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

...Yeah because that PC your building is worth 5 consoles....

It's possible to build a console equivalent for about $500 (not including display, but consoles don't come with displays either). You can even go small form factor and put it right in your living room entertainment system. Here, I have come up with a few builds.

Both have an Intel i3-6100, a GTX 950, On-board wifi, 8GB of memory (upgradable to 16 with another stick), and a 640GB HDD. They are both small form factor and should take up a space slightly larger than an Xbox One.

This one I like the case more, it does not include a drive bay (because I think they are mostly obsolete): http://pcpartpicker.com/list/6LnW4C

This one has a blu-ray drive because I know some people have movie collections and stuff like that: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/TmhRvV

In either case I would recommend going to an SSD (or adding one), however I did not include one since consoles don't come with them anyway (and I wanted to keep costs down while including at least 500GB of storage). And you can always go with a beefier video card (up to a small 1060 GTX would fit in these cases and should also be within the power limits of the included PSU's).

I believe that both of these PCs would perform similarly to a PS4 (and far surpass it if you want to spend a little more on the video card).

And yes you can even hook up many PS3/4 controllers wirelessly via blue tooth if you buy a cheap adapter.

While saving up for that GTX 1080 and i7 processor will take a long ass time, when it's so necessary for that gaming PC, it'll be worth the effort so you can enjoy even moderate games at... wait wait wait, WHAT????

Just where is it written that these components are the only ones that will run games at playable levels? Oh that's right, IT'S NOT a requisite. Any ol' i5 even from earlier generations will do you just fine. So will an AMD FX CPU (preferably 8000 series) or even an i3 for some modest performance.

Can't afford a GTX 1080? Don't need one. the GTX 1070's and 1060's are more than adequate. Hell you can go even further back to the 900 or even some 700 series. Same with AMD cards of the RX, and R9 300/200 series. Plenty of affordable cards that can deliver beastly 1080p performance.

Which brings me to my next point; resolution. Sure it would be great to play at 4k, provided you can still get decent frame rate, but that by no means is the required standard for PC gaming. Getting 1080p on console (for those games that are capable) is not equal to 1080p on PC - on the latter you still have better graphical fidelity by means of texture resolution, lighting, shadows, detail level, screen space reflections, foliage count, water detail, anti-aliasing, physics... all manner of assets displayed with a fidelity you don't get on consoles. Plus getting that true 1080 (not upscaled) that's not limited to 30 fps. So you can game with great visuals and 60 fps and even higher.

None of which requires a GTX 1080 / i7 combo, if you game at 1080. Hell even gaming at 1440 doesn't require the highest end processors, though not as cheap of course. And you actually think 16 GB of RAM is expensive?? Really???

Any modest $500-600 build may not "max out" all games, but will still easily outperform the consoles considering they have settings equivalent of Med to Low, and still limited in most cases to 30 fps. But of you can splurge for a little more for that extra ooomph in settings and performance, the sky is the limit. A $800-1000 build is worth it, or even go all in with $1500-2000 so long as it doesn't break your bank. Oh and didn't even get into the savings on games, and not just through Steam. $60 and up is for suckers only.

Bottom line is that PC gaming is only as expensive as you want/are willing it to be. Not that anything in your post can even be taken seriously... FFS. Can you at least do us all the courtesy and admit that you're just trolling with this, since it's evident you haven't fooled anyone?

@Cobra_nVidia: Thats an issue with the coding of that game though more than the machine. The game is terrible overall. It runs like shit on PC too.

I primarily PC gamed for most of my life and have slowly switched to primarily consoles because PC gaming has been pretty much in decline in the last few years to me. Yeah theres a few gems like Total Warhammer and Deserts of Kharak, but theres TONS and TONS of shovelware and a lot of games just have technical issues on PC. I dont like troubleshooting issues with games. I'm not an IT guy, I dont enjoy it. My time is valuable and I dont like troubleshooting bugs in PC games, dont have the time or patience. Old example, but back when ArcheAge came out I couldnt even get the game to launch on my PC due to that stupid hackshield program in their crappy Glyph launcher blocking it. Spent a week trying and gave up. Thats what finally pushed me over the edge to favor consoles.

