Topic: PC Gaming & Maintenance (questions and tips)

I'll start this off by first saying I'm a console gamer. I love the ease of console gaming and I love playing games on big television screens from comfy seating couch/sofas/armchairs, as I'm sure a lot of you also do.

But I've also reached a point where I'm kind of bored with console limitations regarding new technology and pushing games to play at their very limits. And I'm looking jealously at the capabilities of the latest graphics cards, processors etc.

So I'm looking for as much feedback or experiences as possible in relation to PC Gaming as a whole as i ponder whether to bkther going all out and getting a really nice high end PC. But my main queries, I guess, are how easy it is to maintain a gaming PC used only for gaming purposes? Is it a life of constant checks and tweaks and frustrations, or can you just set it up with Steam, Gamepass GoG, etc and play some games without any constant nurturing of the machine.

Sp how "Plug and Play" can gaming PC's be these days? As, really, I'm basically just after a massive games console that just happens to have the latest and greatest in GPU's, processors and cooling, and can run any game any way I like without ever having to settle too much. But I definitely don't want more hassle than a console in terms of day to day usability.

@Falcon94 cheers. Do you use mainly for gaming or exclusively for gaming, or is it a bit of an all round set up that is good for gaming also? My main thing is, I want something I can set up once (delete all bloat, for example) and then use only to play games. So turn on, boot up a game and then play like it as any other console, almost as if it isn't even a PC, but with maxed out everything possible (no overlooking or random stuff like that) but with no desire to have to update this and that, do a scan, find out what is making it do something unexpected etc and generally suffering through windows being windows.

I absolutely despise Windows as an operating system, to be honest, and it is so out of date looking and still feels like something that should only ever be used in offices or for work. But then, I have no experience with gaming on windows either, other than maybe the odd football manager on a standard office PC and a laptop set up.

Is it possible to basically get it to function well this way, with little to no worry about doing anything else with it?

My only other thought would be to just get an Xbox with gamepass as a way to pick and choose the games I want, when I want. But then if I'm doing that, the lure to do that but via much better hardware is most tempting as it is available on PC.

It's not like I'd stop using my PS5 either, as my library is there, plus friends for online gaming. I just have the desire to be able to get the very most out of big AAA titles and have access to Xbox and PC games, especially when the better stuff comes around. But the nagging worry of spending a large amount for some added headaches on top of regular gaming is there, I suppose haha.

If you have time at any point give us a little run down of a day in the life of a gaming PC, and what is comparable to the ease of console gaming and what is different 😁

@Falcon94 I've gone down the rabbit hole building potential PC's on a PC building specialists to get my head around the kind of things required. And now my brain is pretty much mush 😅 at first I was adding water cooling and top end processors, but went away from that as I'm sure that is pretty pointless for my needs and water cooling is even more maintenance on top.

At the end of it though, there's a 4080 super option build at around £2800 and the 4090 with a fairly similar build at for, I think, £3700. I don't know if there is other stuff I can trim off that aren't as needed, or anything I'd need to add for a 1440p-4K ultra settings machine which can reach frame rates anywhere from 60/120 depending on games.

Here is a snapshot of some of the things I was looking at. Any feedback would be welcome 😅

@Falcon94 cheers 🍻 I'll keep looking into it.

I did look at some more compact builds, as that would suit even more tbh, as it wouldn't require any reworking of available space, which would be another pain as it is something I want to add to an existing set up where I have console, TV etc 😅 I think those smaller case set ups maxed out at 4070 super graphics cards, so I'll look into how much you can get out of those. It seemed you can still get very good resolution and graphics settings on it, and still be above or around console levels in terms of FPS as a bonus. But I only had a quick scout online for some general results.

Resolution and graphics is still going to be most important to me, as it will be on a 55inch oled, any frame rate at or above console levels is pretty much fine with me.

Motherboards are something I have no idea about, so I just picked any random ones. So I'll keep that in mind and research those properly 🫠