Buying a Gaming PC

[DANGERMAN]

One of the most disheartening things you see around atm, actually it's a long way down the list given the state of the world, is that there's a decent number of people that think they'd be happy owning nothing. 

 

Personally I think it's pure short sightedness. Spotify is convenient, Netflix is convenient, there's a forum I'm on where a weird number of people play games via streaming. To some extent I get it, we all only have so much space, you're not going to fill your car with cds if you don't have to, your home with dvds and games. 

 

I love that young people seem to be going the other way. Cynical nerds like me like owning stuff for any number of reasons, but I really like that there's a trend for dvds, cds and even cassettes now. The latter might be a novelty, but if they can't afford a sub, or just want to own something, and stuff like vinyl has got stupidly expensive, then good for them, and good for them supporting artists they like. 

 

There's companies making new cd players, mp3 players, and tape players. In gaming we've got the likes of Evercade, with companies like Atari and Modretro making new ways to play old physical games. There's new physical games for old consoles, and physical versions of indie games still. Hopefully that lasts. 

 

Combined with the people who stuck with PS4 so long, Steam Deck, and Steam Machine, meaning we're aiming for lower spec, or at least making do. I know I'm not itching for a PS6 in the next year or two. Not that that solves the problem, but maybe we do get a new market for that, whether that's a good or bad thing 

[Sly Reflex]

Depending on the specs of the Steambox it might be the cheapest entrant into being able to play newer games. It might be a thing where people are forced into it out of necessity since the next lot of consoles are going to be fucking eye wateringly expensive. I mean they already are, I look to the price of them and the games and wonder how the fuck people manage to bust through shit like they have.

 

I noticed a trend as well, specifically for PS5 users. I was looking back over the previous years of Sony game completions and it was anywhere between 20 and 70 games depending on how hardcore they were.

 

That declined a lot once we got into PS5 era because they don't have the ability to trade in. Some people that were prolific on completing games and moving onto the next big thing didn't even bother keeping score this year.

 

You could chalk this up to there being next to fuck all to play on PS5, or the fact they are just getting older and priorities have altered, but it's something I have noticed a lot since covid maybe?

 

On the other side of the aisle we have people playing lots of shite, but not seeing any of it through to the end.

 

Not really the place to discuss it here since it's wildly off topic, but I think it's interesting how this has panned out. People are being priced out of big hitting stuff and vouching for games like Ball X Pit too. I think they're fucking sick of AAA stuff, or at least consuming fewer AAA games. For instance I don't know anyone that played the recent Ass Creed within my close circle. Considering there's a few that absolutely stan that series, it's a bit telling that things might be a little off.

[Maf]

One of the reasons I got a PC is because I wanted to try do some video-type projects with games, but I never got around to it. Inspired by a cool GMV I saw yesterday and waking up at 3am this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, I ChatGPT’d my way through the process. I successfully got video capture, downloaded a royalty free song, edited it (in the sense of gameplay and song start and stop with each other), balanced the music and sfx out a little, rendered and got it on YouTube. The video is crap but I’m glad I managed to learn the basics and complete the process end-2-end. Next step is to actually have a creative, but basic idea and make something good. But I was glad I managed to just complete a video on the technical side. 

[DANGERMAN]

Once you understand the software a bit its not too hard. You've already thought about balancing sound and gameplay which is a good sign 

[radiofloyd]

My computer has bricked it and I don’t really feel like investing any more money in keeping it alive. It’s been a good servant since 2015.

 

I will get a new PC but that will probably be after a PS5 and Switch 2, so probably a late 2027 purchase at the earliest.

[DANGERMAN]

I've no idea on the prices but a laptop might be a better value investment over a desktop at the minute, if you were looking for a pc

[one-armed dwarf]

Steam Machine for indies and PS5 for AAA could be a good combo. 

 

It's hard to say though with how expensive things are. 

 

Today I assembled my other components which I ship of Thesues-ed out of my main PC over the years, which I'm mainly going to be using for FPS and CRPG as it's at a desk in the office. 3070 and a 9700k, 8 cores and 8GB VRAM won't be great for modern stuff but there's lots of stuff that isn't modern

[mfnick]

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Steam Machine for indies and PS5 for AAA could be a good combo. 

 

Isn’t that a bit insane when the PS5 is significantly cheaper than the Steam Machine & has the majority of indies that are worth playing on it anyway & can run them better?
 

Surely a £500 Laptop/PC would be better if you absolutely need to play the indies which aren’t on PS5. That’d still be more than powerful enough for those games. Rather than paying £900 for a machine just to play something that looks like it’s from the PS2 gen. 

[one-armed dwarf]

PC is way better for indies than PS imo, you get early access as well if that's your bag (understandably, for a lot it isn't, but still). Lots of weirdo indies as well, can't play Kenshi on PS 🤓

There's lots of indies on PC which take an age to come out on console, especially in the immersive sim genre. They also run really light as they target systems that are probably under the spec of a SM. 

 

Laptops I don't know a lot about, it's always a bit of an unknown there I think. Every laptop I've had has been a balls scorching menace. 

[Sly Reflex]

I still think that if you are in it for the really long game, the steam machine might be the thing to go to. You're not going to see any discontinued shit there ala like we have with the PS3/Vita stuff recently. Shit will just roll on and on, the OS will be supported forever too, that's another thing that tends to cripple stuff. Like when we went from 7 to 10 to 11.

 

It's just insanely expensive for what it is. I can't even fathom how the big three are going to put another console out and have it come at a price people won't cringe at when they see the sticker price.

[one-armed dwarf]

I got my PC set up with moonlight/sunshine streaming, and with both systems connected over ethernet I think this shit feels near native latency wise, I could play Doom Eternal on it. And die a lot, I'm rusty. The client PC could run the game fine locally, but I wanted to try it with something that involves reflexes. So I guess I'm a believer of LAN streaming now. 

 

The 'both systems need to be on ethernet' is obviously a pretty significant drawback though, unless you have your place set up for it. I think it would be a great option though if you had something with a smaller form factor in the living room, driven by the big boi in another room. Maybe more high end routers can do it on WiFi, but I know that's not an option for me. 

 

Don't use the in-built steam streaming, it's really shit, laggy as fuck. Hopefully they improve it soon (I think they will before Steam Frame)

[Sly Reflex]

I just used to use the chromecast to send stuff to the main tv. Worked for everything except stuff there you needed to be frame perfect. Could play CloneHero on it fine enough, but something like Pinball FX was a no go. Anything under that level of input delay was perfectly fine. Wired one side, wireless the other side. Easier than how I used to do it with a Belkin bridge a long time ago. 

I think you can use the moonlight method on an appletv dongle as well? Supposedly not a bad way to go about it.

 

Raspberry Pi was made for this sort of stuff, I reckon that would make an excellent bridge. Also you could put Pihole on it and get rid of all the adverts on your TV browsing. That shit is a silver bullet if you know what you are doing. 

[DANGERMAN]

Anyway @radiofloyd, hope that helps

[Sly Reflex]