What’s the price of switching from console to PC?

[joker454]

You didn't include the cost of the base OS. There's plenty of factors you also left out for new consumers, such as you said the case, hdd, keyboard and mouse. It's not a genuine comparison until you include the cost of all base software and hardware to make the experience.

You re-use your existing os key, you are allowed to do that (you can call and they will activate it if needbe, I've done that) and the assumption is that you have an existing pc to upgrade which just about everyone does. If not then you can still buy a case, hdd, keyboard and mouse for <$100, or buy a complete pc for $300 or so online, like I said in the other thread they are on sale every single day here, then add either a 670 video card and be done with it. It really isn't anywhere near as complicated as people make it out to be nowadays. Then people won't have to cry on forums for years about poor texture filtering, crappy frame rates, etc and instead just play games.

That's all Joe Gamer wants.

Which Joe Gamer? The Joe Gamers I know who have kids also want to watch home videos, movies, and stuff like that, things which aren't as good on console. They also want to browse the web, something which consoles to date have been terrible at. So you'll have to clarify which Joe Gamer you are talking about, because the ones I know seem to have different needs than you. In any case it looks like you are screwed in the UK, I asked some UK friends and your pc pricing there is terrible, almost double what it costs here. That explains why they buy parts here when they are here and bring them back there. So in your case just stick with console.

I dont think everyone is willing to waste hours trying to check hardwate compatibility, find the best prices for the best hardware money can buy and then when he purchases all the parts (maybe from the internet from various sellers) put time to build it themselves. The console is ready to buy and plug in. Few are experts and patient enough to build their own PCs

For the record my gaming pc has been more solid than my 360, I've had no problems at all with it this year. It just runs and runs, I haven't even had one game crash. I haven't had to do any troubleshooting at all either, it just all works. I've been on Windows 8 now so as a bonus the machine cold boots in about 13 seconds, but I just sleep it anyways. Aside from saving a ton of money on games, a great bonus especially on Windows 8 is all the games I get on Win8 store work on every pc in the house. I have them in the office, living room, my laptop and soon my tablet. Just right click and "install all", bam done. Same with my steam games, I have them everywhere I want. It's all just so cheap and so damn convenient that going back to console seems like an extremely tough sell, but to each their own.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Which Joe Gamer? The Joe Gamers I know who have kids also want to watch home videos, movies, and stuff like that, things which aren't as good on console. They also want to browse the web, something which consoles to date have been terrible at. So you'll have to clarify which Joe Gamer you are talking about...

See my wanted features list in the OP. In terms of gaming (not overall functionality, for which it's plainly obvious PC wins so there's no need to discuss that - this isn't a discussion on value), it's a cheapish box that gets games on the screen that matters.

Aside from saving a ton of money on games, a great bonus especially on Windows 8 is all the games I get on Win8 store work on every pc in the house. I have them in the office, living room, my laptop and soon my tablet. Just right click and "install all", bam done. Same with my steam games, I have them everywhere I want. It's all just so cheap and so damn convenient that going back to console seems like an extremely tough sell, but to each their own.

Windows 8 is one of the directions that I consider might make a big difference for PC vs. console, not least because I expect there to be no exclusives between the next XB and PC, but it still doesn't address some of the other aspects like social gaming I keep harping on about and which no-one gives an answer to, which I can only take to mean that gaming on PC is principally either solo or online.

 

[Arwin]

I'm surprised this discussion didn't start off from the Digital Foundry 300 quid gaming pc project that was posted on 24 June this year:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-introducing-the-digital-foundry-pc

I'll relate my current position on this, as I've been looking to bring the PC back into my gaming life for a few years now, and finally ended up doing this a month ago, and we have very similar histories I think.

Personally, I got a quad-core, pretty silent, HTC box with 4GB of memory with a pretty decent form-factor (only about twice the original Slim in volume, not that much weightier) for 399 euro in 2009. I was however disappointed to find it almost impossible to find a low-profile GPU that fits in there that makes gaming worth it on this machine.

So imho, if you want a budget PC, the first thing you can throw out is the idea of a small form factor. The GPU is the biggest price and performance bottleneck in the whole affair, and the regular form factor devices give the best playroom. Even then, I found a rather spectacularly passive cooled GPU that didn't fit in the regular sized case of my wife's PC (not that it'd have worked, I later discovered when trying something else, because of her out-of-date PCI slot).

