Very OT - questions about gaming computer for 11 y.o.
namffuak
Posts: 4,176
My sister hit me up on this today. Her grandson is bugging his mom for a gaming computer; he's 11, mostly plays fortnite, has a 14 year old brother, and has his eye on something that costs $800.
His mom thinks he's too young; being a not especially child-friendly old geezer, I tend to agree with her.
So -
1) Is a gaming computer appropriate for his age - and keep in mind it would also need to be suitable for schoolwoork as well.
2) What price point would cover an accepatble system?
3) Specific system recommendations cheerfully accepted. They live in south-eastern Texas, so US vendors please.
I'm presuming at this point he's playing the game on his phone. I'm also presuming he's angling for this as a Christmas gift.
That's everything I know; I con get more specifics if required.
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Comments
it could be a gateway to 3D modelling though, especially if he decides to play Minecraft too.
If he is already playing Fortnite online and takes reasonable care of his other electronics, then age shouldn't really be a factor. A gaming computer can handle anything he may need for school. $800 sounds like the right ballpark for what he would need.
The system requirements for Fortnight are:
Fortnite Minimum PC System Requirements
Fortnite Recommended PC System Requirements
Some sources gave lower specifications, so I would aim for slightly better than the minimum listed here. AMD CPU and graphics card would work fine and may save some money. An AMD Ryzen 5 3200 or 3600 should provide plenty of CPU power.
I bought an all AMD system with an AMD Ryzen 5 3200 and an AMD Radeon RX580 a year and a half ago for $750 which has done very well for my games and rendering with 3DL.
Fortnite is a super easy game to run. It can run on pretty much anything, and indeed it is even on mobile phones.
So with that in mind you do not need any sort of powerful machine to play Fortnite. That is good, because GPUs are horribly over priced right now. It is sad to say, but $800 for a PC is actually cheap in this current market, many GPUs go for that by themselves. I don't know what is in that PC, though. I'm guessing a 1650 or 1660, which is low end but good enough to play Fortnite, and a number of games at 1080p. There are actually some $800 prebuilts that do not even have a GPU at all! That is how bad things are. Prices just keep getting worse.
I don't know even know what to say, either. I personally think these inflated prices will be around for a good while. If he just wants to play Fortnite...a console would work great if you can get one. But I am guessing he wants a PC to join his friends. (I forget if PC players can match up with console players online in Fortnite, it is usually tough because keyboard and mouse offer an advantage to aiming over controllers.)
I do not think 11 is too young at all for a computer. But you may want to have some parental restrictions in place if you are concerned what about what kind of websites an 11 year old might wind up in when not gaming. However these would be present for any internet connected device today...which is everything. I think it is better to teach him now how to handle what he may see online, because frankly many of the kids in school will show him stuff on their tablets or phones anyway. YouTube itself can have all kinds of questionable stuff, like some pretty hateful videos. Growing up today is more challenging.
People can be bullied online and in games. This might sound crazy but some players might make fun of other players who use a default skin for example. A default skin being the initial characters available to play. Fortnite itself is free, but it has loot boxes and cosmetic options you can buy. So making fun of those who play defaults is a way of bullying the poor kids. So there can be pressure to buy stuff to keep up appearances.
Games with loot boxes can also quickly empty wallets with impulse spending, and can even be addictive. So make sure that credit card account is either locked or limited and that understands what your rules are.
MicroCenter has a location in Houston, and they offer a PowerSpec G229 which might be right up your alley. It's a bit over budget at $899 and comes with a i5 11400F, GTX 1660 Super 6GB, 16GB of Ram and a 500gb SSD. Now the trouble is, you can only purchase them instore, and they move kinda quick. Luckily however, PowerSpec is their own in house brand, so if they do go out of stock by the time the decision is to be made, the wait shouldn't be too long.
I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate for his age. Any kid his age and even younger I know of has a console by then, I don't see any difference with a gaming computer other than they are more expensive.
$800 might be a bit too low. The hardest thing now is the availability. The graphics card is the most importing thing for a gaming computer. Personally, my minimum would be a 3060 Ti. I just don't see paying close to that for the older generation cards. Many people are getting 1060's or prebuilts with them, simply because of the availability but I would consider a 1060 too low end for a modern gaming rig.
Anyways, TLDR I would spring for a system with a 3060 Ti.
Man, if I ever asked my parents for something like that when I was a kid they would have died laughing. I see kids runnin around with expensive ass phones and tablets these days, so why not I guess.....
