Now that remote work is established, that social networks are increasingly personal, virtual classrooms are spreading and more, the world of PC gaming is growing by correlation. More and more people decide to have a personal range computer, not one shared by the family in the living room. With this, many people take the opportunity to switch to playing on PC for a simple reason: comfort. They already have a PC they can play games on, and switching between systems just to play games is becoming less and less common. This grows if the systems are in different rooms.
This text is for you, who are a user with a console and perhaps have ever considered moving to the PC as a gaming platform. It is an increasingly booming decision. Consoles are being relegated to the secondary option for elements not related to its catalog, such as the portability of the Nintendo Switch, or the lower price of PlayStation 5 and Xbox series, especially in its PlayStation 5 Digital and Xbox series S models.
In this article we are going to give you all the necessary help so that you can start your adventure in the world of PC gaming. So you can see that it is really simple at the end of the day.
Table of Contents
Busting PC gaming myths
The first thing is to remove many of the myths and phrases most used by those who believe that PC Gaming is not an option comparable to playing with a console, that it is expensive, or that it always causes problems. Generally, the issue of monetary cost, or its complications when playing. With this we do not want to invalidate many criticisms that playing on PC from a console player can have. We want to give context to those phrases so you can see that it's not that serious.
The idea that “You need to spend thousands of euros on a PC just to play” is outdated and false
It is undeniable that the gaming PC has a higher barrier to entry, but it is not expensive for that. Above all, because a PC is used for more than just playing. For their part, the consoles are really standardized lower-middle-range computers, subsidized through the economy of scale of mass manufacturing of components several years ago, and because the manufacturers hope to earn more from royalties and sales of games on their console. and its stores. This allows the price of the console to be cheaper than a computer, but greatly limits the options for use and play. Ironically, it is possible to get a PC with the same capabilities for a very similar price. It really isn't that expensive to buy a PC compared to buying a console, even though old parts are hard to come by.
It is possible and very safe that a high-end PC can reach more than 1.000 euros or 1.500. In many online stores you can buy a PC model with an RTX 3060 and a modern Intel Core for that price threshold. It is important to say that such a computer easily can last you more than ten years of top games. Currently the minimum requirements of those games with great graphics, they have barely surpassed the GTX 770, which is a graph from ten years ago. Above all, it matters the resolution at which you are going to play, the most common being 1080p (1.920 x 1080p). The following steps lead to resolutions of 2.560 x 1.440 (QHD), and 3.840 x 2.160 (4K). If you are going to use a 1080p resolution monitor or television for a long time, it hardly pays to go for higher cost graphics or processors. These are the two elements where more money goes.
For many years, a graphics card with 2 GB of VRAM was only required as minimum, not recommended. Games that require 4 GB of graphics VRAM, whose price is greatly reduced, are currently being established. On the processor side, an i5 or a Ryzen 5, which are mid-range CPUs, can easily handle all games. Because the most demanding is only for those who want to go to 4K resolutions or use Ray Tracing.
A PC worth 600 euros can handle many current games at 1080p. It is comparable to the price of a modern console, and allows you to play with the configuration you want, to cheaper games, and to a greater offer of games in general.
"You have to get the most powerful graphics card to play" is not true
To give you an idea of the minimum requirements that leading games ask for, God of War It asks for a processor, an Intel i5-2500k, a mid-range from ten generations ago, 6 GB of RAM, which is not exactly much, and a 4 GB graphics card, an NVIDIA GTX 960 or an AMD R9 290 being preferable. They are graphics about seven years ago to play at 1080p.
It also happens that it is true that it is impressive to see the top of the range such as the RTX 3090 Ti at prices of thousands of euros for itself. But first of all, its high capacity makes it future-proof for easily fifteen years, about three generations of consoles. In second place, not game standard. Recent Steam hardware surveys show that many gamers still favor the 1060GB GTX 6 and 1080GB GTX 8. Both move games at 1080p resolution and high graphic quality. Elden Ring is a game that has come out with a very bad optimization, but with a few patches and updates, the graphics most used by gamers move the game smoothly and silky. The higher graphics are intended for higher resolutions, multiple 4K monitors, and video rendering work.
The videogames they are stagnating graphically and 6 GB of VRAM is more than enough during the near future and in the medium term. More VRAM is recommended only if you are going to connect it to a 4K monitor and plan to apply Ray Tracing to it. This greatly improves the lighting to one with better shadows, but still It is a technology that many home graphics do not support. and it has to be optimized a lot to be something standardized in modern games. It is true that there are, but unless you have a high-end television, you do not have to buy a high-end graphics card.
"I once got a pre-assembled bike and it was not working properly" is an isolated case caused by misinformation
Possibly, you will buy one that has a very high profit margin, offering more customer service and deployment for companies than one for consumers. Last year the case of the Youtuber Super Eyepatch Wolf's computer became notorious, who placed his trust in Dell with a computer with an Intel Xeon W-2223, a 1000 GB NVIDIA Quadro P4, and 4 modules of 16 GB DDR4 RAM. frequency 2933 MHz.
