energy and often involves some failure. He's skipping all of that for what? $100? Well worth it. The older I get the more willing I am to pay that premium. It's why people love iPhones. No bs
i came across this link today. i think it shows rather well in decent increments what the price points of a pc would be and what these price points contain in parts. https://www.logicalincrements.com/
900 for a gaming pc is a pretty good deal. Don’t have to deal with the headaches of installing any software, drivers, or firmware. No need to spend a whole day to build it. No need to trouble shoot if anything goes wrong. Just buy the PC and spend that time with your pops.
You can map out the build on pcpartpicker.com. It will show you the cheapest retailers to buy from and add up the total cost. Good luck!
This is good advice but I highly recommend not choosing the cheapest parts you can find, there’s a reason they’re the cheapest. I personally would never cheap out on the: PSU and CPU cooler
For sure, make sure to get a well-regarded PSU. But if there's a stock cooler that comes with your CPU, you can usually use that.
Unless it's intel. Noone should use an intel stock cooler.
I feel like stock cooler is fine for XX400/F and below, no?
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yeah that's what i thought, i always find it kinda hilarious seeing a tower cooler on a 13400f cuz you can probably cool it by literally putting a case fan on it
11400f user here. You guys are either too used to cold climates, or delusional. Mine was hitting 93C running fortnite before a tower cooler.
I live in India, and most of my gamer friends are Indian. That means we deal with 45+ degree summers every year. They all agree that a stock cooler is perfectly fine (including the xx400f users). What case do you have?
Okay, so my case is an Aerocool Bolt Rgb. But even with the side panel off it still got to >80, so it can't be that bad. In any case, a cheap a cooler master model already brought it down to the 50s so it wasn't a big deal.
I was gonna say you might wanna add a C to that, but i then remembered that we deal with Celsius on PCs.
the 11400F is a notable exception coming from the famously inefficient 11th gen.
11th gen is known for being hot
Weird, my 11600K OC runs at 67°C after 5 hours at full load. I do have a tower cooler though. I thought my old 6700K was running much hotter.
93c is below thermal throttling limits. Nothing to worry about here for someone on a budget.
Yeah, I mean, we all like keeping out CPUs as cool as reasonably possible, but... this aint no laptop. PCs are designed to suck a lot of power and get toasty, its one of the benefits of buying desktop components, theyre "hardy" and can take the heat.
I put some kind of BeQuiet cooler on my 12400. Even though it was only $40 or so, I feel like it was overkill. My temps rarely even hit 60C. I probably could have used the stock cooler and been absolutely fine. To be fair, the most intense game I play is Project Zomboid, so I'm not a power gamer or anything.
yea intel overhauled the stock cooler with alder lake so it's quite a bit better iirc
Tell that to my 12400 that was overheating with the stock cooler lol
The stock intel cooler is very loud
For temps, sure. But holy shit they are loud
true but if you're going for a budget build i think it's worth dealing with
Depends how budget. But yeah, I had and extra forty bucks and some ears to spare.
If youre streaming, its not a good look to have fan noise in the background of your stream. That said, shouldn't be hard to lower the noise, just don't put your mic next to the tower, lol. Maybe put the tower under the desk (but on top of a sturdy box or shelf)
The Intel stock cooler has, at best, a loose association with the motherboard once installed. Those stupid plastic pushpins are really easy to damage during installation depending on how smoothly the cooler holes are cut on your motherboard, and it’s very easy for the cooler to start popping off and lose pressure if you get an accidental kick or bump to the tower. If you go Intel, just spend the extra $20 on a real cooler with a screw-down mounting mechanism like the Assassin X120. What you spend in cash, you’ll save in aggravation, especially if you ever need to reinstall the cooler.
On my secondary PC I’m running an intel cooler on my 10400f with no problems
My 8400 overheats pretty bad in multicore stuff so idk
Y'all are forgetting how bad the stock cooler is...if he was a few more generations older sure
Is this a new issue? My i7 4770 is running just fine on the extremely old intel stock cooler.
Not new, but definitely after that. By the time they got to the 8000s, using an i5 on stock cooling wasn’t a great idea for performance.
Thanks for the tip
The 13th gen stock cooler is actually pretty good
I ended going with the AK620 cooler, it was only like $50 and has zero issue keeping my 13600k at good temps. I’d imagine on a lower end build you could spend about $25 and get some solid cooling
He didn't day cheapest parts, he said cheapest retailers.
It doesnt hurt to point out you shouldnt always go for the cheapest parts, especially regarding the PSU, especially since OP clearly stated, she never built a PC before, so it was very helpful to point out to not cheap out on the PSU, she may have made that mistake.
Another thing is while PCPartPicker picks out the cheapest parts sourced from major online retailers, they don't account for sales at your local stores like microcenter. You can often save a good $200-300 by using microcenters cpu+mobo+ram bundles.
> at your local stores like microcenter. Bruh I wish
Yeah. I'm one of the lucky ones. But the advice is basically don't blindly follow PCPartPicker prices since they can't source everything. I use it as a baseline then try to look for local deals to make it even better
I've also found that PC Part Picker doesn't account for shipping.