Second, if you really want to have a clearly noticeable difference in performance from your PC, your PC will end up costing between 500-600 euro at least. It's almost impossible to get anything decent much lower than that, unless you are definitely going to build it yourself, and are going to reuse some Windows licence.

Personally, I spent 849,- euro on a 3rd gen i7 vpro, GTX550Ti, 8GB of RAM, 2TB hdd. I didn't even put an SSD yet, because I didn't want to spend more money on it now, and told myself I'll hold off with that until I've made up my mind if I'm going to install Windows 8 (for my work, it's very advantageous to work with the latest OS, as I don't get a chance to build up experience with that at work, where we'll always switch to a new OS much, much later). It is also still shocking to me that a BluRay drive is pretty much not standard yet and costs quite a bit extra. The best option almost seemed to be a 100 euro external BluRay burner, which again, I was not quite ready yet to spend the money on. We'll see if I still want it later.

This is way more than I've spent on any PC in a looong time, but after I'd spent ages trying to figure out the best course of action and sort of discovered that 599,- would currently get me a fairly mediocre PC that was disappointingly close to the 399 box I bought in 2009. I ended up having a slightly bigger budget, and decided to go for this particular box, which with a GPU of about 115 at retail is already considered 'out-of-date' by very many, but for me much more important was that if I were to buy another GPU next year, there wouldn't be components in this PC that held it back.

Then comes convenience. Steam is, in a word, fantastic. This is a major improvement to PC gaming, and has been for a good while. Today, Steam is clearly thinking along with you, as just recently they've released an update that gives Steam a user interface tailored to people that use their PCs in front of a TV, and it aims to be controllable completely by a typical gaming controller. Of course there are still a quite (surprisingly) large number of games that don't support a controller very well, some not even at all, but it helps. I also really like their new community beta programme, which allows you to share screenshots and what not with other gamers in a pretty sweet manner, and Steam green-light just launched too, which is a democratic way to get (indy or otherwise) games onto Steam.

As for the games, with this machine, I finally do really get to play most games at 1080p with generally better framerates than the console version, even if I switch on 3D (which with NVidia's 3DVision, so far is pretty much just a question of pressing CTRL-T, which is awesome). You still have to hassle with settings with some games (Rocksmith, notably, defaults to 800x600 for some reason, even though my PC doesn't even blink when it's running in 1080p, in 3D).

At the same time, consoles get a lot of exclusives, so I would still never switch. Heck, Playstation Plus, possibly even better than Steam sales in many ways, has given me Red Dead Redemption, a pretty amazing game that for some reason still haven't been brought to PC. Combined with several other real Sony exclusives, I would never ever trade my PS3 for a PC for gaming. I'd sooner stick to lower resolutions and longer load-times than switch to PC.

So really switching, you'd have to be quite conscious of what games you know you are going to play, and know that the vast majority of them are on PC in a form you are comfortable with. I'd never do it myself.

But if you can spend 600 euro, and you are keeping your PS3, then there is definitely some good gaming to be had on PC, and most games that are released on all three platforms will likely to be best on PC, and by a considerable margin.

There's my two pence.

Oh and for what it's worth, the regular case size is still plenty portable enough, if you ask me. The biggest hassle with bringing your own device has always basically been bringing the monitor, and cheap and light LCDs have made that so much less of an issue.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

What would it cost a console gamer to switch to PC gaming?
(aka "the PC vs Console smackdown thread")

Just for the hell of it. Something that could play 720p and possibly 1080p. All depending on quality settings chosen.

Celeron G5xx goes for around 50 USD.
Mini-ITX Socket 1155 MB with x16 PCIE slot for around 50 USD.
4 GB DDR memory for about 20 USD
250 GB HDD for 50 USD or go up to a 500 GB HDD for about 70 USD.
Radeon 7750 for about 90 USD or 6670 for 60 USD.
Mini-ITX Case with 250 watt PSU about 45 USD.

That covers the basics minus keyboard/mouse/controller. Will be able to hook it up to a TV via HDMI with audio. Use Steam or other online DD vendor to load games and skip an optical drive (14-20 USD for DVD, 55 USD for BRD if you HAVE to have one).

Looks to be about 275-325 for the hardware minus the above paragraph.

Windows 7 Home Premium OEM is ~100 USD, but you can find it on sale for less.