There used to be PC games that I would gladly build a new rig to play. There hasnt been one that made me want to build a new rig in 5 years. I've been saving $50/month for a rig since 2012 and there just hasnt been a game that made me pull the trigger. Waiting on Star Citizen, if it delivers I'll probably have $5k to spend on a rig for it by then. I can still play Company of Heroes, Heroes of the Storm,Dawn of War, Starcraft, DoTA2, etc. on my old rig.

Like I said, for me PC gaming is for people that like RTS, MOBAs and MMOs, all genres kinda stagnating at the moment. The rest I can play on console. Might not be as shiny but meh I grew up in the 70s playing Atari 2600 and Intellivision, its not a deal breaker for me.

PC gaming is very expensive in my country. I've a low end PC tho for work and old games ( 750 ti, 8 gb ram, i3 ). I seriously can never afford GTX 1080 or a i7 on its current price. I even 've to buy new mobo, power supply, more ram, 4 k monitor if i want to play PC games on its all glory. I see many PC gamers build High End rigs for ultimate experience. Consoles are way cheaper as i feel, hence my question :(

What part of "you DON'T NEED a GTX 1080 and i7 for a gaming capable PC" do you not understand?

No, it's not. It's an issue with games being released on fixed hardware that can't even run the game at locked 30 fps. You can find other (mostly less severe) examples of this issue easily - either by checking digitalfoundry's videos by owning a console yourself.

And Lichdom Battlemage ran at 720@60 fps on my old 650Ti, and runs at 1080@60 fps on my 970. At least the parts I've seen because it is a bad game.

@Juub1990: Unlike the PC market, console game prices are also influenced by the used gaming market. Not just its digital stores and brick and motor sales. Even the rental market (Gamefly, Redbox, etc) has some influence too, as it drops demand for game purchases. And sells excess stock at a discount. All of these factors create an excessive supply of console game availability. Holiday sales are also a great time to purchase console games no differently than PC. Where games that are just a few weeks old, can drop below $40. Along with other great deals. And last December, Bloodborne was a mere $20 for a brand new copy. Which wasn't a year old at that point. There's also no current gen game that is 3 years old. The closest ones to that age, are launch titles that became dirt cheap a long time ago.

Also good that someone went ahead and posted the eBay link that I already checked for F4. So yes, you can see there are nice copies of F4 for under $30. With an X1 version going for $23 including shipping (very good condition too). And that price will only get lower, as F4 inches closer to a year old with holiday sales upcoming. So it won't take 2-3 years let alone 5 years, for that price to drop further. But just a few weeks after its 1 year release at the latest.

And to answer your other question, I tend to get games that are between a year and just below 2 years old for the below $20 price point. Some off PSN, some off retail outlets, and I also started using eBay recently. Where I got SW Battlefront (less than a year old) for $12 including shipping a month ago. You may think how can you wait a year ???? Truth is, the gaming industry has grown so much. Along with other interests I have. That it really isn't a problem, as I have other games to play till I get the price I want.

Definitely not an issue with the game. I get like 120 fps easily at 1080p.

A person with 3 PC gaming buddies can game effortlessly at 1/4 of any games price OFFLINE and safe and dandy!!!

I call that a reality check!

Isn't GTX 1080 and i7 needed to max out games nowadays?

It's expensive up front but you will save money on all the good game discount deals.

It's very disingenuous of PC gamers to talk about about how cheap PC gaming is compared to console gaming. If you were to build a PC today, you would have trouble playing games on it 4 years from now. Because the flagship, $500 GTX 680 from 2012 isn't doing too hot these days.

Many of todays games are running sub 30 fps on it at max settings. Sure you could turn stuff down, but then what's the real advantage? It runs The Witcher 3 at 26fps, Far Cry 4 at 22fps, Assassins Creed Syndicate at 20fps and GTA V at 13 on average. How can you justify a card that costs as much as a console? The GTX 680 was the flagship card of 2012 and the consoles launched in 2013...

The advantage of PC gaming is choice and customization. You can move at your own pace. But driver support and software development determine how fast you NEED to upgrade hardware. Really the price advantage belongs to the consoles, not the other way around.

Not really

Comparing GTX 1080 to console level hardware is flawed.

He's mocking your intelligence.

That's completely untrue and you know it.