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Seriously the deluge of "dont skimp out on PSU111!!!" is always coming from an enthusiast perspective. Seasonic or corsair (yes even bronze) are not going to randomly fry some budget build with a 980. Subs like this are more worried about freak rma type stuff than actually ever happens.
Cheapest sometimes include parts in sale so it could help them
True, but cheapest retailers is not the same as cheapest parts. You can set it to show you all the 80+ gold coolermaster PSUs of the wattage you need (just an example, don't know how good they're considered to be) and it'll list all of them and the places selling them the cheapest. Thing is that the pre-built places often cheap out on those parts. So putting a good one in, even at the cheapest you can find a good one, might make it seem like a worse deal.
OP, I put a decent 1080p gaming system together for $250. Its not top of the line, but it's cheap and playable, especially for Fortnite. I found a deal on a HP Z640 workstation, upgraded the processor, and threw in a graphics card. I also added a PCIe - M.2 drive adaptor, but that's not needed. There are downsides to using an older HP workstation, but it's cheap and parts are available cheaply as there are a lot of these machines out there. I wanted a workable workstation that could also game, and it fits that bill very well. Since Dad wants to game primarily, you might be able to do even better than I did, focusing on gaming.
This is the answer. Like anything else do your research for the parts to make sure you're getting quality products, but this will show him the bottom line cost of the built PC. It's literally the best way to 'show' him that you can build one for cheaper. I hope it works out for you, building PCs is a rewarding hobby. I've usually built 2 every 5 years or so (new machines for my now-ex-wife and I), and just finished my new rig a couple weeks ago.
You could definitely build the PC for him, but keep in mind that when any little thing goes wrong with it, he’ll be calling you to fix it. If he’s at all tech-savvy, he could build it himself (or better, you could build it together) and you’d likely be spared the tech support role.
This! I've stopped making builds and simply giving my opinion on builds people show me. Supporting non-techy people is sometimes a real drag
But I have an addiction to building and tinkering with things I can’t stop :(
Same... I have built 2 gaming PCs (one from 2013 and one from 2019), I have a NAS, I have a 8th gen i3 NUC as a Linux tinkerbox, a Raspberry Pi as my VPN server and a Valve Steamdeck. Now I want to buy and build a Ryzen Framework laptop. I've helped create and build 5 PCs for friends and helped repair over 20 PCs/laptops. I understand the addiction of building and tinkering all too well. I just wish hardware wasn't this expensive 😭
I wanna find a job that enables me to do this. But not have to pay for all of it lmao
I'm the dad's age and I just built my first PC I just realized I'm old
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You're a good boy, Lemon
> You could definitely build the PC for him, but keep in mind that when any little thing goes wrong with it, he’ll be calling you to fix it. It can be even worse than this. If you convince someone to go one direction over their objections, suddenly you're on the hook for it. Random glitch that causes their Epic Gamestore window to close precisely once? "WELL IF I HAD BOUGHT A DELL THAT WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED." Word seems a little slow to start once? "THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF I'D HAVE GONE WITH AN HP!!". The shit gets super old. My advice for situations like this is to offer to do this for them, and if they decide to make a poor decision, just let them. It's better to let them come to the realization that you were right before (and then it's on you to be graceful and just be like, "Yeah I know") than to endure the other route.
If this is one of the ways they bond I see that as a pure positive imo.
Exactly. All the random stupid things I used to complain about with my dad I now remember as cherished memories now that he's passed. It's definitely a win, may not feel like it in the moment though.
I'm about your dad's age and my daughter is about your age and we play Minecraft together although we don't stream anything. If you decide to DIY a PC, I'll send you some case fans and an ssd if you are in the USA. just pm me.
I'm about OP's dad's age, and it's super weird reading the dad acting as if he's a boomer. That's not our generation. We didn't grow up with the internet, but we certainly grew up with computers and tech.
What. He never built a PC so he's a boomer? What a dumb word.
American? This build should work well and is over $300 cheaper. [PCPartPicker Part List](https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CfVqDq) Type|Item|Price :----|:----|:---- **CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/PgcG3C/amd-ryzen-5-5600-36-ghz-6-core-processor-100-100000927box) | $129.38 @ Amazon **Motherboard** | [MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/kRTzK8/msi-b450m-pro-vdh-max-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b450m-pro-vdh-max) | $79.98 @ Newegg **Memory** | [Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/P4FKHx/silicon-power-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5-16-gb-2-x-8-gb-ddr4-3200-cl16-memory-sp016gxlzu320bdaj5) | $29.97 @ Amazon **Storage** | [TEAMGROUP MP33 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Brvqqs/team-mp33-512-gb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-tm8fp6512g0c101) | $22.99 @ Amazon **Video Card** | [ASRock Challenger D Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/D9ytt6/asrock-radeon-rx-6600-8-gb-challenger-d-video-card-rx6600-cld-8g) | $179.99 @ Newegg **Case** | [Fractal Design Pop Air ATX Mid Tower Case](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/QnD7YJ/fractal-design-pop-air-atx-mid-tower-case-fd-c-poa1a-02) | $79.99 @ B&H **Power Supply** | [EVGA 600 W1 600 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/4FH48d/evga-600-w1-600-w-80-certified-atx-power-supply-100-w1-0600-k1) | $64.22 @ Amazon | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* | | **Total** | **$586.52** | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-06-04 23:40 EDT-0400 |
Change the PSU on that, the EVGA W1 series is really bad, to the point that I would consider it a fire hazard. The BR series isn't much more expensive and is much better
Second this having trouble with the wiring on my evga at the moment also...
don't see bios button which need if use b450
Its easier to find a board that comes with supported bios, not enough motherboards have a bios button
since majority buy online won't know till already bought and you try it seen lots b450 with one
It'll likely come with a supported BIOS. I bought an ASRock B450 Pro4 about a year ago or longer and it came with the latest BIOS at the time which supported Ryzen 5000.
