Any of you gotten into handheld gaming pcs? Asus ROG Ally X looks a fantastic bit of kit but the €950 pricetag is steep ://
May hold off and wait for the next generation
May hold off and wait for the next generation
Gaming Building a gaming PC
- Thread starter Igor Drefljak
- Start date
Anyone got a recommendation for a small form factor/mini PC that’s good for gaming? Doesn’t have to be the absolute top of the top but emulating upto 4k is a big thing for me
I do most of my gaming on the Steam Deck OLED these days. I love it especially after spending a day at work in an office chair already.
If I would use it as my only gaming device I would also be looking at competition as the Steam Deck is struggling with newer AAA games. I think a new generation will release next year as AMD's Z2 Extreme chip will be out. I would probably wait a bit if I could.
The absolute coolest thing though is Moonlight Streaming and for that I personally don't care so much about native performance as I use it at home 99% of the time. I have a pretty beefy PC and I can run Cyberpunk, Alan Wake 2 or whatever maxed out handheld in HDR, it's amazing. Made easier as the resolution is quite low even when downsampling.
Steam Deck has a couple of things over the more expensive competition currently:
- OLED HDR @ 1000 max nits - The only OLED screen and the brightest. I don't think any of the others support HDR. I find that more important than slightly better resolution and refresh rate although that would be welcome as well.
- Trackpads - Not as good as a mouse but I play some games like CIV with it without too much hassle.
- Steam OS - You can still tinker a lot (A LOT) with it if you're into that sort of thing, but Steam has done an amazing job with creating a console like experience if you want a plug and play solution and they keep improving it. This is coming to the competition as well though from what I've read.
- Cheaper
But yeah if I could wait I would probably check what's on the horizon. I kind of doubt that Valve will release a new Steam Deck for a while sadly. I will probably only upgrade if there is a big improvement to the screen as performance is fine for my use case.
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If you want 4k in high specs playing at a good framerate, you'll likely have to opt for a top of the line machine. If you're happy with 1440p (2k) then you have a lot more options.
Otherwise your best bet is honestly building something yourself, using a small case, and a small motherboard (mini-ITX).
If you want 4K I'd imagine you'd want a discrete GPU, and mini-PCs (as far as I'm aware) are all integrated with the CPU.
You could get a something in an ITX (or HTPC) case, but 4K is basically top end. For most, the sweet spot is 1440p.
If you have decent internet, Geforce Now Ultimate might be the way to go to get 4K highest settings on a budget.
I'm gonna ask here, and probably Reddit and overclockers.
Can anyone recommend a cheap gaming PC? The youngun really only plays Minecraft, however, I'd like get one which will do a bit more, but also upgrade in future with a proper graphics card, maybe more RAM, etc.
I'd be looking as cheap as possible really incase he gets bored quickly and slinks back off to his Xbox.
Edit: https://www.ebuyer.com/2194003-alph...jM9pn6troivXSggWasgaAo9VEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Potentially something like that, I believe I'd be able to upgrade for him in future? Not sure how far though as way out the loop in regards to motherboards and shit these days.
Can anyone recommend a cheap gaming PC? The youngun really only plays Minecraft, however, I'd like get one which will do a bit more, but also upgrade in future with a proper graphics card, maybe more RAM, etc.
I'd be looking as cheap as possible really incase he gets bored quickly and slinks back off to his Xbox.
Edit: https://www.ebuyer.com/2194003-alph...jM9pn6troivXSggWasgaAo9VEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
Potentially something like that, I believe I'd be able to upgrade for him in future? Not sure how far though as way out the loop in regards to motherboards and shit these days.
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Where are you located? UK?
Knew I'd missed something. Yes I'm in the UK.
Ok and are you looking to build yourself or buying a pre built?
Prefer pre built, but I am comfortable building myself if that's much cheaper
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor (£114.89 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 GAMING X V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£55.93 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: MSI SPATIUM M371 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£54.99 @ AWD-IT)
Video Card: XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Core Radeon RX 6650 XT 8 GB Video Card (£227.40 @ Amazon UK)
Case: MSI MAG FORGE 100R ATX Mid Tower Case (£43.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair RM650 (2023) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£69.98 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £660.16
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-10-24 18:28 BST+0100
I'd probably look for something along those lines. You can get a slightly cheaper 6600 GPU (still plenty fast for what it sounds like ud use it for) or find a cheaper bronze rated PSU to save cash. Maybe even find an even cheaper case too. Similarly you can save some on the SSD on a cheaper model or brand or less capacity. RAM you can probably find cheaper too or drop down to 16GB. In other words. If you want to go below 600 and closer to 500 thats very doable.
Do these things have any battery life to them? Long distance flights, are they fit for purpose?
The Steam Deck OLED I believe has the the best battery life, while the stronger systems sacrifices some battery life for raw power although I think the latest Ally improved some in that regard as well. You can get around 2- 3 hours of heavier games like Elden Ring on a Steam Deck OLED from memory, while lighter games like Indie games, Slay the Spire and the like can give you much longer. Like 7-8 hours or so, it depends on the game. Valve claims 3-12 hours officially. A lot of people also limit fps, screen brightness max TDP (watts) and so on to maximize battery life. It's easily changed in the settings.