A card from 2012 cannot max out the latest most demanding games? That's simply because you need a card from 2016 for that. I was playing TW3 at 30+fps with a mix of High/Medium(mostly High) with Hairworks off at 1080p on a 7850. That's a mid-range card from 2012.

You're a complete fool if you just crank up the settings of the latest games to the max and hope your 680 will be able to run them. Often times these games at max settings have graphical features that did not even exist in 2012(Hairworks for example) so of course your pre-Hairworks card won't run Hairworks all that well.

Your post is even more wrong when you take into account the fact one or two settings is enough to completely cripple performance on older cards. For example in TW3, disabling Hairworks and cranking down Foliage Visiblity Range to Medium/High can yield performance improvements of over 30%. That's a huge frame-rate increase for a bit of graphical quality. In AC Syndicate dropping Shadow Quality from PCSS to High will yield improvements of 10fps+.

You're being really dishonest here. Nobody buys a flagship card from 2012 expecting to max games in 2016. They buy cards in 2012 hoping to max the current games and to be able to play games at acceptable/good settings for years to come which is exactly what the 680 is doing. The huge draw back is the 2GB of RAM. Otherwise it is still a very capable card even to this day and can still play most games today at high settings, 30fps+ and 1080p. A GTX 680 still shits on the PS4 and Xbox One and always will.

If you're buying a top-of-the-line anything in electronics, you aren't doing it for longevity. I doubt anyone would buy a 680 hoping to last years, let alone at max settings. They have to stop themselves buying a new card the next year.

That's part of why I got a 970. It was never the top so I'll just wait until I need a resolution bump.

7970 aged better than 680...

@ronvalencia: SPEAK NOT OF THE RED DEVIL TO ME!!!

@Cobra_nVidia said:

@ronvalencia: SPEAK NOT OF THE RED DEVIL TO ME!!!

My point was against your "If you're buying a top-of-the-line anything in electronics, you aren't doing it for longevity" argument.

PS; GameGPU benchmarks has disabled async compute via AA settings change..

It depends on weekly/monthly rental cost vs mortgage repayment amount and location.

MS only confirms "xbox anywhere" from E3 2016 game list.

Xbox original to Xbox 360 = 4 years

XBO to Scorpio ~= 4 years

PS4 to NEO ~= 3 years???

What a stupid thread. This topic has been beaten to death, and is pretty obvious.

Just buying my high end gaming rig this weekend hopefully ordering tonight which is costing £1453 around $2900 but we in UK always have to pay more for things any way. Cant wait its a vr ready system with upgraded parts what I chose.

/pc master race

I got 8 years out of my PS3 and around the same from my PS2 and still use both even now, are you still using there 8-10 year old PC I highly doubt it.

Yeah it's expensive, but well worth it to play Thousands of Games at your disposal while Gaming on Console only restricts you.

It's possible but why would a PC gamer want that? After 8 to 10 years games on consoles tend to look awful. GTA V was a blurfest with a horrible, choppy frame rate. It looks and plays awful on the PS3.

Yes, it's expensive. You pay for more power. Those that can afford it will benefit from the PC features of higher resolutions, faster frame rates, and higher resolution textures (and more) where games allow.

You avi LMFAO lol

Smh at PC builds without including the cost of an OS.

Yay PS3. All hail the "the human eye can't see above 20 fps" master race. 8 years of overrated exclusives and massive eye strain must have been fun.

I got a year or two out of my PS3 until I realized that the XBOX 360 was a better system with exclusives I enjoyed a lot more.

Also, I have no need to still use an 8-10 year old PC, since Microsoft doesn't (yet) charge us a monthly fee to play our old games. I don't know to many people using a 10 year old PC for anything, frankly. And those PCs are a lot more versatile, and ran games at 60 fps.

If you want value, get a Wii U. Great games that perform very well, and the droughts in releases are there to remind you to go outside.

its only expensive for the ignorant who have no clue how pc gaming works. You can buy a used 1-2 year old gaming pc on craigslist for less than $500 and it would play every modern game at high settings. Of course if you know nothing about pc hardware or you want everything brand new and all the latest hardware, then PC gaming can get very expensive. Its just like buying a car: You can buy a 2 year old mazda 3 for $10k with very nice options OR you can go out and spend $40k on a brand new fully decked out 2017 mazda 3...the choice is yours.