A bit more than a console when you factor in the OS, but it can also do many things a console can't do. As well, if you hit up the Steam sales you can often get up to 90% off (Summer/Winter sale) and various games go on sale each week for 33-75% off. You could easily make back any difference in price if you don't have to buy a game as soon as it is released.

Alternative you could go for an AMD APU and skip the dedicated graphics card. Performance will suffer but "should" still have generally console level graphics. This might be cheaper, but I'm too lazy to look up system based on this.

Another option is to go with something like an Intel i3-2100 for about 120 USD. You'll gain a lot of CPU power but lose a bit of GPU power. And for gaming at this level, you're more often going to be graphics limited than CPU limited. I'm not sure it'd overall be better than a Gxx with 6670 for about 110 USD.

All prices are sourced from Newegg in the US. Shopping around could potentially shave off 10-50 USD or more for the hardware and 20-30 USD or more for the OS.

This also assumes you build it yourself and thus avoid labor (hire someone) or margins (OEM system builders).

Prices will also likely be higher in Europe (VAT+other stuff). Newegg and many online e-tailers in the US don't charge sales tax unless they have a physical presence in your state. And you may also have to include shipping, although almost all the items I sourced included free shipping at the egg.

Regards,
SB

 

[joker454]

Windows 7 Home Premium OEM is ~100 USD, but you can find it on sale for less.

I think the Windows 8 upgrade price is $40, so if you ever had any hardware that ran any flavor of Windows XP or greater since 2001 then you can use that Windows key for the $40 upgrade price to Windows 8.

It's moot anyways, what costs us about 200 Euro here seems to cost them 800 Euro there to get the equivalent hardware over in Europe. It makes sense now why Europeans see pc's as so expensive, whereas they are dirt cheap here. Pc hardware just seems to cost a fortune across the pond. That may also explain why I so often see Europeans on these types of forums with such weak pc hardware or old gpu's, whereas it seems Americans are rocking significantly stronger pc hardware. For example I spent less on my gaming pc than Arwin did, yet I have a core i7, 16gb of ram, 3tb hdd, NVidia 670, 650watt power supply and a blu-ray drive. With such a massive price disparity it's no wonder pc's can't cost compete with consoles in Europe.

 

[antwan]

I really, really detest that the OP makes no single mention of buying the Windows OS.
I am really sorry but that is what I hate about PC gaming, or PC gamers in general.
It's why most developers don't even treat the PC as a real platform; delaying games, making no effort to use the superior processing power that a modern PC provides, and so on.

The cost of switching would be enormous; one could say that even if the games you play were available and on a steam sale, it would not matter that much, but a lot of the "a pc can do more" is wasted on people who use more mature platforms. For me it would be really expensive to switch to PC, even if I got it for free because of all the extra time and waiting associated with the platform.

But to answer the question; if you already have the mindset of not paying for the OS then the price can be as low as 300-400 euro's. Plus you never pay for games again in your life. That's at least worth something, right? ;-)

 

[DuckThor Evil]

It's moot anyways, what costs us about 200 Euro here seems to cost them 800 Euro there to get the equivalent hardware over in Europe. It makes sense now why Europeans see pc's as so expensive, whereas they are dirt cheap here. Pc hardware just seems to cost a fortune across the pond. That may also explain why I so often see Europeans on these types of forums with such weak pc hardware or old gpu's, whereas it seems Americans are rocking significantly stronger pc hardware. For example I spent less on my gaming pc than Arwin did, yet I have a core i7, 16gb of ram, 3tb hdd, NVidia 670, 650watt power supply and a blu-ray drive. With such a massive price disparity it's no wonder pc's can't cost compete with consoles in Europe.

I know you are exaggerating with that price comparison, but you still have inaccurate understanding of the situation. Things are more expensive here, but not that much. You can't compare parts you bought from Newegg to a pre-built machine Arwin picked up from some store. If you order your components from say an online store in Germany, you'll get pretty good prices, that way the amount of premium we actually have to pay reduces to about 10-15% over US.

 

[Nesh]

I know you are exaggerating with that price comparison, but you still have inaccurate understanding of the situation. Things are more expensive here, but not that much. You can't compare parts you bought from Newegg to a pre-built machine Arwin picked up from some store. If you order your components from say an online store in Germany, you'll get pretty good prices, that way the amount of premium we actually have to pay reduces to about 10-15% over US.

