I'm going to buy my son a gaming desktop but I don't know jack about computers. I have a best buy and a microcenter nearby so I'll probably shop there. Are there particular brands that are better? Ones to avoid? What specs should I be looking at? He had a nice gaming laptop for a while but it cracked out so now it's time to go the desktop route.

Microcenter is probably your best bet. Their in-house brand, PowerSpec, is pretty good. If you provide a budget, we can help.

Ok, cool. I wasn't sure what their brand was named. Budget is $2.5k to $3k.

That's a nice budget, so you should have some solid options. Do you need to buy a monitor, mouse and keyboard as well?

Before budget, what games does he play or want to play? What monitor will he use? What resolution? 1080p,1440p, 4k? That would let us put together what he actually needs, even when looking at prebuilts.

wrinkledink said:

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That's a nice budget, so you should have some solid options. Do you need to buy a monitor, mouse and keyboard as well?

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He has all the other stuff. Probably nothing fancy. The monitor is a LG 1440p (LG - UltraGear 27" IPS QHD 144Hz 1ms G-SYNCCompatible, Gaming Monitor with HDR). That could be upgraded in the future.

He's been playing The Outlast Trials and Baldurs Gate 3 lately.

BSD said:

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He's been playing The Outlast Trials and Baldurs Gate 3 lately.

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Prebuilt pc only or interested in building one with him? They are extremely easy to build nowadays especially with youtube. Prebuilt will almost always cost more for same parts.

This pc is in your budget limit and its pretty close to top of the line and would last him years. Gfx card can be upgraded to newer gen in many years but everything else wouldn't need upgrades.

This is a fantastic deal at microcenter
https://www.microcenter.com/product/691581/powerspec-g753-gaming-pc

That's still a pretty good monitor TBH. That powerspec desktop linked above is very nice. It does show out of stock currently but it might be worth the trip to the store anyways. Sometimes people luck out and get great "open box" deals.

Edit: FatZilla has provided some good suggestions. I don't see any super hot deals in stock currently.

This PowerSpec seems pretty decent too:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/694569/powerspec-g754-gaming-pc

Just saw this one back in stock. Hopefully you see this post now haha. If not, I would keep checking, if you are up for it:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/691581/powerspec-g753-gaming-pc

Updated the post. Definitely jump on that. They just put 5 in stock in Houston. I would be there tomorrow morning tbh to get one.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/691581/powerspec-g753-gaming-pc

That is a smoking deal.

And to think someone on Reddit got an open box one for $1200. Unreal.

Here's a breakdown if your were to get it MSRP-ish.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D $489.99
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT $749.00
Motherboard: MSI PRO B650-P WiFi $169.99
RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 $119.99
SSD: Samsung 990 EVO 2TB NVMe $129.99
Operating System: Windows 11 Home $109.99(meh)
Power Supply (PSU): Estimated 750W Gold-rated PSU $100.00
Case: Mid-tower ATX case with airflow and cable management $100.00
CPU Cooler: Aftermarket air or AIO cooler (since 9800X3D has no cooler) $50.00
Miscellaneous (cables, thermal paste, etc.): $50.00
Estimated Total: $2,068.95

I slept late. That one is gone. What about this?

https://www.microcenter.com/product/694569/powerspec-g754-gaming-pc

Edit: just saw wrinkledink post that one above. I'll probably grab it.

One more question: should we go with 32GB RAM or pay up for 64GB? I've always been known to take things up a notch but is that overkill?

Overkill

BSD said:

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I slept late. That one is gone. What about this?

https://www.microcenter.com/product/694569/powerspec-g754-gaming-pc

Edit: just saw wrinkledink post that one above. I'll probably grab it.

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Call the store and ask about them restocking the first model. Its a better pc for lower price. The 5070 ti is slightly weaker but still a good card at 1440p. The original was oos last night then 5 got added and sold out before this morning. If more will come in, id set up an alert to snag one if it's not immediate need.

Gotcha. Thanks. I would like to get one today (I've been putting this off for a few months now and my son has been patient) so I may run up there and see if there is any of the first one in the back that wasn't listed.

FatZilla said:

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The 5070 ti is slightly weaker but still a good card at 1440p.

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How does the 5080 compare? There are two computers in stock with that one (but also more RAM so are more expensive)

https://www.microcenter.com/product/689587/powerspec-g723-gaming-pc

https://www.microcenter.com/product/689639/powerspec-g480-gaming-pc

Also, I have no idea in the difference in processors on these two:
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7GHz Processor;
Intel Core i9 14th Gen 14900KF 2.4GHz Processor

get the AMD CPU. The latest Intel CPUs have issues aren't as good for gaming.

The 5080 is one of the top 3 most powerful GPUs, and will easily run anything he can play at the highest settings 1440p. It is kind of overkill honestly. For what you are getting the price is pretty good. GPU and CPU alone would run you roughly 2k just for those two pieces.

BSD said:

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FatZilla said:

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The 5070 ti is slightly weaker but still a good card at 1440p.

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How does the 5080 compare? There are two computers in stock with that one (but also more RAM so are more expensive)

https://www.microcenter.com/product/689587/powerspec-g723-gaming-pc

https://www.microcenter.com/product/689639/powerspec-g480-gaming-pc

Also, I have no idea in the difference in processors on these two:
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7GHz Processor;
Intel Core i9 14th Gen 14900KF 2.4GHz Processor

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Stay with 9800x3d and for 5080 its more powerful and will work fine, its just costing more paying the nvidia name tax essentially vs an amd card.

5080 and 9800x3d with 64 gb of ram and a 2 TB SSD for $2400 is amazing.

The great thing about Microcenter is if you walk into the PC builder section they will have very knowledgeable staff there who can answer questions and help you make the best decision. When I was building last year I had a guy who helped save me money for a better PC than what I was looking at. He knew about a deal that I hadn't seen.

aezmvp said:

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5080 and 9800x3d with 64 gb of ram and a 2 TB SSD for $2400 is amazing.

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This is what we went with. A bit overkill? Sure. But I like to take things to 11.

Thanks for the help, yall!

Bought a Lenovo T7 Legion and have been happy.

$1550.