Your advice is kindly requested for a kids birthday gift - A Gaming PC! :)

[stevegarza]

Hello,

My name is Steve. I am coming to this community with hopes of getting some advice. My 12 year old is always complaining that his pc is to slow for gaming. He runs steam and plays TF2, Gary's Mod, Battlefield, Titanfall, etc. He has a 3 year old asus essentio series cm1630. Its only 3 years old but I am certain that that machine is not built to handle the video games that he would like to play.

His birthday is coming up in September and I am thinking of buying him a new computer. I have been looking around and its clear that gaming pc's are quite expensive and I'm not ready to spend 3K for a 12 year old to play video games on. It just does not seem very feasible for me to spend that kind of money to simply play video games!

With that being said a friend suggested that i get him the HP Envy Phonix gaming system.

Here are the specs:

HP Envy Phoenix 810-109 Minitower PC - 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4770K Quad Core Processor i7-3.5GHz - 12GB RAM - 2TB HDD + 128GB-SSD (Solid State Drive) - DVDRW - GeForce GTX645 with 2GB Graphics Memory - Wi-Fi AC + Bluetooth - Windows 8.1 Home
Powered by a 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4770K Quad Core Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz)
12GB RAM (3 DIMM)
2TB 7200RPM Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
DVD+/-RW
Multimedia Reader
Gigabit Ethernet
Wi-Fi AC + Bluetooth for easy connectivity
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645 Graphics (2GB Graphics Memory)
Ports: Top I/O ports
USB 3.0: 2
Microphone: 1
Headphone: 1
Ports: Front I/O ports

USB 2.0: 4
Ports: Back I/O ports
Optical S/PDIF-out port
LAN
USB 2.0: 2
USB 3.0: 2
DVI-D
DVI-I
Audio: center/subwoofer
Audio: rear speaker out
Audio: side speaker out
Audio: Line in
Audio: Line out
Audio: Microphone
Windows 8.1 Home 64-bit
600W Power Supply

Just by looking at the specs i can already see that its leap and bounds faster then what he currently has. The Computer is 1500 dollars so I don't want to spend this much money on something that is going to leave him exactly where h is.

My question, is this computer fast enough to handle his video games at a fast and enjoyable rate? How fast is this computer in terms of today operating standards for other applications such as Photoshop, Ableton, etc?

How good is the video card on board? and can this computer upgrade to a better video card without having to replace any other parts? If so what is the best video card to replace the current one with and will the processor bottleneck?

thanks for your time and help!!!

 

[volcanoscout]

On this system, the CPU is good, but you can get a newer version (i7-4790K) for about the same price. It has a 4.0 GHz starting clock (4.4 GHz turbo), as opposed to the 4770K's 3.5/3.9 GHz. I doubt the cooling system in the case is setup for overclocking, although the motherboard and CPU are capable of it- you'd need to upgrade the CPU cooler or not overclock, in which case the K chip isn't a good value.

The GPU isn't great (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+645). If your son wants to play modern games, it's going to struggle. You can upgrade it, but you'd need to check the actual space available inside the case to make sure a new one would fit.

Any GPU upgrade would require a check on the PSU suitability. OEM builds tend to come with pretty junky power supply units. They also have a habit of using odd sizes making upgrading challenging. In this case it looks like a standard size so replacing it should be straight forward if necessary.

Are you at all interested in building it yourself instead? Maybe as a father/son project? It can seem a daunting task (which is why OEM PCs sell so well), but you can get a lot more performance with much higher quality components for $1500. Or equal performance for a lot less. If you are, we'll help you pick out the best components and put it together. There are also a ton of good youtube tutorials online.

Edit: Here's another comparison chart for the GTX 645. Scroll down (and down, and down) till you see the red box outlining the 645's benchmark. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+645&id=2513

 

[numanator]

My problem with that pre-built is that it really isn't a gaming pc since most of the money is spent on the CPU and very little on the graphics card. The GTX 645 is a previous generation low-mid end GPU and would not perform great on modern games. If you can build one yourself there are much better options but if you are looking for a prebuilt PC I know that Digitalstorm.com has a decent setup for around $1200-1300 that would be much better than the one you posted.

Also the posted pc has an unlocked CPU for overclocking but doesn't have any info on the motherboard or cooling for it.

Here is the digital storm one:

https://www.digitalstormonline.com/configurator.asp?id=995477

It is decent, there are some parts I don't like but it seems to be well recieved and decently priced.

 

[Ytyoussef]

This computer has a good processor, but a mediocre graphics card, which is actually the most important part in a gaming PC. So I wouldn't suggest getting that, it's too expensive for what you're getting.

You can build him something for $1500 that will make him play all of the games you listed at the highest settings, and it is quite easy. You could have a look at a few instructional videos on how to build a PC and do it yourself, for the price of the Envy, you would be getting something much more powerful for him.

(This is a good video with info about which parts you can get for $1500, but it is a bit outdated, so just watch it to have an idea of how to build a PC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFb3TNePIg)

If you do want a pre-built PC, could you tell us where you live so that I can suggest something that would be better for him, but be aware that you would still be paying more than if you were to build it yourself.

 

[smeezekitty]

Too much CPU and not enough GPU. You could most likely build a better box for only $1000
For example
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/j66C4D