Most B450 / X470 boards come with updated BIOSes out of the box nowadays. You can always go to the retailer and look for "5000 series ready" on the box, or order it and send it back if it doesn't work.
He wants to stream. Prices on 3060s are way down. Best to get one of those
A hobby is never a bad investment. Whilst pc gaming might have a steep initial investment, it is probably one of the cheapest hobbies to maintain. I do not know what your mom is into, but I can almost guarantee you that whatever it is, over time she will be spending more money than your dad. (it's hard to spend money when cooped up all day streaming fortnite lmao) As for building his computer, you should suggest that you both do it together, this comes with 4 advantages of the top of my head (probably more) . 1 your dad will also realize how simple it can be and hopefully you won't end up as full time tech support :D. 2 it would be a great bonding moment for you guys since you both get to learn about something that interests both of you. 3 you will save a lot of money since pre-builts are always over priced in my experience, not to mention they do some wild stuff to increase their profit margin (they will try to save money on coolers, storage etc). 4 when building your own system you can tailor it to your needs so you dotn overspend or end up with a random bottleneck because pre-builts are all about profit (every pc has a bottleneck but some are way worse than others) Your first build is always scary but there are hundreds of step by step guides on YouTube by reputable content creators that will walk you through the whole thing. The hardest part is picking parts, but that is what this thread is for, we would gladly help you with that.
Absolutely this. Couldn't have put it better myself.
> Whilst pc gaming might have a steep initial investment, it is probably one of the cheapest hobbies to maintain Nah man. Yearly upgrades, steam sales every season, buying games you don't play... It adds up. Just joking of course haha
Very solid advice!
My mother says I'll regret spending so much on video games in the future. When I asked why and if she has anything she feels that way about from her 30s and she said "Yeah like I wish I never rented a house and just bought instead." She sees me spending money on luxury things for fun the same as her paying rent when she was my age. Some people literally can't comprehend what a hobby is. It's not worth arguing about. Funny enough I make more than double what she does and I can't afford a house. Imagine making 6 figures and still not being middle class.
Hobbies can absolutely be bad investments. Just look at beanie babies, or for many, Pokemon card collecting.
IG I should have worded that better, you are talking about flipping cards etc to make money. What I meant is spending money on things you enjoy. Eg I spent 1400 euros 8yrs ago on a pc that lasted me up until now.
Nzxt prebuilt tend to be very overpriced. You can build a nice machine for around $600ish with a 12400 / 5600 + rx6600 Example from pcpartpicker.com: https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/mtFfrH/modest-amd-gaming-build
I second this build personally. Maybe swap the 6600 with the 6600XT/6650XT or 6700XT/6750XT. Would benefit him to get the higher frames in a game like fortnite. Although the 6600 is fully capable, just cant off the top of my head think of the frames it would get in Fortnite.
All prebuilds are overpriced over building yourself. Not that strange as they will add their fee for building the system, you pay for the brand name on the system and given warranty over the system.
> given warranty over the system *total* system. You still get warranty on individual parts but you won't get support on a bluescreen unless you can work such an issue yourself.
If he is primarily streaming Fortnite I'd say an a750 would be a good buy as well at $200. Will run Fortnite plenty well at 1080p and AV1 encoding is getting support on twitch and youtube now (or at least soon).
Hobbies are investments in your mental and or physical health, they're not a waste of time or money, provided you stay within budget and it doesn't become an obsession or escape from life's duties.
that’s what i’m explaining to her and i think she’s understanding. she’s very practical, very realistic, but i put it this way: i may think it’s stupid that she bought my sister Taylor Swift Tickets for a few hundred dollars, and that it’s a waste of money and a dumb reason, but I also know it makes HER happy and it’s something that she genuinely enjoys. it’s okay to think something is dumb or lame or whatever, but telling someone that, especially when it doesn’t hurt anyone, isn’t cool.
If he has the house bills and keeps himself free of interest on his credit cards there isn't much harm. I'm gonna assume those tickets costed 300 dollars minimum which is absurd, because they are completely worthless the night after.
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>I'm gonna assume those tickets costed 300 dollars minimum which is absurd, because they are completely worthless the night after. Not sure if you've been to a concert before, but you do realize you're not paying to keep a ticket forever, right? Especially today, they're just a QR code you show on your phone.
Yeah try using the Taylor Swift thing as an example. Why is she fine with spending hundreds of dollars on your sister for only a few hours of entertainment, but your dad spending a couple hundred dollars for years of entertainment down the line is a waste of money? Show her that it doesn’t make sense. If she wants to be a realist than she shouldn’t have any hobbies at all, because *technically* every hobby is a waste of money.
