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sasllcFlag for United States of America

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Guidelines for building a gaming PC

A customer wants me to guide her son on building a gaming PC--which I know almost nothing about, as I just deal with small-office computers.  I have seen some gaming PCs advertised, and they always seem to be pricey with high-end specs.  Below are my questions:

1) I know he plays his games with others over the internet.  I don't know how much--if any--of the games actually 'run' on the PC, using its resources.  So my first question is whether he needs a high-end I7 processor--or is that a waste of money because the PC is actually doing very little work?

2) 4GB or 8GB RAM?--again not understanding how much the PC is actually doing.  He would only be doing one thing at a time in Windows 10 Home, i.e. only one window active.

3) For a given processor, where can I go to find out what speed RAM is required?

I want him to get enough horsepower so he is not disappointed, but not waste money on components that are needlessly high-end.  TIA
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John
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I use solidly high computers but not for games.

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit.
At least 8 GB of memory and 16 GB preferred.
i7 CPU
Top make SSD PCI-e drive at least 500 GB and check the price of 1 TB as it might not be that more.

High end Intel GPU or Nvidia is the owner prefers. Make sure Nvidia supplies drivers now and for future versions of Windows 10. Intel is good at this. Nvidia is so-so at this.
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>>  So my first question is whether he needs a high-end I7 processor--or is that a waste of money because the PC is actually doing very little work?

You'd really need to identify the games he is playing.  Internet games can either be demanding on resources.  Or not.

Now it is not only the CPU but the graphics card, the memory, the hard disk, the cooling, etc etc.

CPU will probably need to be quad core, memory 8 Gb minimum, graphics card 1 Gb of onboard memory (or more) for a reasonable gaming machine.

Which leads us back to the bolded paragraph above.
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So does this mean that even online games DO heavily use computer resources?  I get the impression that the video card sucks resources, but is the game itself using a lot of resources--even though it is being run online?

And regarding the Intel or Nvidia GPU...are you referring to the video card he would add?
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I don't know, and have no way to find out right now.  Apparently we are saying that some game do use a lot of resources, even if they are being played online with others, so the safe thing to do is tell him to spend some money on the good stuff.  Tell me if I'm misunderstanding, and otherwise I will lead him in that direction.
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I was mistaken...I WAS able to get a quick answer below--although I am not familiar with what he is talking about!

=====
A quick answer would be counter strike: global offensive, and minecraft on occasion.  I also plan to get into more free roam games.
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>>  So does this mean that even online games DO heavily use computer resources?

They can.  It depends on the game.

Being run online can mean anything.  In a lot of cases the online computer may be just passing information back and forth between itself and other computers.  Or it could be doing lots of processing as well.  Or both.  You really need to identify the games he plays.

Video cards may suck resources or not.  In some cases all they do is just throw stuff up on the screen while the CPU does the work.  Or the card may need to heavily process the graphics before it puts the stuff on the screen.  Depends on the game.

Intel graphics come on the the motherboard with Intel chips.  For gaming purposes you don't use Intel graphics.  You either use a Nvidia card or a Radeon card for gaming.
If those are the only two games then your needs are modest.  But get a full listing in case there is something demanding.

At this stage you'd need (my estimation)

1 Gb Nvidia or AMD Radeon GPU
8 Gb memory
Quad core processor.  i5 would probably be more than enough.
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Once he picks his processor, is there a site that will tell him the RAM speed he needs to buy to go with the processor?
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One other thought:   Be sure to use a high-end chipset motherboard ... the Asus "ROG" series of boards are superb for high-end systems.   You don't need the absolutely top-of-the-line (over $300) boards, but a good $200 board will notably outperform the low-end boards and support a lot more high-end features.    This is a good choice:  https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132928

Note that if you get a good motherboard, CPU, and memory that every other component can easily be upgraded if you later want higher performance.   [e.g. if you went with a Radeon RX480 and the user eventually wanted better video performance; it's easy to swap it for a GTX-1080 -- or probably an even higher-performance card if it's a year down the road].
Yet another note:   It's become so "standard" I almost forgot to mention it:  Absolutely use an SSD for the system drive !!   A high-quality SSD with 500GB or more is very affordable these days, and will provide a BIG boost in performance over traditional drives.    An M.2 unit -- especially an NVME drive -- is even better.   But be sure you use an SSD, whether or not it's an NVME  (NVME units are appreciably more expensive).
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