Back To School Gaming Hardware Buying Guide - 2024 Edition | MMORPG.com

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Back To School Gaming Hardware Buying Guide - 2024 Edition | MMORPG.com

Settling on the perfect gear for back-to-school season can be a bit tough, especially if you're looking beyond school and trying to buy for the gamer in your life. We've got a laundry list of options you can choose from to hone in on the right piece of kit for the gamer in your life.

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Terazon

Love these kinds of article lists.
I don't agree with the results of some of them but that is part of the fun.
(Example: I really think Steelseries keyboards are under-rated)

lotrlore

Terazon said:

Love these kinds of article lists.
I don't agree with the results of some of them but that is part of the fun.
(Example: I really think Steelseries keyboards are under-rated)

So when I started building this list, I hadn't personally used a Steelseries keyboard myself, so was basing part of this recommendation off things I had personal experience with.

Now I have, and the beauty of these lists is they can be updated and morph over time. So rest assured, we will likely include one in an upcoming update!

Aeander

I'll be upgrading my 9 year old PC later this year. I've been out of the loop for a long time. What would be the budget-performance standard nowadays, like the i5 1050ti combo was back then?

lotrlore

Aeander said:

I'll be upgrading my 9 year old PC later this year. I've been out of the loop for a long time. What would be the budget-performance standard nowadays, like the i5 1050ti combo was back then?

It's a little harder to recommend something like this since so many games nowadays are GPU dependant.

A good combo would be a Ryzen 5 7600, or the Ryzen 7 variant of the same line, with either a lower-priced 40-series card from Nvidia (like a 4060 Super or 4070 Ti Super) or a last generation 6000 series from AMD, since it can take advantage of AMD's FSR 3 frame gen. 

Really just depends on what you're trying to do. But since much of this will likely require a full system rebuild to support, any of the PCs I listed in this guide will fit the bill (I really recommend the Navigator as a good price to performance bundle, especially with the warranty to boot). 

Aeander

lotrlore said:

Aeander said:

I'll be upgrading my 9 year old PC later this year. I've been out of the loop for a long time. What would be the budget-performance standard nowadays, like the i5 1050ti combo was back then?

It's a little harder to recommend something like this since so many games nowadays are GPU dependant.

A good combo would be a Ryzen 5 7600, or the Ryzen 7 variant of the same line, with either a lower-priced 40-series card from Nvidia (like a 4060 Super or 4070 Ti Super) or a last generation 6000 series from AMD, since it can take advantage of AMD's FSR 3 frame gen. 

Really just depends on what you're trying to do. But since much of this will likely require a full system rebuild to support, any of the PCs I listed in this guide will fit the bill (I really recommend the Navigator as a good price to performance bundle, especially with the warranty to boot). 

I'll keep that in mind when I actually look into it around Black Friday/Cyber Monday or New Year's. That's the kind of mid range benchmark I'm looking for.

I'm thinking air cooled rather than liquid cooled though. Hoping it'll last longer.

Tiller

Best mouse: Lamzu MAYA 8k /Doodle/X/Fanatic versions
Best small mouse: Lamzu Atlantis Mini Champion edition. 8k
Best 80% KB: Wooting 80HE

Vrika

Aeander said:

I'll be upgrading my 9 year old PC later this year. I've been out of the loop for a long time. What would be the budget-performance standard nowadays, like the i5 1050ti combo was back then?

There isn't any really good combo at the moment.

For CPUs, best alternatives are probably I5 and Ryzen 5 CPUs: I5-14400F, I5-14600KF, Ryzen 5 7600, Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 5 9600X. Depending on what's on sale.

More expensive CPUs than that tend to add more cores than games can take advantage of rather than more speed, so they aren't really worth it. If you want to get cheaper than that, then I3-14100F, Ryzen 5 5600 and Ryzen 5 5600X run games well enough and offer fantastic price/performance.

GPU prices tend to be roughly directly proportional to their speed. For good gaming experience I'd recommend getting at least RTX 4060 at around $300, and it'll be fast enough to give you good gaming experience on 1920x1080 resolution and 60 FPS. If you're ready to pay more, it would give you ability to run games on higher resolution, higher FPS, and maybe turn on some extra special effects that give you slightly better looking graphics. Paying more than $300 is not a bad of use of money if you can afford it, but it's not necessary.

RAM is cheap, I recommend looking for 32 GB RAM.

Hard disk space is also cheap. There are plenty of 2 TB NVMe M.2 SSDs that promise 5 000 - 7 000 MB/s reading and writing speeds at less than $200, and 1 TB versions of those at around $100. I wouldn't go for anything slower than that because the slower hard disks aren't really cheaper.

Scot

Straight to other favourites for some purchases coming up.

GameByNight

Tiller said:

Best mouse: Lamzu MAYA 8k /Doodle/X/Fanatic versions

Best small mouse: Lamzu Atlantis Mini Champion edition. 8k

Best 80% KB: Wooting 80HE

Tiller knows his stuff.