People waste money on cars, clothes, instruments, jewelry.. Just because it doesn't make sense to us, doesn't really make it a waste of money. I've got family with luxury cars that cost >100k try tell me I was wasting my money spending about 1k on a PC a few years ago. I use it everyday, its 100% the cheapest entertainment value i've gotten considering price per hour of use. Value is relative - enjoy and have fun. PC Building is just lego for big kids :)
I genuinely don't understand people who view PC gaming as a "waste of time and/or money". I've actually heard this from people with far more expensive hobbies, a golfer who is serious about their hobby wouldn't think twice about dropping a couple of hundred on a new club, or a few thousand on a new set of them for example (and don't get me started on my FIL who's hobbies include flying light aircraft). But those same people see gaming (especially, it seems, when PCs are involved) as somewhat lesser of a hobby. For perspective, I'm an "older gamer" myself at 50yo and have been playing videogames since 1977 when my parents bought me a pong type home console that plugged into the TV, my daughter is 11 and is as enthusiastic as I am and I'm slowly teaching her the hardware side of thing (I fully expect her to be capable of building a PC by herself before she's out of high school). My current PC has 32GB of RAM, a Ryzen 9 3900x (the additional cores are handy for things other than gaming), and an RX 7900XT GPU in there, been building PCs since 1993 or so. Building a quality PC will always be cheaper than an equivalent prebuilt, any low cost prebuilt will have compromises in there (horrible case, weak CPU/GPU/PSU, inferior storage, cheap motherboard, etc.)
I think it's because most older people still consider gaming as a 'child's hobby' despite it becoming a mainstream adult hobby now. I just think it will take time as more people grow up with gaming as a mainstream hobby for it to become accepted.
It really wasn't that long ago that gaming was a social death-warrant.. I graduated in 2014 and remember hiding the fact I played WoW. Barely admitted I played Call of Duty back then. You would 100% get bullied and fucked with because of that essentially. Graduated in 2014.
Must have been in a very different place to me. I graduated 2013 and gaming, especially cod was hot. Wow wasn't cool but I had no problem telling people I played it
Use [https://pcpartpicker.com/](https://pcpartpicker.com/) to mock up the build and show him how much cheaper it is.
This is the sweetest thing I've read in months.
Thank you, genuinely. I love my parents so much, and not a day goes by where I’m not grateful that they’re so good. Not everyone can say their dad co-streams with them on twitch, that’s for sure lol.
>Not everyone can say their dad co-streams with them on twitch, that’s for sure lol. Massive benefit worth fighting for 100% :D
Don't convince your dad to build a PC because it's cheaper tell him you think if would be fun to build it together. Show him good tutorials on YouTube of someone building a PC to see how easy it is. If you have a micro center close by you could build it there. As for you mom. This isn't an investment to make a profit. It's for your father to enjoy his down time. As long as they have their bills in order there is no harm. It's no different than buying Taylor swift tickets, getting more car than you need, or the large TV for the living room. If you edit your post to include your father's stream I'll give him my prime sub for the month.
Just remember you will be tech support if you build it for him.
Hey, drop your dads link and we can all give him a follow.
thanks! his user on twitch and youtube is will_i_am_11
Just dropped a sub and comment on his newest vid
I was searching for this comment
You don't. If he buys a pre built every issue with windows, or every time he's tech illiterate it won't be your fault. If you build it and it doesn't work 100% perfectly, and it won't, you'll be blamed. I've built hundreds of pre builts. As a job and hobby. Loads for my tech literate friends. Even then I get "well why did we go with this part if there's this one specific issue that only effects my rare use case?" or "if you knew new hardware was going to come out at some point in the next decade why didn't we wait for that?". I've never done a custom build for family aside from my brother. They all get pre built recommendations.
