Is it me or building a nifty PC for gaming is very expensive than console gaming?

I can never afford a GTX 1080, 16 gb ram, a i7 CPU, a 4K monitor to be very Honest. Plus mobo, matching Cabinet, Keyboard, Mouse, Powerful power supply ETC.

Is it me or building a nifty PC for gaming is very expensive than console gaming?

Answer me please :)

Of course its expensive, PC can do so many things that consoles could only dream of.

Building a PC, especially from scratch (keyboard, monitor), will cost you quite a bit of money, yes. No way around it, unless you go with those builds people post here to make a point. But those tend to burn your house down.

Contrary to popular belief a gaming PC isn't strictly restricted to gaming. It can double-down as a workstation, a home theater and a lot of other things unlike a console.

Building a PC that can run games as good as a console isn't that expensive. With it you get among other things a tool you can use for work and a huge library of 40 years of backwards compatibility.

The difference in price can be made up in a few months due to cheaper games on the PC compared to consoles. Not to mention that the PC has some extremely successful free to play games that can easily take up hundreds of hours of your time if they are your cup of tea.

A GTX 1080, 16 gb ram, a i7 CPU, a 4K monitor plus matching Cabinet, Keyboard, Mouse, Powerful power supply etc are indeed very expensive but what you pay for there is a superior visual experience. A high end PC that targets 60 fps on 1080p is much cheaper and mid-range PC that targets console performance is really affordable.

It really depends on how much your willingly to spend on building PC components. For me personally, when it's time for me to build a new PC, I tend to spend $1,200 and I usually get a loan at my Bank which is pretty easy and simple to pay back the loan nowadays so spending isn't an issue for me. When someone ask me how much they should spend, I always recommended them to spend $700 and even a $700 PC will still be reliable and beating current-gen consoles for that matter. I know a lot of PC gamers love to brag about there over spend PC but However, if you’re looking to get a really high-end system that is capable of giving you a really high-end experience, you could easily achieve that with $700 of quality computer components in my opinion.

Yes building a PC is no doubt expensive but it's always been a high risk rewards.

A 4k monitor? Do you have a 4k TV for your console, do you include that in your price for a console? You can easily game on a TV with a PC should you choose to.

If you buy 3 consoles (and even then you don't get close to the library of a PC), pay for online for them for a gen, buy a TV (as you want to scratch buy a PC lets do the same), spare controllers, a cabinet to house the consoles and put the TV on, buy the much more expensive but less extensive library to play, how much does that cost vs a top line PC?

I just spent about $800 on one that plays everything on high-max at 1080p and 60fps. Should also play some games great at 1440p or higher, but I don't have a monitor for it.

With the amount of games, great performance, and additional features, it's worth it. It's about the cost of a console + online fees for the generation, but has so much more gaming value.

400$ (console)+300$ online (3 years)+500$ (15 games)=1450$

PC (1000$)+450$ (15 games)= 1450$

Except your PC will be far more powerful, useful and play games much better. Also, you could comfortably buy over 30 games at an average price point of 15$. PC wins again.

@indzman: build a Nintendo- PlayStation hybrid it's worth the effort. Lol & PC gaming.

@beardmad: What kind of Monitor your looking for and how much your looking to spend?

No shit? Going for the best of the best costs money... Same with anything. What a fucking stupid thread.

No way around it, PC's are expensive. Especially if your assembling everything from scratch.

I personally hate seeing "builds for $500" or "same price as console builds". And they often don't a keyboard, mouse (and mouse pad), or a monitor. Like if I'm suppose to game with my imagination. Or even an informative suggestion to use a HDTV, if the setup can work for you.

Sometimes they don't even have a copy of Windows for no reason. As if its standard to be bundled for free with a CPU or whatever. Or say colleges give them for free. Well, my college didn't and not everyone is a college student who has access to free copies. To shave off $100 dollars from their build.

Who exactly said a gaming PC is restricted to gaming ? There's also plenty of information out there for those who take even a brief look into PC's, of what kind of parts will best suit their needs in a computer.

And consoles have long not been one trick ponies. Implying otherwise is silly. You'll have to go back to the 90's to find a console that just played games. As since the introduction of the PS2, multimedia applications has greatly expanded on console. Along with handhelds like the PSP, which was ahead of its time.

Are you on welfare or something? A 1080 instead of a Quadro m6000? Get at least one of those. Maybe even an nVidia Tesla - just in case. And only 1 CPU? You want at least a dual socketed board, with some Intel Xeon E5-2697s.

You are deliberately misleading people into thinking a gaming PC costs less than $10,000.

It honestly just depends.

If you want your PC to be strong and supercharged like a PS4 then you'll need to look at the average price of new cars and multiply that by two.

