Post
I'm looking to build a gaming PC to replace the HP Omen laptop that's been my daily drive for long enough that it's struggling to run games now (or more than it struggled when it was new). I know $1500 is a relatively very low budget for a PC, especially now, but I'm currently studying an IT cert that requires me to work with virtual machines in VirtualBox and some other things like that, and if I have to fork out money for a computer that can keep up with that, I want to be able to play some games too. I'm familiar with the theory behind PC parts and building, but am not at all familiar with the brands, what is considered reliable/trustworthy and what is not, which is why I'm asking here. I'm willing to compromise on internal storage space, I don't tend to have more than one or two games installed at a time and I have a NAS for other files. Games that take up a huge amount of space are also few and far between in my Steam library. I also don't particularly care about crazy refresh rates or FPS, my vision isn't very good anyway and I don't play competitive shooters, my priority is minimal visible lag in simulator games. I'd also like it to be a good base to upgrade in the future, so if a larger case or motherboard makes that easier without making it way more expensive that would be great too. Current gaming laptop specs for reference. Laptop is an HP Omen purchased around 2021(?) AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with Radeon integrated graphics NVIDIA TU117M GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Mobile 16gb RAM 250gb storage Required questions/answers New build or upgrade? New build, with the exception of already having peripherals (monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc) Existing parts/monitors to reuse? Currently have a two monitor setup, one is this 27" QHD monitor, the other one is some random 27" 1080p office monitor. PC purpose? (Gaming, editing, etc. List apps/games) Gaming, almost entirely single-player games. Cities Skylines, Project Highrise, Dispatch, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remake(s), Doom 2016, various rhythm games. A lot of the games I play/want to play are a little on the older side but were near/at the top-end of PC requirements when they were released, things like Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein: The New Order. I also play a handful of retro games in DOSbox/from GOG but obviously those are less of a consideration here Some work with Virtual Machines running Windows 11 and Windows Server as part of an IT course I'm studying. I often have to have two or three VMs open at a time. Purchase country? Near Micro Center? Australia, no Micro Center here Monitors needed? (Number, size, resolution, refresh rate) needs to support dual monitor output, but I already have the monitors Budget range? (Include tax considerations) $1500-$2000, on the lower end of that if possible. Taxes are all included in Australian price listings WiFi or wired connection? wi-fi preferred Size/noise constraints? don't care Color/lighting preferences? Preferably no RGB, but if it's cheaper for whatever reason it isn't a dealbreaker Other than that, don't really care what it looks like Any other specific needs? I run Linux, so AMD is preferred over NVIDIA for GPUs because the AMD drivers tend to cooperate better with Linux than NVIDIA. Also means I don't need to purchase an OS.
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