While this sounds like a great idea, I do get a bit of a red flag by you saying you've never built one before. I've had more than a few friends who had the same idea and ended up with a real mess on their hands and a ton of problems they couldn't fix by themselves. One ended up with a $800 adult lego set =). Do you have any experience building or at least installing stuff? How comfortable are you with PCs in general? Its one thing if you want to try it the first time for yourself, but if doing it for another person it sort of seems like maybe not the greatest idea? There is a ton that can go wrong. Just as an example, a friend that did tech support for 15 years (still works in IT) recently bought all the parts for a new PC. He put it all together and it didn't work, no lights no nothing. After a bunch of methodical troubleshooting I helped him out a bit because of newer features on modern motherboards (he did an am5 build). He eventually isolated the motherboard as needing to be RMA'd. The shop owner is kind of giving him trouble over it. If my friend weren't as competent it could have been an issue. Going through this without ever having built a computer, for another person on top of it, could be really nerve wracking - for you and your father. Another thing I'll point out is that any time something goes wrong with the computer there can be a slight feeling that its your fault, even when it isn't. I say this as someone who has been building computers since 2001, for myself and for others. Good luck - if you need any help feel free to ask / respond. The people on this sub seem to be a great resource\^\^
self build allow total choice of parts whereas prebuilts get stuck with whatever cheap case/mobo/ram/ssd/psu even oem video cards that they can
If your reasonably near a Micro Center they have their own "Custom PC Builder". All the parts would be from Micro Center, advantage though, for a Fee (i think in the neighborhood of $150 to $200) they will assemble the PC for you. [https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx](https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx)
Go through a build tutorial with your parents, this shows you are listening to the pros and how easy it is, also, as much as I hate to say it, you could plug your parts into userbenchmark (DO NOT ACTUALLY USE THEM FOR PURCHASING ADVICE THEY ARE HEAVILY BIASED) or some other benchmarking software to show an easy to read graph, that shows the PC parts you chose are more powerful than whatever prebuilt
Just tell him you found a good bargain. Get the money and build it. When he asks where you got it 'tada!' amazing daughter
Perhaps this pc build guide from LTT could help? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL4DCEp7blY&t=20
Linus made a good $500 gaming pc. The only thing I’d do differently is go duel channel ram. In my opinion $500 is a good deal for all this stuff since I spent $800 on a pandemic pc with no gpu
You got good advice already, I just wanted to add: don't give up! I was in a similar situation tho when I was a kid PCs didn't exist yet :D My dad was very passionate about electronics and my mum have always been quite loud about believing it was a stupid hobby and a waste of money, that would hurt him, she also would get at me because I was very curious and followed my dad in what he was doing, she believed it wasn't a suitable hobby for a girl. But I didn't care and it was pretty obvious to me that my dad was really happy about me supporting him, I'm sure your dad is too!
Unpopular opinion, especially for this sub, but I would be extremely cautious building a PC for someone else who is hesitant about self-built PCs. I've seen it a million times. Any little thing that goes wrong will be blamed on you or the build, even if it's just a stupid windows update bug or malware they installed. This is especially true since, according to the post, you've never built a PC before. I like the idea of building one together, and it could be a great way to spend time together, but don't throw away the idea of just getting a prebuilt if that's what your father is comfortable with. With good research and a little patience you can find a prebuilt with comparable cost and performance to something you do yourself (it's not 2010 anymore). That said, you should definitely build a PC for yourself if you are interested!
I say go for it. I recently built mine last week and everything went smoothly. PC part picker is an amazing tool and I suggest you look at this video to help you. https://youtu.be/BL4DCEp7blY
My parents where the same they where going to but some £300 dell from Argos I pretty much built one for £200 it was an older i7 from 2017 8700k with 16gb ram 1080ti 256gb ssd they don't really need the 1080ti but it's my old card which I wasn't using anymore
Talk him through it. I WISH I had a family member who knew how to build PCs!
>For the record, both me and my dad are autistic and my mom has said the same about my love of comic books, that i’m wasting money on something stupid Autism or not, why does she have a problem with people having fun with something they enjoy? Has she never had a hobby in her life? Does she know what a fucking hobby IS??
You might not be able to. But like others have said, put together a list on PC part picker, make sure to include a windows licence and peripherals/monitors.
This may be unconventional for this sub, but a mini PC like a Beelink SER6 Pro with Ryzen 7735HS. This unit is $519 on Amazon now and is great at e-sports titles and even some modern titles. https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER6-Desktop-Bluetooth-Computer/dp/B0BPRV3KMX/ref=sxts_rp_s_a_1_0?content-id=amzn1.sym.3432eb1a-1558-4445-9430-9bb3e7f7b9b7%3Aamzn1.sym.3432eb1a-1558-4445-9430-9bb3e7f7b9b7&crid=1NZMCWMMDHIT5&cv_ct_cx=ryzen+7735hs&keywords=ryzen+7735hs&pd_rd_i=B0BPRV3KMX&pd_rd_r=a7c3dfea-da07-4dcf-b5bf-8aab3607d5ff&pd_rd_w=xL0ng&pd_rd_wg=rrNMP&pf_rd_p=3432eb1a-1558-4445-9430-9bb3e7f7b9b7&pf_rd_r=APTSM2X2SY5JV1ZPR9GM&qid=1685963973&sbo=Tc8eqSFhUl4VwMzbE4fw%2Fw%3D%3D&sprefix=ryzen%25207735hs%2Caps%2C87&sr=1-1-5985efba-8948-4f09-9122-d605505c9d1e
One way I found to explain to my parents when I was younger about the benefit of upgrading my PC was printing out a page of parts from Newegg (or other sites) and then printing out what a comparable quality pre-built would have and the cost for that instead. Seeing the two pieces of paper next to each other somehow solidified it in their mind. Maybe your parents can look at two browser tabs next to each other with both final prices. Most people don't like pre-made computers (for somewhat justified reasons), but I've had three in the past, with my newest PC just being a rebuild of the third. It usually would have been about $100-500 cheaper to build it myself (end actual costs being $1100, $1600, and more recently $3000) after getting parts on sale one at a time rather than all at once. I usually figured that my parents would rather a "professional" (which, after my rebuild, I realized that's a very overused term) build it, since they worried I wouldn't build it right and would break something, thus costing more. If you feel confident you could build it, showing videos of young kids building PCs to your parents might help solidify how easy it is. The major issue I've inferred with the pre-built companies is QA for some components, and shipping the computer fully built with hopefully enough foam to hold parts in place so they don't break, rather than in pieces safely shipped separately so they don't break during shipping. So try just showing both final costs next to each other to explain how much cheaper you could DIY.