In the video itself, it can be seen that he placed all his trust in the brand and instantly saw that they did not install an SSD or a network card because he did not put the correct options in the menu. And looking at the components that are seen in a second of the video, it is seen that he bought a workstation. Is a PC format designed to work in network environments, and with advanced image, sound and video editing software. It was not a PC to do your work alone, nor for games. The graphics card, for editing videos and probably playing video games, was already out of date by the time he bought it. Its RAM memory had very low frequencies by 2021 standards. No matter how much capacity four modules have, if they are slow they will be slow no matter how much capacity they have.
The pre-assembled ones are not the devil. But you have to look very closely at the components it has and how they combine. Don't look so much at the brand, well the components between them are usually very similar to each other, especially their use of so-called reference models. These are the key components, without any improvement from another manufacturer. They are a way of having a computer that can run games at a certain quality, as long as the components are up to par and do not mark a huge premium.
Above we show the case of a computer model pre-assembled by Starforge Systems that for 900 dollars offered an i3-10100F, a minimum range of almost three years ago designed for office automation; a GTX 1660Ti, which barely exceeds the GTX 1060 that the minimums of leading games ask for; and only 512 GB of storage on an NVMe SSD, without an additional hard drive. In summary, the components are not out of date, but they do not correspond little to the price they are asking for since they are very low-end. In response, Twitter user @_Something_Evil did an experiment asking for separate components to make a better computer.
As a result, he managed to put an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, a CPU with more cores and more modern; an NVMe with more capacity, and an AMD Radeon RX 6600, comparable to the RTX 2080. It warns that it is a price without assembly, but you can order the assembly from a store, for about 50 euros, and you can have a computer ready to play , and that it will last you a decade with good graphic quality.
We understand that finding out about components is scary. But is a growing need in a world where computers increasingly dominate our lives. Luckily, there are communities like the r/buildapc subreddit that can help you with questions about components and if they combine well.
"I like to play sitting on the couch"
It is true that keyboard and mouse control is the best in many games, but it is not comfortable sitting at a distance. Luckily, PC supports any controller configuration and you can connect Xbox 360 controllers, Xbox One controllers, Xbox series controllers, Nintendo Switch controllers, PlayStation 4 controllers, PlayStation 5 controllers and anything else you can think of.
If you already want controller control, Steam has a built-in Big Picture mode that changes the client display to resemble the console interface.
Where to buy PC games?
Unlike consoles, PCs do not have a game store that has a total monopoly on sales imposed by the manufacturer. While Steam is in a position to be considered a monopoly, there are alternatives and it's not the only way to legally get PC games. Among the major stores are the following:
- Steam: Valve digital store. The vast majority of PC games end up in this store. It has community features like forums for each game, organization of mods, and even marketplace for digital items for games and player profile.
- Epic Games Store: Epic Games Digital Store. It is the only place to download Fortnite. Many PC games are available in this store, and some are even exclusive. It doesn't have as many community features as Steam. Every week, they give a free game that changes every Thursday afternoon (Spanish peninsular time), so you can have a huge library of games for nothing.
- Itch.io: Web store specialized in being an independent game platform. Allows you to download games without DRM.
- GoG.com: Web specialized in classic games recompiled to work on modern systems. It also has current games. Allows you to download all available games without DRM. It has its client called GoG Galaxy.
- Humble Store: Game store that usually has keys to redeem on Steam and sometimes direct download without DRM. He often does discount game bundles, usually leaving games for less than a US dollar.
- fanatical: It regularly offers discounted Steam key bundles.
How to build a gaming PC from scratch?
The first thing is to have a performance goal that you want your PC to have, and adjust the budget. One piece of advice is to look at the minimum requirements of the multiplatform games you are interested in playing, and upload them a few generations to make sure that your PC is not going to be outdated. Let's take as an example that you want a PC to play Elden Ring, with which we will see its requirements:
Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 3 3300X
Memory: 12 GB of RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB or AMD RADEON RX 580 4GB
Storage: 60 GB of available space
Elden Ring Minimum Requirements
With this we can plan the personalized assembly of a PC, which with the assembler of a certain PC assembly website that also checks compatibility, we have the following components:
- CPU: Intel Core i5-10400F 2.90GHz
- Motherboard: Gigabyte H510M S2H V2
- RAM: Kingston FURY Beast DDR4 3200MHz 16GB 2x8GB CL16
- SSD: Kioxia EXCERIA 500GB SSD NVMe M.2 2280
- HDD: Seagate BarraCuda 3.5″ 2TB SATA 3
- Case: Tempest Start Black ATX Tower
- Power supply: Tempest PSU 750W
- Graphic card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER OC 6GB GDDR6
- Network/WIFI adapter: Asus PCE-AC51 PCI-e AC750 Wireless Adapter
With all this, we have a PC that can comfortably move Elden Ring, and with the final price, assembly included, does not exceed 750 euros at the date of writing these lines. It should be said that it does not have an operating system, but installing it is as easy as downloading Windows 11 from the official Microsoft website, creating an image on a PenDrive, and when we receive the PC, installing Windows by placing the PenDrive before turning on the PC and accessing lips. For its part, the Windows 110 license is very easy to find for around 10 euros and then upgrade to Windows 11. It may seem like a cumbersome process, but it is paying only that to install it ourselves, which is really easy; against several tens of euros. Cumbersome, but it is only done once.
