HALP!!! My kid wants a gaming computer for his birthday (OCT20)

I've looked at a bunch on Amazon and other places and they're all around 1K for just the box. Obvious;y we need the monitor, keyboard, mouse too.

If he could use it for his schoolwork that would be good too.

He mostly streams games - Roblox, Fortnite etc

Basically, We need something that isn't laggy, glitchy and the graphics are great.

We want the computer to last about least 5 years and we are mostly looking at desktops but aren't completely against laptops if they'll do the job.

looking at spending around $800 in total.

What specs should we be looking for?

Skip the mouse and keyboard and just get them at goodwill or etc. There's no reason to get a fancy option there imo.

At that price point you're not going to be able to play every game that's out there, but I think Fortnite and Roblox have a fairly low threshold.

Prioritize the CPU over the graphics card / memory / disc space as those are easier to upgrade later.

Makes sense. Thanks!

What should I be looking for in a monitor?

i'd look at the 'Entry-Level' and 'Modest' build examples on here to get an idea of what's currently in that price range spec-wise for desktops: https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/
if you're buying prebuilt though it'll obviously be a bit pricier than these

laptops you're gonna be hard pressed to find something that can run the big blockbuster games well for that price so depends whether they're gonna want to play those or just fortnite type stuff

should be able to get a decent 24" 1080p monitor for like 100-120 bucks i think. you won't need 144hz since your build won't be able to do it on most games, 60 or 75 is fine

agree you should prioritize cpu. i'd also prioritize having a SSD rather than a HDD for the hard drive, that's a pretty big upgrade that you can't make up for elsewhere. you can always add a big HDD as a secondary drive later if you want a ton of space for music or movies or whatever

get a prebuilt microcenter model. they have a generic in-house brand and are extremely solid

oh yeah i just peeked at microcenter's site and their desktops in the $600-800 range are a lot better specs than the ones i saw on amazon

Never been too into this but had friends who were.

All I can really say is that the advice to ignore mouse and keyboard seems VERY wrong to me. Gamers love a good mouse and keyboard. They generally value chunky mechanical keyboards (lot's of flashy gamer versions of these out there) and a good laser mouse with the right amount of buttons. I think Logitech is still a good brand for those?

I'm sure there's some reasonably priced and serviceable options out there but they're definitely not components that gamers ignore. In fact I remember them being highly prioritized similar to the rest of the specs. And those giant mousepads!

If you are trying to maximize your budget, you do not spend $$$ on a keyboard and mouse. Those are addons you get later.

^^^ DJP otm. Also, gives a chance to have your kid get incentivized to save money to upgrade them later with the models they want.

Basically everyone saying "maximize CPU, upgrade other bits over time" is OTM

(also "go SSD if you can")