Of course you can also get a powerbank. I believe you are allowed to bring 100w on a flight, the battery is 50w.
When streaming games from a computer that does all the work I get like 8 hours battery life.
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Cheers for that. Always toyed with the idea, but haven’t been following their development. I remember the gens I looked at had awful battery life, so it’s nice to hear about the improvements.
My 11 year old gaming PC has finally died and I'm thinking I'd rather replace it than go the PS5 Pro route. Hoping folks on here can help me out as I haven't paid attention to the PC market for awhile.
I'm aiming to play new releases at high settings at 60fps/1440p. I'm not very bothered about framerates above 60fps. I may occasionally hook this up to my 4K TV, so some ability to hit 4k wouldn't go amiss.
ChatGPT recommends:
CPU: Ryzen 5 7600
GPU: RTX 4070 (12GB)
Motherboard: MSI B650M Pro (AM5)
RAM: 32GB DDR5
PSU: Corsair RM750x
Storage: 1TB SSD
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition
And gives a total cost for this as around $1450 USD.
I have a 250gig SSD that was used in my previous PC as the boot drive, so I thought I may as well keep using that. I'd probably bump the data drive to 2TB.
Does anyone have thoughts on the build above, and whether there are better alternatives that would suit my needs?
I'm aiming to play new releases at high settings at 60fps/1440p. I'm not very bothered about framerates above 60fps. I may occasionally hook this up to my 4K TV, so some ability to hit 4k wouldn't go amiss.
ChatGPT recommends:
CPU: Ryzen 5 7600
GPU: RTX 4070 (12GB)
Motherboard: MSI B650M Pro (AM5)
RAM: 32GB DDR5
PSU: Corsair RM750x
Storage: 1TB SSD
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition
And gives a total cost for this as around $1450 USD.
I have a 250gig SSD that was used in my previous PC as the boot drive, so I thought I may as well keep using that. I'd probably bump the data drive to 2TB.
Does anyone have thoughts on the build above, and whether there are better alternatives that would suit my needs?
Apologies @Redplane , I thought I'd replied to this saying thanks, just read the thread and I haven't. Thanks for this, appreciate the effort you have went to aswell! Think this is the route I'm going to go
Nice build if you go for it, slightly better than something I put together last Christmas. Highly reccomend, will do exactly what you need.
My extremely similar case has shot up in pirce, double what I paid for it, guessing it's been been discontinued or is rarer now, but other than that it's kind of the lower/slightly cheap spec that @Redplane was talking about. The cheaper case and not buying an aftermarket cpu cooler would make it around £550 now but if you can afford the extra I'd go for the upgrades to future proof it for a bit longer.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£74.98 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Vetroo V5 52 CFM CPU Cooler (£29.00 @ Computer Orbit)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 GAMING X V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£92.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (£33.79 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Kingston NV2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£48.99 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: Asus DUAL Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card (£203.98 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case: MSI MAG FORGE 100M ATX Mid Tower Case (£83.01 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CV550 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£57.98 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £624.72
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Ended up buying a rig from a uni student for a pretty decent price.
Ryzen 7 5800x
GTX 4070 12GB
Gigabyte B550 motherboard
32GB DDR4
1TB Samsung SSD
Corsair H100x AIO
Corsair 4000D Case
Corsair SP120mm X3 fans
Ran Cyberpunk ultra raytraced settings yesterday at 4K with DLSS + Frame Gen, getting mid 80s framerates. Quite happy thus far.
Ryzen 7 5800x
GTX 4070 12GB
Gigabyte B550 motherboard
32GB DDR4
1TB Samsung SSD
Corsair H100x AIO
Corsair 4000D Case
Corsair SP120mm X3 fans
Ran Cyberpunk ultra raytraced settings yesterday at 4K with DLSS + Frame Gen, getting mid 80s framerates. Quite happy thus far.
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The 1070 only had 8GB. Did you mean a 4070? Because a 1070 isn't going to give you frame gen and it certainly wouldn't run CP77 in 4k@80fps.
Good rig, could do with more SSD space but that's easily upgraded. Personally not a fan of watercooling my system though.
You definitely did not run Cyberpunk on "ultra raytraced setting at 4K" with a 1070 at mid 80s fps. The 1070 is an 8 year old card that was "mid-range" when it was launched.
I'm also 99% sure there's no such thing as a 1070 12GB. There might have been one tagged "12G", but it'll be 8GB VRAM.
I've got an RTX 3070 8GB, a card two generations newer than a 1070, with the rest of my set up being incredibly similar to yours (same CPU, same amount of RAM), and I just ran a benchmark at Ultra Raytracing at 1440p (so a step down from 4K), and it averaged about 50 fps, min 36, max 60.
Are you sure you haven't got an RTX 4070 12GB, because that would make far more sense (although I remain sceptical of the 80fps as an average, given the benchmarks I've seen have a 4090 struggling with that)?