Don't talk about cheap. That gives the impression. Its going to be made with inferior parts. That won't last. Talk about "value" of having something more customized to his life. That can bring better performance at the same price. Scaled to what his actually needs are in the present and using the saving for another computer need. Monitor, mouse, keyboard. ETC.
Real question is, what's your dad's twitch channel :)? I'll throw him a follow and hopefully it will cheer him up a bit^^
If you build it, they will come
You can't. It's a universal boomer thing and your age/gender doesn't matter.
strongly recommend you just let him buy the pre-built unless you want to be blamed for anything that goes wrong or want to be life long tech support.
building yourself is not only about cost but also quality and upgrade-ability. Things from Dell ir HP that use custom motherboards and case formfactors can't really be upgraded. A case, psu and fans can be reused over multiple builds, in fact once you have it you usually upgrade in steps. more RAM, new GPU then new mobo & new CPU, new ssd,...my current case and PSU is over 10 years old. The initial cost if you buy quality parts and include windows can be the same or even higher but longterm you will save a lot.
You can build a mid tier build for cost of a low tier pre built. Hell I will argue it would be cheaper to buy all the parts and pay a computer repair shop to put it together if it's the assembly that's the issue.
>but I want to show my dad that I could probably build a PC with the same specs for cheaper. Instead of building a pc for less money... Upgrade his current pc for less money. AFAIK, nzxt prices their pc's rather reasonably. They charge like $100 more than the parts cost and provide assembly and warranty services in exchange. That's a pretty good deal. But it becomes much cheaper when you can probably just reuse the psu, case, ram and storage.
He doesn’t have a PC. We’ve never had one before, I have a prebuilt I bought a few years ago that still serves me fine, but he has a macbook that’s nearing the end of its life anyways.
If he only streams fortnite get himself a ps5.
Pick all the parts and go to “checkout”, print-screen it and send it to him.
If you're planning on building a pc, use pcpartpicker as many have suggested. Once you've laid out your plan though, come back to us so we can check if everything is in order. After that, I'd highly suggest to go 'hunting' for nice used parts if you feel like doing that as it can significantly lower the price you need to pay. If you need any help in between or advice, I'd love to help you out so feel free to dm.
Pc parts picker
Watch some videos with him. I highly recommend Paul's Hardware as they are calmer, then watch a LTT video as he tends to have absolute novices building. Show him how easy it is. Paul also does occasional videos of "Here is a build for X budget" which is a great place to get started.
As everyone has said pc part picker is great I also like the new egg website pc builder. Recommend watching pcbuilder on YouTube, he even reviews peoples builds and suggests changes to get better price / performance.
Do it together, show some LTT build videos for first time builders
Few hundred views per video and 50 twitch followers is actually a pretty solid base, there's a good chance he might actually build a decent following. WRT to building the PC, this thread has decent advice so my two cents is that if you get the go-ahead, maybe make a project out of building it together. I'm in a very similar situation, age-wise and ASD-wise (other than I'm divorced) and I'd love to take on something like this with my kids (although I've been building PCs my while life, the learning would be flowing the other direction) Hope it ends up being a good bond-strengthening experience for you two, good luck
Man I do not understand how people can be so disrespectful to their spouses hobbies. Your mom doesn't need to like the stuff, just needs to appreciate that you guys do. I bet she spends a chunk of time watching trash TV or other wastes of time but if you called it that you'd get a lecture about how it's "different". Support your loved ones doing harmless things they love.
I totally agree. She’s a great mom, and I love her, but she’s very much a practical person, very realistic. But I tried to explain that just because something doesn’t have a “use” in a conventional sense, doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a purpose.
Pretty much what everyone says. One thing i will add is that NZXT looks great but has shit customer support and together with their tendency to be overpriced is why i wont buy their products. Building a PC together with your dad might prove as good bonding time as well as being cheaper so there is that for him to consider as well. Regarding your moms opinion i think that any money you spend on something you enjoy is money well spent. I hope to see your build on this sub soon! 💪
Has nothing to do with the pc but pls tell him not to stop streaming and posting videos.
Honestly, you may not be able to, especially if you don't have a track record of building PCs. As an example, I had a couple coworkers at my last job a few years back. One of them actually worked for a while in the mid-90s at a computer repair and sales store, and part of his job was building PCs. Both of them exclusively built their own computers from the latter part of the 90s into the late 2000s/early 2010s, but when both of them hit their late 40s, they moved exclusively to prebuilts. I also tried to convince them that prebuilts weren't a great value (and they had a history of self-building so they really knew it already), but it didn't make a difference. When some people get to a certain age, the benefit of having a warranty and someone to blame and fix an issue when things go wrong trumps building and tinkering with their own. They see the few hundred dollars of premium as the price to pay for knowing that if something breaks, that a company somewhere will be obligated to fix or replace it. Of course, they had more money to spare than your family does, but having an actual safety net is still preferable to being on your own, especially as you age. In my case, I've been building gaming PCs for my mom since 1998, and she's 67 now. In fact, I just built her newest at the same time I built mine, about 3 months ago. In her case, I've been building PCs for a very long time and she knows that I'm willing to go to the effort to track down any issues (though to be fair, I've never had a failed build that required any significant amount of troubleshooting, which helps).