My second PC for example has a core i5 4590k, 8gb of ram, integrated intel graphics, 1 tb hdd. I bought this from craigslist for about $135 USD. This is an HP desktop and in an ITX form factor. If I wanted to do some serious gaming, I could add a low profile video card like the geforce 750 ti or a radeon rx 460 for an extra $100. Total price = $245 and I will be playing most games at 1080P at medium to high settings. So yeah, if you know what you're doing, pc gaming can end up being very cheap. Tell me, how much does it cost for a gaming console plus 4 controllers, an online subscription, extra accessories, and paying $70 for games?? PC gaming is much cheaper than console gaming.

Honestly it all depends on how you look at it. I generally value systems at 1 dollar = 1 hour of use, the same metric I sometimes use for games. Lets say the base PC is $600, the monitor is $200, the mouse and keyboard together are $100, and the OS is another $100. I'm not counting NewEgg sales which are a great way to cut the price if you have patience to grab parts to slowly build a PC. So it is $1000 when all is said and done, which is a lot of money up front.

A console (PS4 to make the example easy) is $350 and the TV to hook it up costs $200. That is $550.

Console should win by default right? That is where the value proposition I mentioned above changes things. I use my PC for about 3-4+ hours a day, regardless of what is going on. Whether it be the internet, work, or gaming, the hardware I paid for is getting used. The 1000 hours I would need to see a break even on the costs come much quicker then they would for a console because I'm using it for pretty much everything, also as an entertainment system when I feel like it.

A console can play games and act as a multimedia box if necessary. The value there gets murkier and can be justified if you stream from that box. If you use solely the TV for cable, then the console itself isn't getting used, and there is no value for it. In both cases the value would take a lot longer to catch up to a PC, for me at least.

Building a solid PC is expensive, only rich guys can afford a Solid gaming PC. PS 4 is for everyone, but yeah PS 4 games are expensive. Play selected games.

No.. Who gave you that idea?

I have an i5 3570K and a GTX 680 and I get an average fps of 60-70 on Battlefield 1 on ultra settings. This hardware came out 4 years ago..

Not really a problem when they can be bought for less than 30 dollars

WOW, really Harry? I thought GTX 1080 was needed to max out or play latest games in Ultra settings lol. Thanks for the info :)

Still the GTX 680 can play games at 60 fps even if all setting aren't turned to the max. You probably wouldn't notice a huge difference.

Pc gamers who claim that gaming pc and it's peripherals are cheap are probably just newbies and those who are clueless about pc gaming.

Hahaha, omg.. are you making these numbers up? I have a 680 and it's not even close to what you're saying.. Stop spreading misinformation. >__>

GTA V all max settings except grass is on high. Average fps is 50-60, rarely drops to 45.

Witcher 3 foliage draw distance at medium, everything else on max, Nvidia Hairworks on, average fps is 45-55.

Battlefield 1 all max settings, average fps is 60-70.

Arkham Knight all max settings. Nvidia Gameworks all on except the smoke. Average fps is 50-60.

No, I just reported the performance that was given in the link I provided...

And as a former GTX 690 owner, I can safely say you are full of it. I played GTA V with the 690 at 1080p and had to turn more than grass down to get 60fps.

The Witcher 3 with hairworks off and a 5960X doesn't get the performance you described...

He's either lying or he needs to update fraps.

It depends on the timing and what stores/deals you have nearby.

I did a build for someone in the Fall of 2013 (it was right around the time the xboxone/ps4 came out) and for $250 more than the price of the consoles ($650 vs $400) I was able to get him a Full PC tower with windows included that had twice the GPU power and over three times the CPU power (FX 8320 and aftermarket voltage unlocked 7970gz).

Microcenter near my house had a pre-built Asus on display last week for $400 and it had a 6th gen intel i5 (i5 is almost identical to the i7) with a GTX 760 (4x the CPU power of the consoles and almost twice the GPU power and it was only $400 no building required).

If you know where to shop it doesn't have to be that expensive for a very nice computer

Upfront cost are more, but I like cheap Steam and Humble Bundle sales. A 1070 is $300 less than 1080 and can max/ultra 1080p gaming. That's why I use currently and i love it.