Now, about this configuration, there are a few notes why each of the decisions:
- The CPU may be almost three years old, but being an i5, it has enough core counts for smooth multitasking. It is a CPU of a range widely used for gaming. It may have fewer cores than higher end CPUs from years ago but the quality and performance of the cores matters.
- This motherboard is not top of the range, but for gaming it is much more than enough. The dual-channel memory configuration is more than enough for gaming, and 16GB runs all the games. It would be easily scalable to eventually go up to a 32GB configuration in dual channel DDR4, with two identical 16GB modules. In addition, it has four SATA ports, so it would be easy to expand with a SATA hard drive or SSD in case you need it.
- The NVMe SSD is 500 GB, since smaller amounts for the startup disk mean that if you put two or three large games, generally games like Genshin Impact or Overwatch, it fills up fast. 2TB of hard drive storage is a very good amount for storage.
- No fan or additional liquid cooling has been put into it because Intel CPU comes with a fan as standard. Normally, many CPUs come with a heatsink as standard, but it is not applicable to all.
- The graphics card is a 1660 GB GTX 6. This is more than enough memory to play games in high quality if you are going to play on a 1080p monitor, which are the most common. Knowing that you are going to be limited to this resolution, it is not necessary to go up to 12 GB models. As of today, the GTX 1060 is considered to be the best or one of the best 1080p gaming PC graphics cards, and the 6's extra power and use of GDDR1660 make it even better going forward.
Then there's the option of looking at different stores to see what pre-built PC options they have, which ensures that they have a compatible configuration and we can receive it instantly. Simply, let's take into account the minimum requirements of the games we ask for, and that they are most likely computers with expansion options.
With all this we have a PC that will easily last us the current generation of consoles, and most likely the next. Surprisingly, consoles tend to have particularly backward graphics cards and components, because it's imperative that they be cheaper in mass production than a PC.
Yes, you may think that 750 euros for a PC to play is a lot of entry, but really, as we said, the barrier to entry is high, not expensive. But with a PC like this, you can do much more than just play. Today we carry out countless actions on a PC, especially with distance work and virtual classes, so that a PC that works well in this type of task is already an improvement in the quality of life. It is something that we do not take into account, but as more and more we need a personal PC for day to day, we do not need a gaming PC that serves us for tasks, but a PC for tasks that serves us for gaming.
Is it necessary on PC to play with keyboard and mouse?
No. On PC, an infinite number of controllers are compatible, like all those of the Xbox Box brand, which use Xinput. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch controllers may work depending on the game. Steam is integrating support for all possible controllers into its client so you don't have to buy an additional controller.
What drawbacks does the gaming PC have?
The first of all is that you will not have access to all the games there have been and for having, legally. Although it is much better than years ago when console games were not released on PC due to compatibility problems. Speaking of the games from the different console manufacturers that are going to have exclusives:
- Microsoft It no longer does Xbox exclusives and releases all its games on PC, so if you like their games, a gaming PC means you don't have to deal with buying an Xbox series S or Xbox series X.
- Sony is slowly releasing its games on PC, but usually several years later and titles that it is interested in promoting for imminent sequels or movies. In case you don't want to wait to play Sony games, a PlayStation 5 will give you security that you are going to play them without having to wait.
- Nintendo doesn't release games on PC, not even games that would benefit from having as large a community as possible like Pokémon Unite. If you like Nintendo games, there is no choice but to buy a Nintendo Switch.
Then it is that it is inevitable that there will be certain optimization or compatibility problems. Although we are light years away from years ago when it was said that to have a good performance you had to have "a NASA PC»Or«the same computer as the developers«. For everyone's convenience, PC game compatibility has improved a lot and at most you need the minimum components, which have been stagnant for years and have not advanced much, so as long as you have a powerful PC, you can play anything.
Yes, there are isolated cases of large games with optimization problems due to rapid ports, such as Elden Ring, which made the graphics run by default on the motherboard when no CPU with integrated graphics could move it; NieR: Automata, which needed unofficial patches and a new port when it came out on the Windows Store, or Batman Arkham Knight, which barely had time to optimize on PC. We are not going to deny that they exist, but some notable cases do not invalidate that more and more ports of PC games are made with love.
When is it not worth moving to PC Gaming?
The key is how much you play, in terms of quantity and time. If you are going to play little, either in number of games or time, it is not worth spending on a gaming PC. The consoles do their job very well as low-middle-range PCs at affordable prices.
If you are only going to play a few titles a year, you will hardly take advantage of the cost of components and offers for cheaper games. Consoles are still a gaming option, which due to their proprietary system have more expensive games, and are much easier to handle. But if you are a user who buys the annual FIFA and two more games a year, the difference in price compared to the game on PC will hardly be noticeable.
PC is the most complete gaming option for the most dedicated gamers, yes. But there is a system for each user. This guide to get into PC gaming is not for those who play a few titles, but for those players who play several dozen games each year.