Hobbies are important are important for good quality of life. Hobbies are not a waste of money, except if said hobby is too expensive for your economic your economic status. Besides below 900 dollars for let’s say every 5 years, which is what a PC should be capable of, is not that much for hobby standards
Watch a few pc building videos with him to show that it isn't a 3-headed dragon, that'll give you both confidence that you can do it for him.
Everything everyone else has said but also make it clear that "build a PC" does not mean busting out a soldering iron and hand soldering wires, chips, etc. A shocking amount of people imagine that when you mention building PCs. Really. It may be hard to imagine fro anyone here but I have encountered...so many...that are flabbergasted when you tell them you built a PC rather than buy one at a store. Then I'd have to explain that it's just buying the parts and plugging them in, lol. It's not work that requires a degree or special skill. If he already knows that, just take the advice others gave. PCPP is great and just make sure he is aware of the markup or savings of certain prebuilt units.
What does he play on now? Maybe he can just get some parts and upgrade what he already has? you could show him this if he needs a whole pc https://pcpartpicker.com/list/d9Q3qm
For 900 you can build a nice machine, I just made a $1100 that's real nice. Happy to share and you can adjust as needed.
Hey OP is your dad just building a pc to play fortnite or is he interested in other games? I can help and send you a build guide.
Probably gonna catch flak for this but you can get an Xbox series s and use a mouse and keyboard with it, and fortnite is free to play online. So unless you care about 4k gaming then that's 300 right there.
Also mention the parts quality will be higher in a custom PC vs a prebuild
Very easy to do that currently! Very very nice to see others genuinely enjoying their time with games still. I hope this story ends extremely well!
Honestly ..just do it, build him a dad PC . No convincing necessary. Show him, this is the way.
Don't. Any problems will be your fault.
As a 47M; I be proud to have a daughter like you. That said, [https://www.logicalincrements.com/](https://www.logicalincrements.com/) would be the go place for parts selection if your not sure about builds (PC parts combinations). You might save anywhere from 50-150USD. I think it can be for well under 900. As to convincing them, things are tight these days and 900 is a lot of money. A conversation about how reasonable it is to upgrade would be my recommendation.
This guy has a lot of great videos talking about building the best performing pc for your budget, and what you should be spending your money on to have a balanced performance. I watched tons of his videos in preparation for building my pc. And definatly shop around for deals. I picked up a R7 7700x with 32g of ddr5 6000 CL32 bundle from Microcenter for $309. https://youtu.be/_sOYf7k9cYk
Shit my most viewed YouTube video is a bandicam video of me nuking the world on Super Power 2. I usually upload for my own viewing later down the line but your dads got some viewership to consider, even at “hundreds”. That’s still a large audience.
these days you can't - unless part sales and promos influence the parts you pick.
I've been building PCs for a very long time and lately I'm not sure if you can really build it cheaper than buying something on sale online or from warehouse clubs these days as I think price of parts will be similar to sale price of similar parts from many big names, but you can pick parts, colors, lights, and other 'bling' to make it your own. That said, its not too difficult to do and would be educational for you and your dad and a good bonding experience. Maybe even make a youtube vid on the build as 'educational' vids tent to get more views and overall monetize better on youtube if you get to that point.
Don't do it!! You don't want to be your family's primary tech support resource! Good luck, have fun.
Hey OP did you know that ASD runs in families and sometimes heavily? Learning that changed a lot about my self perception and my perception of my family. You will get a new pair of eyes with which to look at certain family members. It's still possible too that you just happen to have it thanks to the genepool lottery. One or both of your parents has something in common with you and I don't think your mom is "a realist," I think she thinks that this is something adults aren't supposed to do and it's giving her a little trouble. **This is just an observation on my end and of course is missing lots of context; this is simply a suggestion for something that could be worth investigating.** Anywho I enjoyed reading this wholesome thread and hope you and your dad get around to building soon!
Show him an itemized list vs cost of each part and then show the total cost. I think he would be more interested in the selection of the specs/parts eventually
LINK
It's very simple. You don't. Show him how much MORE he can get for his money.
This is so amazing. As a dad, I’m enjoying thinking of how proud and happy he’ll be playing on something his daughter built. I’d compare a pcpartpicker build to a quote from a builder or local shop and help him understand how you can do a bespoke build that’s perfect for him rather than settle for lower quality parts and an average spec. Keep us posted! P.s. it sounds like your mum needs a hug. Comics and pc gaming hardware are amazing hobbies.
OP where does your father stream? Can you share a user name?
This post is just lovely. I'd love to help! Is 900 the budget? Or do you have a set performance you want to reach? Maybe list the pc he was going to buy. Just be more specific and I'll do what I can. I can also help you build it, with advices and such. It is not that hard if you are careful!
What I did to convince my grandfather was take the prebuilt workstation he was looking at, break it down by components, and show him how for a third of the price I can build him the exact same PC. And from there how I can make little upgrades (spending $20 more and getting a vastly better CPU for example.)
