Recommend a decent prebuilt under $500

My son would like to play more games but my aging i3 is pretty bad. However he mostly wants to play Fallout 4, and other older games. Considering how much he really cares (a little but not a ton) and his needs I want to get him a "ok" PC for Christmas.

Any recommendations? Putting "prebuild PC under $500" leads to many options but I don't know if any are worth it so I thought I would look for advise.

I didn't put this in the help me build thread because I don't want to build it - I want to unbox it and have it work.

Black Friday will likely end up your best bet. Are you prepared to go somewhere then? Cause you should be!

Otherwise I'd consider watching for sales and coupons for different vendors. Dell's outlet has some pretty sweet deals.

Problem is gaming for less than $500 is kinda tough.

Edit: Do you have a preferred vendor? Dell? Newegg? Best buy?

Is the $500 budget just for the tower? Or would it have to cover monitor and peripherals?

Tasty Pudding wrote:

Is the $500 budget just for the tower? Or would it have to cover monitor and peripherals?

Good questions!

Even used GTX 780s are selling for $100 on eBay and GTX 970s are like $200.

So a prebuilt with anything but integrated graphics for under $500 seems unlikely right now. Would you be potentially buying a GPU separately or cannibalize one from an existing PC? Or does that count as building?

Even the cheapest Dell Outlet desktop prebuilt is over $700.

Is getting a console out of the question?

In this market getting an Xbox One X seems a more realistic option if Fallout 4/Bethesda stuff would be the types of things he wants to play. Those are even all on Gamepass.

Or heck, for $500 you could probably swing a PS4 Pro and an Xbox One X.

And you can't really get any more prebuilt or open it and have it work than a console.

Is a Steam Deck a possible option? Dunno if they're possible to preorder or what the chances are of one running Fallout 4 are though.

ccoates wrote:

Is getting a console out of the question?

In this market getting an Xbox One X seems a more realistic option if Fallout 4/Bethesda stuff would be the types of things he wants to play. Those are even all on Gamepass.

Or heck, for $500 you could probably swing a PS4 Pro and an Xbox One X.

I was going to suggest a Series S, which are relatively easy to get hold of now if you know where to look. Get one of those and a Game Pass sub, and you're off to the races, with a couple of hundred dollars left over.

Looking around, it's possible Farley might be able to get a prebuilt with a 1650 (ish) for somewhere in the region of $500 with a deep Black Friday discount, but that wouldn't include monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. Frankly, a console would be a much better option at that price point.

+1 for a Series S, if all he's looking to do is game.

How about a laptop? I've seen a few in the $500 range, which would obviously include built-in keyboard, trackpad, and screen. Maybe something like this? It's certainly not top-of-the-line, and I've been hit/miss on Asus products, but I think that might do reasonably well for some older games.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

Is a Steam Deck a possible option? Dunno if they're possible to preorder or what the chances are of one running Fallout 4 are though.

You can preorder still, but current preorders are estimated for release after Q2 2022. So maybe... next Christmas?

Many questions - let me try to answer.

1. we have a PS5, Xbox Series X and Switch. he likes moding (in fact has added so many to Fallout 4 it wont' boot without crashing) so it seems like a PC is what he would need.
2. we have keyboard, monitor, etc.
3. as mentioned a Steam Deck would be great in many ways but won't make Christmas.
4. preferences for brand - none. I wouldn't mind if the parts were upgradable (like I plan to put the SSD from the current PC in it)

Thanks for all the information.

farley3k wrote:

Many questions - let me try to answer.

1. we have a PS5, Xbox Series X and Switch. he likes moding (in fact has added so many to Fallout 4 it wont' boot without crashing) so it seems like a PC is what he would need.
2. we have keyboard, monitor, etc.
3. as mentioned a Steam Deck would be great in many ways but won't make Christmas.
4. preferences for brand - none. I wouldn't mind if the parts were upgradable (like I plan to put the SSD from the current PC in it)

Thanks for all the information.

I know you said you didn't want to build it, but maybe someone else here would? This is an extremely generous community and I know most have parts laying around. Maybe we can cobble something together for you and you could pay the shipping to get it sent to you? I'm all about helping a young person experience the joys of pc gaming and I'd be willing to pay it forward. Thoughts?

Fallout 4 is moddable on Xbox. Not to the same extent as PC, but definitely to a great extent.

iBuyPower makes some decent rigs for $500. It really is gonna come down to who is having the best sale at any given moment. There's no magical "get this cpu and gpu combination" that exists. Definitely don't buy anything with less than 8 gb of ram.

Most lot of stuff with come with an SSD nowadays, so you probably won't have to do anything related to that.

Edit: Intel's i5-11400F is a great chip, one which I'm actually using and this currently $600 machine has it. GPU is weaksauce though.

tundra wrote:

I know you said you didn't want to build it, but maybe someone else here would? This is an extremely generous community and I know most have parts laying around.

I could build one. I have for many years but I just was hoping for something simple. I am feeling a bit lazy.

This page lists several for under $600 which is pushing how much I want to spend for a hobby he may drop. Any of them worth the price?

Aside from being ugly this one on Amazon seems decent

*old man grumping*

One thing I find annoying is the fact that i7 isn't always better than i5. It seems to depend on other things (generation, clock speed) Back in my day I knew a 486 was better than a 386. I knew a Pentium 2 was better than a Pentium 1.

Now it seems like they don't want to have versions that make it easy to compare.

I don't know nuthin about IPASON.

That renewed Lenovo is pretty sweet looking compared to the other sub-$600 selections. Only a 90 day warranty though.

Would you be better off with a modern integrated GPU than a 730? I don't know much about the 730, but it seems appalling, based on benchmarks.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

Would you be better off with a modern integrated GPU than a 730? I don't know much about the 730, but it seems appalling, based on benchmarks.

You're right, that card can't push 1080p. It struggles with 720p.

I assumed it wasn't that bad, but it's bad. It's not meant for gaming, it's meant for multimedia.

Alrighty, looking around at some available builds and whatnot, I'm seeing the GTX 750, GTX 1030 and Radeon 550 as the most common bottom end GPUs in this price range. Both of them vastly outperform integrated graphics. He'll be running current games at 1080p on low settings, mostly, but they will run decently then.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Z7FG56B

There's some used ones with nice price tags. CPU is solid (it's a budget gamer's cpu, rock solid), GPU will need to be replaced in a couple years when prices aren't insane.

Edit: https://store.acer.com/en-us/sale/de...

Couple of good prices on new towers here. You'll need to find a GPU and put it in, but solid prices for solid builds.