If you just want an Xbone level PC then you can go buy a $300 Dell at Best Buy.

I actually might drop the money on an LG UM95C. It's a 34 inch ultrawide monitor with a 3440x1440 resolution. They run about $600 I think.

PC gaming gets really expensive whenyou falling into high tech traps.

For example 4K , VR , high end cards , high end CPUs , fancy towers ,fancy monitors ...

A normal typical gamer that dont give a shit about trends and gaming on 1080p .. can make a really great PC that will last at least 4-5 years and in the long run will end up being way cheaper than a console of PS4/X1 caliber.

Only the fact that you spending up to 60$ for each year for online services , here is your great mid to high end GPU. Then you saving from each game ALOT ... which in the long run of an entire generation .. here is your great CPU/RAM/MB ... Its that simple really.

Are you sure High End PC =1000$ ? GPU alone costs 600 +$ :(

What specs and For how much?

Expensive early on. Cheaper later down the road.

This is always my favorite, those budget builds that are missing some of the most essential pieces in order to artificially drive down the cost. Windows isn't free motherf*****....

PC gaming isn't cheap no matter how you look at it.

except the console price is more like $300 console+ $120 (3 years online) +$500 (15 games +36 free games thru Gold) =$920.

Plus all console AAA games always go on sale too you just have to wait them out. Unless its a game I'm hyped for I just wait for them to go on sale. I bought Witcher 3, Arkham Knight, Far Cry Primal and a bunch of other games all for $25 and under. BF4 and Hardline were $4 each. Right now Forza is $29.99, Battlefront is $20, Gears Ultimate is $20, Ark is $20. I only buy digitally.

I get pc can do more things but I have a work issued pc from my job. I dont use my gaming rig for anything else but gaming.

I think it mostly depends on the type of games you want to play. The major benefit of PCs for me is RTS games, DoTA2/LoL and high end MMOs. If you arent those type of games I dont personally see the benefit for the average gamer thats not a high end graphics fiend.

Performance, not everyone wants to watch a slideshow

If you've got a target of 30 fps, you really shouldn't be F#@king dropping below. Ever. Especially not when you know the specs of the system to begin with.

It depends what you want. A lot of millennials here have jobs and can afford a nice gaming rig. Doesn't have to be the best one, however, to be substantially better than consoles.

Who said you needed a 1080? A 1070 is $420 and is still plenty "high-end".

Someone daring to suggest that a PC is more expensive than a console? Burn him.

Watch out for the PC fanboys.

Except as someone already pointed out. you could easily get a new console for 250 to 300. And live would be 180 for 3 years. Which for the Xbone means 48 free games a year or so. So technically you wouldnt even have to buy games, since you'd have 3 or 4 a month thanks to GWG.

I will give you the 500 dollars for 15 games. Thats an acceptable average of what 15 would cost.

Don't see why you would NEED a GTX1080 or a 4K resultion monitor to enjoy PC gaming.

When I add up all the costs: Expensive games, Expensive peripherals, Pay to play online, ... Console gaming has always been way more expensive for me than PC gaming.

Of course you could always build a 10.000 dollar PC and call it expensive. I just never seen the use of that. My budget has always been >1000

Technically because you know... people like to choose the games they play.

Show me one person that only plays free Xbox Live Gold and PSN+ games and never buys or plays a single game that is not offered for 'free' on the service...

Yeah 'technically'

Sadly i cant answer that since my PC is 4 years old , still gaming great at 1080p , soon ill upgrade though and i havent checked prices.

Waiting for new age of GPU that supposedly coming in 2017.

But assuming ive watched great results from mid range GPUs at 1080p , i really think a PC of 700-800$ will be great for 1080p gaming . Now if you really need a new monitor , tower or a better PSU etc , might get a bit more expensive.

Still though , in the long run ... it gets cheaper than a 400-500$ console and its year to year online subscription let alone way pricier games in total. In the worst case scenario to be even but the with PC you can play and do so many more things

Obviously if you can't play a PC with every game maxed out at 100+ FPS at 4K (or 8K) then you're better off buying a $300-$400 console to play games at sub-1080p, and 30fps while paying for online.

There's no in between. You either settle with the absolute best, or worst.

Well i didnt say its common. But technically yes. Xbox has had good to great months every month for around 2 years now. So its pretty worth it. You could buy the console, buy live, and then never buy a game all year if you couldnt afford them. That doesnt negate the wrong prices he had

Seems we have some people with personal issues here, inflating prices of consoles and their online services. And acting like consoles games don't get big sales (outside of Nintendo). Instead of finding other means to justify a PC purchase in a fair and legitimate way. By not trying to mislead uninformed individuals.