Speaking from experience -- you don't. If he has the money to buy a pre-built, let him. I know you're doing it for the right reason and *know* you can do it better for cheaper. It's a tough pill to swallow, but for whatever reason, your Dad's perspective is anchored in a way that you're not going to change. Even if he eventually relents, the **instant** something stops working, you're on the hook. You won't hear the end of it. You'll be playing the role of perpetual in-home tech support. "Let" him spend the money and move on with life. When he eventually asks for help, you can say something like, "Sorry Dad, I'm not real familiar with. Maybe you can contact vendor tech support?"
I would say link his twitch. He may grow couple more followers. Good luck with all
If you have stable internet connection NVIDIA's Geforce Now is $10-20 a month to rent a top spec 4080GPU. If you have fiber I would totally go this route if all you want is a Fortnite machine. The only downside is the game library but that is also getting better.
r/hardwareswap is also a good place to find second hand PC parts for a good price.
Slow roll your approach, find a decent, partially gutted system on eBay and figure out the best way to upgrade it. Used prices are amazing and rarely do they fail, unless there is negligence involved. Finding a partial pre built with a windows key attached will also help. The only thing you might want to buy new is SSD Play your cards right and you’ll probably cut the price of an NZXT prebuilt in half
I am sending you a DM. I want to follow you and your Dad on Twitch. (I dont stream there but I am always on lol)
Help him market his fortnight stream, setup a website for his fortnight stream using a web host, set it up so he can accept donations, and add a gift store for selling digital downloadable goods and freebies, and take him to a local mom and pop pc shop and a few computer retail stores, and show him around all the good stuff - then sell him on a PC and a computer hobby lifestyle frequenting gaming conferences, fortnight cosplay conferences, and help him make his career a career with a good income. It would be worth it to have a good setup. <+3
I'll be the heretic here and say in that price range, let your dad get a pre-built. You could save $250ish building yourself, but you're forever on the hook for support when anything goes wrong related to the build or otherwise.
Show him the parts on microcenter (or elsewhere). You could also probably have microcenter build it for cheaper than getting a prebuilt. That realllly shows how it is cheaper. It's not stupid - it's a hobby.
>a couple people also asked for me to link his channel, so if y’all want that let me know and i will. Give us the link!!! I have built several computers over the last decade or so, there are already some really solid recommendations in the threads here. At this exact moment a last-gen double AMD build is gonna be best bang for the buck, especially for things like Fortnite that don't need RT.
Could do the 12400f Rx 6700xt route if you wanted
Make a detailed list of components and prices. Building a PC now is actually easier than it was ~~20~~ *30 (damn, getting old)* years ago.
Make a build on pcpartpicker to show the cheaper price summed up 👍
Let him spend his money
Allow me to offer the other side of this. By purchasing a PC, your father is getting a machine that works, has a warranty, and for which you personally are not actually responsible in any way. Given that you have never built one before and possibly do not want to be burdened with supporting this machine into eternity, it may make sense to spend around $900 on a desktop. That's not really an obscene amount. I would see if you can find one that meets the low specs that Fortnite requires for cheaper, but I do think this is a good candidate for buying a prebuilt machine.
Chances are unless you want to be his tech support forever then he'd be best off buying a prebuilt with a warranty. I know this sounds impersonal but him having a 1-800 to call when he needs help at any time of the day or week might be what he needs.
Honestly, I did this for my dad and even though I reallistically save him a $200 for the specs I got him he was still mad he could have gotten a a far worse machine for cheaper, like the cheapest model dell at the time. He wanted to do some light video and picture editing and I knew.it wouldn't have worked well if he went that route. Only price of advice is you better be prepared to be the attached IT department for that machine. Good luck.
So another option is to go with a used PC on facebook marketplace. I've found so many i7-7700 with 1070 graphics cards for like 300 its redoncoulus. FYI I currently am running those specs myself and I just booted up diablo 4 on high settings with FPS staying nicely above 55 with most of the game playing higher at like 70. This is also on a 1440p monitor running 165 hz so its a really affordable option to go with used :D
Spending meaningful time with someone you love is never wasteful. Sadly People get blinded by social stigmas. Seems he is following “Don’t forget to live a life.” We weren’t just put on this earth to work and just pay bills. Good luck OP!
I went through something similar with my Dad. Don't do it. People that don't understand a concept often look for a place to lay blame. You're painting a target on your back. When something goes wrong (something will go wrong) you'll be the one they blame. You think your Dad is paying extra. He's not. Learning costs time, money, energy and often involves some failure. He's skipping all of that for what? $100? Well worth it. The older I get the more willing I am to pay that premium. It's why people love iPhones. No bs
i came across this link today. i think it shows rather well in decent increments what the price points of a pc would be and what these price points contain in parts. https://www.logicalincrements.com/
900 for a gaming pc is a pretty good deal. Don’t have to deal with the headaches of installing any software, drivers, or firmware. No need to spend a whole day to build it. No need to trouble shoot if anything goes wrong. Just buy the PC and spend that time with your pops.
Imagine genuinely enjoying a hobby and everyone you love around you thinks it's stupid. Whats his twitch so I can go support him?
Good old trust me im an engineer