PC Tech Thread

Thanks for the nudge.
Just checked in W11 Settings and 23H2 is waiting for me.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mailbox-migration/migrating-imap-mailboxes/migrate-g-suite-mailboxes

My 15 year old son wants a gaming PC and is keen on the idea of building one from parts. I'm thinking it could be a nice project for us to work on together but I've been a Mac user all my life and know nothing about PCs. Anyone got any tips on where to start and how far would a budget of about 1k get us?

I'm sure others will link elsewhere but I found this a useful resource when building mine: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com
I would say £1k would be plenty depending on what you're looking to play and at what resolution. But do factor in peripherals like a monitor, mouse, keyboard and sound (headset or speakers)

You should be able to put together a good enough pc for under 600, look for combo deal of motherboard with CPU and probably look at getting a 1060 or 3050 GPU.

Copy the parts list from an existing build (I like Quiet PC stuff) and build that. At least you know it'll work if you build it properly.

Thanks - this looks relatively painless - though my rage has cooled and I'm not sure how much I can be bothered (which is how they get you...).

Thanks for the tips! I'll start doing a bit of research

That site it great. It tells you what is compatible and will tell you whether the PSU you're buying is enough to power all the components you have selected.

If you were to go on for example Overclockers.com forums, that is what everyone there uses for speccing their PCs.

Having done similar a couple of years ago for gamer boy, I'd bust the budget and buy the rig up thread that @Soul is flogging. Gamerz need ramz and GPUz.

If it helps @motman, I can sell the PC disassembled :D

Ha! Thanks for the offer but its definitely over his budget.
It would be good if we could build something that could be upgraded later down the line and anyway at the moment he mainly plays Roblox which I doubt needs massive amounts of processing power.

It's a slippery slope!

I'd probably just copy something like this
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-it-mesh-ryzen-5-5500-6-core-nvidia-rtx-4060-8gb-desktop-pc-for-gaming.html

Absolutely bonkers what you can get for your money compared to 2020.

Second 3080, then, or upgrade to 4090?

For playing games at insane framerates CUDA parallel Tensor-flow madness.

After the last few years, that is mad value wow @amey

After the last new years

I just stayed in, much cheaper. Not really a big fan of NYE either.

ha! will edit thanks

We talked about monitors... and I dismissed the need for a new one only a couple of weeks ago.

But now I've changed my mind :)

I have a single 27" monitor, 2560 x 1440 and I split it into 4 zones with Windows PowerToys.

Recently Slack no longer fits... they had a UI update.
And more people are using Google Docs in Pageless, which is clearly designed for higher res screens.

I've had my monitor since 2015... I'm happy with it, but I definitely need to increase the resolution.

Any recommendations on a premium 4K 27" monitor... 27" is required, 4k is required.

Pick from here - 27" 4K that are above 8.5 rating for office.

Doesn't look like you can get the Innocn mini LED one in the UK though.

I've always rated the Dell Ultrasharp

I'd be concerned that 4k @27" will require UI scaling to avoid everything being too small, and therefore potentially ending up in the same situation with Slack and other apps.

The table linked here seems like a reasonable starting point. I can't remember where I found this, so it might be up-thread 😅

Anyway, even ignoring Mac compatibility, 4K 27" falls in the badlands that are more likely to need fractional scaling/less likely applications are tested against.

27" 5K should work for anything tested on retina displays or with integer (2x) scaling.

require UI scaling to avoid everything being too small

I'm 1m in front of it and wear glasses that make it such that I can see pixels.

4k with tiny fonts will probably be fine

Here's a screenshot at 4k reduced to 2560x1440. Obviously it would be sharper on a 4k monitor, but viewing this fullscreen will be accurate in terms of size.

@useless dunno if Windows handles this better (which would be a surprise) but I use 150% scaling on my 4k TV without any noticeable issues.

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