Online stores in Germany must be pretty cheap. I dont think prices are that common in every part in Europe. And of course it demands some more research than in the US to get good prices. For the record I was looking for something simple as an internal 2.5 Sata 500GB HDD and whether I was looking at a store or online shops, that would cost me 84 euros the cheapest price. Thats the lowest price I could find if buying from my country. Thats already almost 1 third of the 300 Euro budget.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I know you are exaggerating with that price comparison, but you still have inaccurate understanding of the situation. Things are more expensive here, but not that much. You can't compare parts you bought from Newegg to a pre-built machine Arwin picked up from some store. If you order your components from say an online store in Germany, you'll get pretty good prices, that way the amount of premium we actually have to pay reduces to about 10-15% over US.

We have prices in stores for comparisons though. I roughly see a $:€ exchange or worse, although I don't look much. Just when I went costing a new PC, the prices I was seeing were a lot more than the very affordable that I was hearing from the North American internets.

At the least, you can't get as low as a US entry level price. Although that said, Almighty's PC supplier, one I hadn't heard of before, does have an entry-level PC for <£200 (I think their business PC).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've had a look at all your PC recommendations:

Budget machine can be seen here : https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/ypwcWXJfYGw4Pa_UGPojYw,,

£467

Mid-range system can b seen here : https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/LKDIJONlA067gq7ZdYIKfg,,

£666

High end system can be seen here : https://www.aria.co.uk/WishList/IE3WpyWfgAXnH8Rb82luSw,,

£949

What I'm seeing so far is that a PC cannot compete with the entry level price of a console. If you can afford the added cost up front, there are saving to be made in software, but these are difficult to quantify. It also would appear that at launch, the difference between console equivalent powered PC will be much higher, like £800+ versus £400. Where the performance of PC increases over time for your money, the minimum price doesn't. Which is understandable and expected - a console with exactly the same parts as a PC can be sourced and assembled extremely efficiently and sold at cost, or even a loss.

I'm still unclear on the living room experience though. Can someone please describe that, whether the PC can do the sociable couch experience the same as the consoles. A quick bit of Googling and I see FIFA is local coop but Borderlands 2 isn't split-screen. If Windows brings everything XB to PC, that should be a solved issue, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

 

[almighty]

I've had a look at all your PC recommendations:
£467
£666

£949

What I'm seeing so far is that a PC cannot compete with the entry level price of a console. If you can afford the added cost up front, there are saving to be made in software, but these are difficult to quantify. It also would appear that at launch, the difference between console equivalent powered PC will be much higher, like £800+ versus £400. Where the performance of PC increases over time for your money, the minimum price doesn't. Which is understandable and expected - a console with exactly the same parts as a PC can be sourced and assembled extremely efficiently and sold at cost, or even a loss.

I'm still unclear on the living room experience though. Can someone please describe that, whether the PC can do the sociable couch experience the same as the consoles. A quick bit of Googling and I see FIFA is local coop but Borderlands 2 isn't split-screen. If Windows brings everything XB to PC, that should be a solved issue, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

As you said a few pages ago with a console you'll still need a cheap PC for office work, so in that respect that would bring a console and an office PC up to £500-600, or in other words more expensive then the budget system but no where near its performance.

And that's not even factoring in software prices over a couple year period.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Online stores in Germany must be pretty cheap. I dont think prices are that common in every part in Europe. And of course it demands some more research than in the US to get good prices.

Yeah Germany has some of the biggest e-tailers in Europe and the volumes there are high. Newegg is also cheap, because they operate in a high volume small margin business. I'm sure if you walk into some neighbourhood computer store in US, the prices won't be competitive against Newegg and you have to pay some amount of sales tax on top.

But yeah if you don't live in Germany, some amount of research has to be done.

These are from http://www.mindfactory.de and include 19% VAT

i7 3770k 291e = 378$ (330$ @Newegg)
EVGA 670 345e = 445$ (380$ Newegg)

Rest of the components should be around the same difference. I have to admit though that 1.3 Euro to dollar ratio surprised me, I thought it was still about 1.25 making my figures look a bit ugly. In any case the difference comes from the VAT if you purchase your stuff from a similar large e-tailer. If one has a way to purchase the computer for a company, you don't have to pay the VAT.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As you said a few pages ago with a console you'll still need a cheap PC for office work.

