Games: Dozer > Core at any price point?

[FoxEye]

My nephew wants to build a cheap gaming PC. I haven't dug into the benchmarks for recent AMD processors, but I gather the picture hasn't changed since Dozer was first released. Intel on top at all price points, right?

Athlon X4 860 beaten by Pentium G, 3-module FX6300 beaten by dual core i3 (pretty shocking that one, the i3 doesn't even have HT), etc.

Is there any price point where the AMD even comes close?

He wants to play Minecraft and CoD (when he's a bit older!)

 

[FoxEye]

I would say as above market place. What is your budget?

His budget is £500, but he wants to build it himself. He's only 12!

I've been trying to put him off, tbh. He's a bit young to be building a PC.

 

[FoxEye]

Never too young if you ask me ... let him. Uild it and you watch

Me and ny son built his gaming pc and hes only 6 now think he was 5 at the time.

Never too young to steer him away from the console rubbish.

It's not console vs PC, it's pre-built vs letting him build one by himself. His mum asked me if I thought he could do it, so I asked him some basic questions to see if he could.

And it's not his age exactly, it's the fact that he doesn't know enough to do it. But he's very headstrong and thinks all he has to do is buy a CPU and some memory and plug it together!

I built my first PC at 16, with no help from anyone, because nobody in my family knew about computers. And I'd been learning about PCs since age 12.

Without a lot of help he isn't going to be able to do it, so I'm really not sure what the point is. Building something with your dad/uncle is not exactly doing it yourself. And he wants to do it by himself, alone.

 

[FoxEye]

Because he didn't even know that an AMD processor wouldn't fit in an Intel motherboard.

It may not be complicated to us, but even now I'd do a few days research before building a new PC, so I'm not 100% in agreement there.

But when you're a headstrong 12 year old boy, who is spending his parents money, and doesn't have a clue what he's doing - in that case my advice is to learn a lot more before you make the attempt. Which is what I told his mum.

e: his parents don't have enough moeny that they can buy CPUs and mobos and let him destroy them in his attempts I imagine RC car kits are a bit cheaper.

 

[FoxEye]

Encourage him! Offer a helping hand but let him do it.

I was upgrading my BBC Model A to Model B specs when I was 12 (1983! How old do I feel?!) I was soldering wires, I.C's and cutting tracks too, under supervision from my father who had no clue what I was doing, it worked first time though and still worked 15years later when I finally sold it on!

Building a PC is literally child's play by comparison.

Heh. Thread has gone wildly off topic, but hey ho.

As regards you and your Micro... some kids are that way inclined, curious and methodical, and patient. Other kids are not.

Sometimes you just know it's not going to work out well. Every child is different, and you don't give a child hundreds of pounds worth of equipment if you aren't sure it isn't going to be broken.

In fairness, what you did at 12 is the exception, not the rule. I'd be a lot happier if he were 15 or 16.

 

[FoxEye]

Buy him a £50 old crappy dell pc off fleebay take it appart and give him the parts and tell him to build it. At least then he will have an idea.

This is not a bad idea.

Part of growing up is problem solving. Building a pc is easy nowadays it really is.

Everything will only go into 1 hole.

This I don't agree with at all. It is very easy to damage or destroy PC parts if you literally have no idea what you're doing. Fail to put on thermal paste (or too much/too little), fail to plug the CPU fan in, plug in the USB headers the wrong way round... (you can destroy just about any USB device doing that). Bent motherboard CPU pins, etc, etc, etc.

Never seen a typical 12 year old boy try to force a round peg into a square hole? I'm sorry but there's a massive difference between a 12 year old and a 15/16 year old. Normally

Also you're assuming that I'm anywhere near him and available to supervise the attempt when he makes it.

Anyway, to end the thread, him and his mum have agreed to wait a year, and in the meantime he'll try to learn a bit more about PCs and components. Perhaps in the meantime he can buy a crappy Dell of ebay and practice taking it apart and putting it back together.

Or he might move on to some other idea and forget entirely he wanted to do this

 

[FoxEye]

Maybe you're just scared he's more developed than you were at 12 and you don't want him taking your glory as the only pc nerd in the family

Believe me, I'd like nothing more than if he took over the role of being our family's tech support guy. Would be awesome.

Has it occurred to you that I might know him a little better than randoms on the internet, tho? I know it sounds absurd, but just pretend for a second that I do...

Never mind anyway as you've all decided against it.

Yup it was as much his mum's decision. She probably knows him quite well as well.

 

[FoxEye]

Oh ok. So what was the point in the thread again? Do you know him more now than you did when you started it?

His mum hadn't made a decision yet and he'd selected an Athlon X4 860 as his processor. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea, and suspected he'd be better off with an i3, or even a Pentium G.

...
However why not let him have a bash? Give him some good tutorials to follow, make sure he watches them all really careful and follows one while he builds? I cant imagine anything more frustrating as a curious child than someone stopping me building my pc. Or doing anything because im not old enough. Like if people on here judge me based on my age, thinking im probably a fat 16 year old nerd because i like computers, atleast thats what i think im viewed as when im literally the opposite haha.

Let the kid build!!

I'm not stopping him from building a PC. If he earns £600 and wants to build a PC that's his business

But atm he's not working, and the money will be coming from his mum. His mum isn't flush with cash, and wants to make sure she isn't wasting her money.

Look, he said he "wanted to build his own PC" without knowing what components go into a PC. It's not been his lifelong passion to build one, it was an idea he had one day and asked his mum if he could do it.

As a young child you have ideas about all sorts of things. Tomorrow he might decide he wants to build his own bike

I said to him "If you're serious about building a PC you need to learn enough that you can tell me what you're going to buy and how it all fits together. Until you can tell me that I'm going to tell your mum you aren't ready."

I thought that was reasonable!

BUT ive always been interested and involved with PC's, and taking apart various consoles and fixing different things, so i do know my way around electronics.

Precisely this. He's never shown any interest about how PCs work until one day he decided he'd like to build one. Because one of his friends said a custom built PC will play Minecraft better.

If you think it'd be a good idea to just give a 12 year old £600 and let him loose on that kind of thing, having had no interest in anything like that beforehand, then you people must have cash to burn!

 

[FoxEye]

Say to him, give him a month, if he can come back, still wanting to do it, can tell you whats needed etc and how to do it then suggest a good build. If his mam is tight on cash, suggest a cheaper build, or if he wants a pc that bad, get a prebuilt from OCUK, they arent that badly priced, and come setup for him. Perfect!

That's basically how we left it. He's currently got an i7 laptop which plays Minecraft really well anyhow. And although he talks about playing CoD I'm sure his mum wouldn't let him near it until he's a lot older!

Besides if we wait till next year not only do you have a load of new GFX cards you also have Zen to look forward to. And he'll be a year older and hopefully more clued up.