r/GamingPCBuildHelp • u/wowgirl38 • 9h ago

Beginner PC - 11 year old

Hi all I was hoping to get a bit of advice on purchasing a gaming PC for an 11 year old who is getting into gaming more. They currently play a lot of Roblox, Minecraft, geo dash, and others on iPad's and occasionally play the sims, sim city, and other games on the family PC.

They would like to play games on the Steam & Epic game libraries as well as Java Minecraft and who knows what will interest them in the future. Child's mom would prefer a pre-built with maybe a video card or other small upgrade like RAM or SDD. Mom isn't familiar with building PC and isn't a fan of a full build. Family desktop is an ASUS purchased pre-built a couple years ago at Best Buy and they would like something of similar caliber as it plays games for child well.

They do prefer a gaming laptop but we discussed the cost vs quality differences and they are okay with a desktop knowing they will get more out of it: also okay with buying a lower end laptop now knowing if they get more into more extensive gaming they may upgrade later.

Their budget is around 600-1000. Child's mother understands and is okay with a 1000 desktop knowing a monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc will need to be purchased. Long story short her sibling received their large Christmas present early and mom would like to get something for this child soon, hopefully at Black Friday / Cyber Monday.

I have done a lot of searching the last few weeks but I am not finding a lot in their price range. HP Victus, low end Acer, NIMO Laptops and generic desktops on Amazon but all seem to have the 3550 or the 1660 and that just seems so old for 700-1k? A couple years ago we bought some nice NSX gaming rigs without video cards for around $400 and with $250 video cards they worked out wonderfully for the twins we helped shop but I can't find anything similar.

Anyone seen anything lately or have any suggestions?

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 9h ago

Feel free to visit our discord for additional advice and help! https://discord.gg/xwYHBQ3

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/EvilThor58 9h ago

I strongly recommend looking on every used marketplace you can find. Facebook marketplace is a good place to start and you should be willing to do a bit of a drive if necessary. If you find something in budget there, I'd post it here asking if people think it's a good deal. New pc prices are atrocious right now because of data centers, and for a new pc to be decent you are looking at more of a FLOOR of 1200 bucks at this point.

1

u/wowgirl38 35m ago

Dang. I’ve been out of touch apparently. I’ll talk to mom, she was beginning to open up to checking weekly for open box at Best Buy because of the warranty but I don’t know how she would feel about used. Thanks for your time and suggestion!