The most I've spend on a console game this gen is $40. And that was for a new Day One edition of MGSV with the DLC code intact, and NBA 2k16. My next expensive purchase is Destiny and its first three expansions at around $30 dollars. Everything else I have, was purchased below $20, including taxes and shipping costs for physical copies (PSN is tax free for me).

If you're not into maxing the graphics of every game imaginable then decent gaming rig is relatively inexpensive.

yeah because it takes a $1500 pc with a 1080 to surpass consoles. You can build one with i5/rx480 or gtx 1060 for $700-800 and it will still be a substantial upgrade over consoles

Hell even an entry level i3 paired with a last gen mid range gpu such as r9380 will be a significant improvement over consoles and that rig will cost $500-600

Let alone a pc will let you spew nonsense on SW and do a million other things

Again, depending on how many games you buy, a good quality high end PC can be cheaper than a PS4 or XB1. And depending on whether you like to buy games new. No royalties, no pay per month.

If you are patient and willing to wait a couple months extra before buying your favorite games, console gaming may be cheaper. And if you don't buy many games at all, it can be cheaper. For me it definitely isn't.

Cost are about the same. You can spend just as much on console as on PC. It all depends on what you want to do

It's you

The prices I had were pretty damn accurate. I was even generous by averaging the price of a new console game at 50$ considering a new console game is 59$+tx which is closer to 65$. Also, by researching properly you could likely shave off a good 100 to 150$ on the 1,000$ build I mentioned.

Also you don't own these games on Xbox Live nor PSN. You're forced to keep paying the subscription if you wanna keep playing them. They don't count. They are a nice perk but I'd rather buy AC2 at 5-10$ once rather than renting it through Games with Gold.

Most people dont buy games at full price. You have to be either foolish, or really hyped for a game to do that. Thats a fact.

And funny you mention AC2, because you actually can keep your 360 games even if you cancel live. And the Xbox One games will always be there if you renew. So you technically own the 360 games 100%. And the One games will always be on your live account.

So that adds up to 24 games you still fully own and can play no matter what.

This is a rather big issue on here from what i can tell. Its as if PC gamers dont actually have any idea how much things cost. You can easily go spend 300 bucks on the Xbox One S 500 gb model and have the optimal console experience at the current moment. And the games are almost always cheaper than the day one price if you can wait a week to play something. And if you cant, it must be worth the extra money to you.

And of course they always try to bring down the price for a year of online. As if 5 dollars a month is insane for the amount of content you receive.

Not even counting the sales on consoles, which are usually pretty decent. I think we had witcher 3 with all dlc recently for like 40 bucks. Thats one of the best deals ive ever heard of, considering the DLC itself is 30 dollars.

The initial cost of PC is and will always be higher. I've never bought very high end systems in my 25 years of gaming. I always opted for mid ranged because new tech always comes up within 2-3 year cycle. What you (OP) are looking at is extremely high end specs which you don't need unless you are into making videos or something that needs lot of power.

There's budget pcs, mid ranged and very high end. You're only comparing PC gaming inputs with very high end systems.

Do any console games even run at 4k?

No.

So are you actually extracting anything out of this thread or nah?

@drrollinstein: Its definitely very misleading and uninformative. More so sad since its a blatant lie. An Xbox One goes as low as $245 new on Amazon with a game. And I paid $300 for my PS4 with the Uncharted collection last December. Managed to also get it tax free too. But was surprisingly stuck with paying the 6 dollar shipping fee on Newegg.

And its not like PC gamers don't pay $60 dollars for games either. Its grown to the standard PC game price since MW2. PC gamers aren't the only ones aware of sales and discount trends. Or sites like cheapassgamer. All of which makes it easily to avoid paying at or near full price for those who wait. And play other games in the meantime.

who says you need a 1080 and a 4k monitor and an i7? Those things are luxuries

an rx 480 coupled with an i5/i3 will run all games at 1080p way better than any console ever could

Building a high-end rig is expensive same with any other thing in life. The latest and greatest is always a considerably expensive investment but you don't have to build a high-end PC. A mid range PC is just as good without the fancy ultra HD textures and bragging rights.

I bought a laptop rather than a PC and that was with 900$ so yes it is expensive

From scratch it can be a little expensive if you're only using it for gaming. But when you go on to your second build, you don't need to replace things like your keyboard, monitor, the case, and some of the internals (e.g if your CPU is still good enough, or the power supply - usually it's just the graphics card that needs replacing). Also, jsut generally you save money on software too, since PC games are cheaper (e.g Steam sales, Overwatch price tag, etc.).

Sorry buy if you can afford an expensive gaming machine, and can afford an expensive online subscription for that gaming machine, but cannot afford any games. You are not able to spend your money with any thought or reason.