UKC

Hi all,

I have posted a similar question last year and after all advice came to the conclusion to get our wee man a PS4 instead of a computer,

Now he has got work to do at school and he does some programming and he has asked again about a computer / laptop for Christmas including gaming .

What do you guys think of this one? Tell me if it is rubbish, I have no idea...Thanks!!!

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/gaming/pc-gaming/gaming-laptops/asus-tuf-dash...

It is expensive, but I could rope in all the grandparents and aunties and us, but only if I would think it is any good...

Heya, the market at the moment is terrible for PC gaming, but if I tried to build you a similar spec'ed PC including a 144hz moniter it would get alarmingly close to this price.

It is only slightly more power for gaming then a PS4 and it could really do with 16gb of RAM rather then the 8gb that this has.. but in this current climate this laptop is actually not a bad deal at all.

Looks like a pretty good price for the spec, i spent more than that on a similar spec desktop last year before the market went mad. Loads of shortages and silly prices at the moment.

Jk

Just a thought but it is fun to build desktop gaming PCs from parts and not that difficult.  Unless there's a really good reason to get a laptop I would get a desktop and I'd plug it into ethernet rather than Wifi to the internet router.   

Desktops stay cooler, they break less often, you get more processing power for the money and most importantly the screen and keyboard/mouse are separate from the processor unit so you can upgrade the processor more often than the screen/keyboard which saves money if you want a fancy screen and keyboard/mouse for gaming.

Good spec for the money.

Depends on your kids, but it’s a lot easier to break a laptop than a desktop. Power jack bending and snapping, overheating when used on a bed, breaking the screen etc. This type of plastic semi-unbranded laptop is also harder to fix. Fewer parts available on eBay etc. 

I was asked to spec a similar thing for my nephew. He had a small notebook PC which saw a lot of abuse, so we decided on a desktop build. Spent about £500 on a similar spec to yours above, but without monitor or graphics card. He managed with an older screen/tv for a while and then bought a £300 graphics card at his next birthday. It’s a good PC now and pays everything fine at 1080p

Thanks Lesley! Very helpful. I  thought it might be alright, but being a total computer luddite, I thought I'd  ask!

Cheers

H

Thanks JK!

Thanks Tom, nice idea , but I am not sure I can build a computer even if it is easy!

Thanks !

Sounds good

Trickier than usual at the moment though, due to massive supply shortages making graphics cards, in particular, immensely difficult to get hold of at reasonable prices or at all.

Main question, what games does he want to run?

I personally wouldn't bother with a Laptop. It won't be upgradeable.

The graphics card that it comes with is going to struggle with the new Games coming out.

Which are Halo, Battlefield and Cod. It would struggle with some older-ish games.

I think you may be better off buying a Desktop then you can switch out the graphics card at a later date. Can run multiple screens add SSD's, HDD's, memory and other peripherals more easily.

You can always buy 2nd hand RAM to add to the PC once you have it.

Its now cool to have RGB Lights all over the case and stuff which may be a feature your son would like.

With a desktop you can also liquid cool the processor which lets it run at a much lower temp.

Difficult to know, everything that comes his way and I don't object to! So, he plays a lot of Minecraft (and similar games), flight simulators, Steep, Call of Duty (against my wishes), car racing games etc

Its mad in china there are videos of people just throwing away all these graphics cards that were being used for bitcoin mining. Mental.

Thanks, I take your point. I am just wondering where to put a Desktop and a laptop is so much more moveable. And also if he is doing his gaming in the living room I can much more easily check up what he is up to (paranoid mum alert ) Would you have any suggestions for a desktop?

Now there's a question haha.

I would build my own. It really isn't that challenging and lots of how to's on the internet.

There is a website called PC Part Picker. https://pcpartpicker.com/

This can be helpful as you can pretty much spec up the PC how you'd like and make sure it is all compatible with each other.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/guide/fTgXsY/modest-amd-gaming-build

That particular link may be useful. To get it cheaper it may be worth buying some 2nd hand ram and graphics card. That is what I have done and I have no issues.

If it must be a laptop, and it must be new, then that is a pretty decent deal.  It's not terribly powerful as gaming laptops go (only core i5, not i7, and only 8GB RAM) but it is reasonably upgradable.

You'll always get a better performance:price ratio if you go desktop rather than laptop.  Admittedly you will then need to budget for monitor, mouse, keyboard, but all three will be SO much better than the ones built into a laptop.

You'll also get much better results for your money if you went used.  Is that a possibility?

Worth checking if your son can though, and if he is interested in it. My oldest (17) built his current gaming PC and added lots of bits and upgrades to the basic first one he had. He is doing A level computer science and is applying to study that at some of the top unis - and it seems his school reckons he has a reasonable chance of getting in. I'm not a total luddite on computers, but more that way than the other, but by allowing Oli to follow his interest in computing we seem to have inadvertently produced quite a talented future computer scientist or programmer!

I had a small Ethereum mining rig about four years ago.  Now I've got a few graphics cards lying about and I built a gaming PC for myself and my daughter to get some use out of them.  The mining application knocks the sh*t out of graphics cards, you probably need to try a couple ex-mining cards to find one that's reliable.

As chance would have it I ordered and received this today:

https://techpanda.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-f15-15-intel-core-i5-gtx-1660-ti-gamin...

An extra hundred squids but the next graphics processor "up" and a really good deal.

That is precisely how I got the knowledge and skills that enable my current career, it's a pretty effective!

Ok, well in that case, CoD will probably be a bit of a stretch on that machine.  Flight sims will work, but you'll have to turn the settings down a lot.  Racing games, again with low settings, probably ok.

Minecraft is fine, it's pretty low resource.  Steep should be fine.

A 'good' gaming laptop will cost £1000 odd.  For the money what you're looking at is ok, but it will struggle with newer games.  If he's already got a console, then I'd strongly suggest that he games on that and just uses the laptop for programming etc.

As others have mentioned the 'best' option is to have him build one himself.  If he's into programming then it's a good idea to have a baseline of how computers work.  While you won't get a good gaming rig for £650, it'll be better than the laptop and you can upgrade it.

Yes I was thinking that tbf, as they would of been on 24hrs a day at full chat.

Would there be anything in keeping the PS4 for gaming, and buying him a cheaper laptop for school work and programming?

If it's just running Word/Excel and some programming you could go second hand on the laptop and it won't matter so much if he drops it/spills drink on it etc.  Will also mean he doesn't have the option of taking his gaming setup on every family trip away.

I'd just like to give a firm plus 1 to this option.  It'll be miles cheaper and you're going to struggle to get gaming PC that'll beat a PS4 untill you're spending a fair amount of money.

I guess the other option would be to get a PS5, but they're not yet super easy to buy.