Sorry folks, 4070 is correct 
I was pleasantly surprised by the framerates at 4k - albeit it was only the in game benchmark. I'll run it again tonight, it was in the 70s plenty as well but I'm fairly sure the average ended up starting with 8.
I'll definitely be upgrading storage space at some point. Why don't you like watercooling?
I was pleasantly surprised by the framerates at 4k - albeit it was only the in game benchmark. I'll run it again tonight, it was in the 70s plenty as well but I'm fairly sure the average ended up starting with 8.
I'll definitely be upgrading storage space at some point. Why don't you like watercooling?
A lot more faff for very little practical gain unless you are aiming for extreme overclocking, which is a completely worthless endeavour for quite a few CPU generations now - tons more heat and power consumption for barely any increase in processing speed.
Air cooling is uncomplicated and relatively failsafe. No aging, leaking pipes or seals, no dying pumps or sedimentation. Also of course a lot cheaper than watercooling, while still providing more than enough cooling power for even high-powered rigs.
Water cooling basically only has three advantages: 1) It can provide more both in terms of peak and continuous cooling, a watercooled system will usually be maybe two or three °C cooler than an aircooled one. Not that that has any big practical effects expect for said overclocking scenarios. 2) It provides more radiator surface area which means that the fans can usually run a little slower, producing slightly less noise. 3) And finally, you can build some nifty-looking display cases if that is your jam (personally I don't care about that one at all, my rig is in an old fully enclosed Fractal Design R4 and under my desk that has been the home to three generations of hardware by now).
For my personal taste, those advantages are just not worth the disadvantages in purchase, setup and maintenance.
Hard to argue with any of that - it's likely not something I'd have opted for if I'd built it myself. Fan noise was an irritant at times yesterday, but I haven't booted into the BIOS to see what might be going on there or downloaded any third party software to manage the fans. Any tips on that front?
I use MSI Afterburner to control the GPU fan curve, the case and CPU fan curves are all set up in the UEFI.
Has anybody tried out these mini PCs that are available on AliExpress? Saw a few pop up on hotukdeals with good reviews, and there's YouTube reviews where they're using them for gaming on low settings etc. They seem like good bang for your buck at under £200, I'm almost tempted to get one if they're actually any good.
What sort of spec would you be looking for in a build this size? They seem to be rating the Ryzen series as a good option. I just know nothing about the latest components anymore.
What sort of spec would you be looking for in a build this size? They seem to be rating the Ryzen series as a good option. I just know nothing about the latest components anymore.
I don't really see the point of those for gaming purposes. We've used plenty of them (though not from questionable Chinese sources, rather Dell and Fujitsu ones) as Fat Clients at work. They're pretty good when a Thin Client won't cut it but a proper tower PC is unneccessary. They could handle some light gaming - browser games, old games, low requirement games. I would not want to use them to play even just semi-demanding 3D-games, or anything that is really CPU-heavy (simulators, strategy games).
For gaming on a tight budget I'd either buy a used console or an older second-hand rig with a CPU that can run W11.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not even looking for a gaming PC. But these things cost less than a £200 and are capable of running some decent games, that was my point mainly. I'm tempted to buy one just because I love gadgets, and I think you could turn it into a really good media centre for streaming, browsing etc. And the ability to run emulators and some other games is a bonus really. For what it's worth, the ones I've seen reviewed are all running W11.
Just did a hell of an upgrade for my son's 16th.
7950x3D with 6000mhz ddr5. At least I haven't got to pay for anything else for quite a few years at least!
Very decent cpu so far, and that's without any optimising anything from the off. I will eventually set him up with batch files for affinity switching/core parking for when he's recording his gaming, but for now there's no need to as it's just blistering even Rust
7950x3D with 6000mhz ddr5. At least I haven't got to pay for anything else for quite a few years at least!
Very decent cpu so far, and that's without any optimising anything from the off. I will eventually set him up with batch files for affinity switching/core parking for when he's recording his gaming, but for now there's no need to as it's just blistering even Rust
Hope you made him assemble it himself. Kids these days are lazy AF enough as it is and with it I feel their technical know how has actually gone down rather than up. Yeah they know how to operate it, but not how it works or often even how to fix it. Us millenials are the greatest generation.Just did a hell of an upgrade for my son's 16th.
7950x3D with 6000mhz ddr5. At least I haven't got to pay for anything else for quite a few years at least!
Very decent cpu so far, and that's without any optimising anything from the off. I will eventually set him up with batch files for affinity switching/core parking for when he's recording his gaming, but for now there's no need to as it's just blistering even Rust
Absolutely did! Gotta earn something, even if it is only putting the gpu/hard drives in.Hope you made him assemble it himself. Kids these days are lazy AF enough as it is and with it I feel their technical know how has actually gone down rather than up. Yeah they know how to operate it, but not how it works or often even how to fix it. Us millenials are the greatest generation.
My youngest will even install the cpus and set up the bios for his ones.
Spoilt little shites