I only have a 980Ti in a Ryzen 3 and what few games I have played work fine with that
A newer Ryzen machine doesn't even need a discrete video card depending on what you're doing/expecting. Minecraft is one thing. Even Fortnite, Apex, Valorant... they don't need that much.
Not everyone needs 60 FPS with Extreme graphics settings. A fast connection also matters, with enough CAT-5 to reach the kid's room rather than wonky shared wifi.
LOL... some kids, they game on their Mom's hand-me-down crapbooks. That Fortnite, Apex, Valorant, etc. range of spec is pretty broad.
same, I had to earn what I wanted as a kid, yard work, paper route, odd jobs, etc. I would never purchase a new, dedicated gaming system for my 11 yr old. Then again, a big problem with kids today is unsupervised access to the internet. Social media, tiktok, are all harmful to young, undeveloped minds IMO. Glad my kid is an adult now.
That doesn't mean those things are not harmful to his/her mind...
And don't forget that the unscrupulous are out there. Research thoroughly any "bargain" you find. There have been reports of really poorly designed/assembled systems being sold as "Gaming" for suspiciously low prices.
I wouldn't use age as a guide imo; other than, considerations as does he normally take care of his stuff?
Main consideration what games is he playing now? What games will he be playing in the next couple of years?
... You do want it to last a few years?
I guess the Fortnite experience on a PC is better, but it's a available on all the consoles... I've always felt that unless you are building a serious gaming rig with all the kit, bells and whistles then a gaming console is sufficient... Mods are usually way better on a PC though, but are mods even a thing in Fortnite?
Megh... I suppose consoles are a thing of the past and it's gonna be VR or a gaming PC soon enough.
I'd guess that there are ways to mod battle royale games, but they're pretty strict about that. If they catch you, bannination is the result.
They sell skins. They don't want you to even mod the look, let alone gameplay in battle royales.
It's a different proposition from Minecraft (Java) modding or The Sims or whatever.
The reason why the Fortnite PC experience is better (IMO) is because the kid can hide in their room and swear (LOL), whereas the console is usually out in the living room.
If you want your kid to play the console in the living room, then console is fine... but a laptop that can do schoolwork, programming, and light gaming is more ideal for slightly older kids, IMO.
Yes, a desktop supercomputer with bleeding-edge gfx cards will outperform a multirole laptop for a lot of stuff.
A decent Ryzen laptop does everything you need, though.
Making the kid figure out a balance between gfx and game performance is also a useful thing about a more limited platform like a laptop... but that's my opinion. Go ahead and get a top of the line game machine if that's in the budget. A modest Ryzen laptop does well enough for MOBAs and battle royales, which the kids like these days. Valorant in this area, but Fortnite, Apex Legends... other stuff like Roblox, Minecraft. The need for a blazing fast gfx card isn't there because the devs know who their audience is.
I was lucky when I was 11: my dad upgraded the C64 he got from work to an IBM Desktop, so I got to use the C64. We didn't have the interwebz back then, so certain content was definitely harder to aquire, making a personal computer much safer for a kid of that age.
Just one very big piece of advice, and the kid will hate me for this: place the computer in a common family area, like the living room! That way, the family can somewhat keep track of what he's doing on it. When he gets a bit older (say, 14 or 15), they can maybe allow him to put it in his own room, but initially, keep it in sight! Maybe hook it up to the stereo system as a cool gimmick (they love that, so it'll be some compensation for not getting it in their own room), but make sure to include some big headphones as well.
Alternatively, get a game console like a playstation or Xbox (I'm pretty sure Fortnite is available on at least one of those) for in their room, and a shared family computer in the living room. While there are definitely bad apples playing on consoles as well, at least you'll have weeded out 99.9% of the pr0n.
I had a laptop when I was 12 and managed to avoid... idk whatever it is people are worried about. Exploding my brain? Accidentally joining the yakuza on the dark webz? Looking it up I think it also cost about 800. Honestly I appreciate the kid for asking for a nice reasonably priced pc.
I'll second everything Outrider42 said. in particular:
and
bear repeating
Definitely asking the important questions!
Kids grow quickly as well as their minds, so he may be playing fortnite one day, Final fantasy 15 the next!
I want to thank everyone for their input. I've summariesd it and passed it on to my sister and am now officially out of the loop.
The question of whether or not its appropriate for his age is dependent on maturity & how well the parents keep tabs on his internet activity. Computers nowadays can be locked down pretty hard & logs kept for review. Much to my chagrin, everything is becoming dependent on computers or "computerish" in itself, so the earlier they get their feet in it, the better, so long as it doesn't turn into something obsessive that will get them in trouble(hence the parents need to have constraints on it).