Reply To: Gaming computers in London?

[The Savage Squirrel]

+1 that a proper gaming PC is by definition a custom built-to-order job; not one that you wander into a shop to try and buy. Knowing that you want one and why pretty much implies a certain level of knowledge that means you won’t be finding competitive examples in general stores that target their offering to those that know nothing about computers (anywhere from Harrods to Curries), and sales assistants there will basically know nothing about this market so can’t add any help.

I’ve had custom-built PCs from quite a few places (although these were specced for other uses, not gaming). Overclockers were fine. The best were Arbico (https://www.arbico.co.uk/) where they gave some useful advice when I put my built-to-spec order in which led to some changes for the better; although most recent reviews don’t seem as good. PCSpecialist were pretty decent too (https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk)

If you know exactly what you want then Scan can be well priced. (https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/gaming)

A high-level gaming PC can easily go WAAAY north of £5000. I’ve got to say it’s a bit like top-end hifi, in that separate components rule, people will have indvidual preferences and an £8k machine isn’t twice as good as a £4k one in real world differences – it’s fractionally better. You can spend huge amounts to get very marginal improvements in performance that 99.9% of people would not notice.

No way I’d be buying this for my similarly-aged kids; it’s like an 18YO asking for a Lambo after passing your driving test; almost absurd overkill (although without the almost-certain carcrash death at least) and I don’t care one bit if my kids’ school friends at their posh school all supposedly have them 😀 . A Playstation 5 is an excellent gaming machine at a tiny fraction of the cost.