Question for the computer savy folks

[ColourofFire]

This would be my line of thinking but at that budget you're still gonna be in struggle town depending on what games he plays. My son built a gaming/multimedia/music production desktop that will run almost anything at medium to high settings and he dropped $2500 all said. Now, that did include a very nice monitor, keyboard and mouse setup. The rig itself was still about $1800. Ryzen 7, 16GB RAM, Nvidia 2080 ti.

You don't need a 2080ti for gaming. Hell, my desktop is still merrily rolling along with a gtx960, and I can play pretty much every game, even though I have to sacrifice on graphics a bit (though never lower than medium) on demanding new titles. For a 1000 bucks you should definitely be able to put something together that keeps you going for a while and has good upgrade potential. Something like a 3060ti costs a third of a 2080ti, and as long as you don't want to play absolutely everything on 4k with crazy FPS, it's going to be more than plenty for a good while.

 

[micwalt]

Thanks for all the replies! I've got a lot to think about.

 

[MonkeyZero]

You don't need a 2080ti for gaming. Hell, my desktop is still merrily rolling along with a gtx960, and I can play pretty much every game, even though I have to sacrifice on graphics a bit (though never lower than medium) on demanding new titles. For a 1000 bucks you should definitely be able to put something together that keeps you going for a while and has good upgrade potential. Something like a 3060ti costs a third of a 2080ti, and as long as you don't want to play absolutely everything on 4k with crazy FPS, it's going to be more than plenty for a good while.

I had forgotten those 3060's were so cheap. Likely because you couldn't get one for so long I had stopped looking. My son actually has a 2080 Super not a ti. I was mistaken. Still literally double the price though.

 

[rhino]

I’d get him a telecaster

 

[shoeless]

I’d get him a telecaster

Good advice. Once he gets to college, shows up at parties playing songs on his Tele, he'll be so busy with college girls throwing themselves at him that he won't have time for gaming.

 

[Chad]

I’m about to get my daughter a laptop for college as well. Luckily, she only games in an Xbox, so I can just get her a MacBook and be done with it.

 

[rhino]

Good advice. Once he gets to college, shows up at parties playing songs on his Tele, he'll be so busy with college girls throwing themselves at him that he won't have time for gaming.

or he won’t get invited to the parties at all. Either way it’s a win

 

[Bones McHorror]

Introduce him to Solitaire. Minesweeper.

Every laptop is a gaming laptop if you love games enough.