Like everyone, I already have a PC that's good for office work. It's good for everything except fast HD video editing. For the average consumer, they don't need to upgrade their PC from anything some years old. The only reason I know people to upgrade recently from various PCs is to switch to a laptop. Oh, or encode HD movies, which is the domain of the more wealthy consumer and not the masses. And with a lot of PC functionality shifting to tablet devices too, the value of the PC is even less ensured. That's why I make that distinction. For those people who are going to get a £400 PC anyway, adding a £400 console budget to that will get them a better PC also able to play the console games, so there's potentially good value there, except if that PC cannot provide the same console experience - a point being constantly avoided by the Pc advocates at the moment! Even if I can get an £800 Pc in 2014 that'll be as good as an XB3 or PS4, instead of spending £400 on a PC and £400 on the console, it appears I'll still miss out on decent controller gaming, couch-coop gaming, small, portable device, and possibly a number of valuable exclusives (although Steam exclusives may offset that). So it's still not a like-for-like replacement.

And that's not even factoring in software prices over a couple year period.

I don't know why this is being repeated. Yes, if you buy 40 games a year, the savings are massive. However, if you only buy 9 games over the life of your console (mean average for XB360 in the US), then no, you won't make significant savings. This is such a huge variable that it needs to be determined on a per-case basis and cannot be used as a constant in PC's favour.

 

[almighty]

Thinking about it and looking on PC World most decent £300 office PC's are rocking core i3 CPU's with some £400 office PC's rocking core i5's.

With that kind of CPU power all you need to do is add a decent GPU.

So on that note you could in theory just add a decent GPU to your existing PC and for around £50 have a PC that plays games better then console.

So the price of moving from console to a gaming PC with more performance? Around £50 for a GPU upgrade or £100 max with a power supply upgrade.

I upgraded my partners parents PC for £100, for that £100 that got a mini ATX motherboard, 4Gb DDR3 and a Pentium Dual core G620, another £50 on top for a dedicated GPU and they would have a competent system capable of out rendering current consoles.

So I think this thread can be ended now.

 

[V3]

Like everyone, I already have a PC that's good for office work. It's good for everything except fast HD video editing. For the average consumer, they don't need to upgrade their PC from anything some years old.

Well most people office PC are typically in their study room, that's why most people build HTPC.

Anyway why look at XB3 or PS4? Just compare it to Wii U. You can't get much gaming PC with Wii U price when you have to factor in, Windows and a controller (wireless).

I still think if you own a console and want PC gaming, don't go with a console price budget PC gaming, its a waste of time, put a bit of money into it and get something decent.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Thinking about it and looking on PC World most decent £300 office PC's are rocking core i3 CPU's with some £400 office PC's rocking core i5's.

With that kind of CPU power all you need to do is add a decent GPU.

I upgraded my partners parents PC for £100, for that £100 that got a mini ATX motherboard, 4Gb DDR3 and a Pentium Dual core G620, another £50 on top for a dedicated GPU and they would have a competent system capable of out rendering current consoles.

Depends on how old the PC is. And if they have a desktop that can be upgraded or a laptop. And if they bought their PC with an i3 or i5, or if it's a 5+ year old Dell with a single core Pentium or Celeron.

So I think this thread can be ended now.

No, because none of the non-fiscal costs have been discussed at all...

 

[almighty]

Depends on how old the PC is. And if they have a desktop that can be upgraded or a laptop. And if they bought their PC with an i3 or i5, or if it's a 5+ year old Dell with a single core Pentium or Celeron.
No, because none of the non-fiscal costs have been discussed at all...

Dude you're never going to be happy, a 5 year old PC would still have something like a Pentium dual core which when paired with a dedicated GPU will still out run the consoles.

That's the whole beauty of PC, if you have an office PC you can upgrade it very very cheaply with used parts.

You can get a decent Core 2 Duo off eBay and drop that in with a dedicated GPU.

It's all well and good arguing prices but the complete and utter fact is that if your on a budget and have a office PC you could upgrade for less money then a new console would cost and you have a faster gaming machine at the end of it.

This form of upgrading using old or used parts is very very common practice, heck on eBay you can get a used Core 2 Quad Q6600, a motherboard and memory for £80-100. Add a dedicated GPU and you have a cheap and very powerful upgrade that will out run any console.

Ignoring the used market for upgrading a PC is ignoring one of the things that makes PC gaming so great. Afteral a lot people buy there consoles used too so so why not used PC parts

Out of interest what is the specs of you office PC?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ignoring the used market for upgrading a PC is ignoring one of the things that makes PC gaming so great. Afteral a lot people buy there consoles used too so so why not used PC parts

That really complicates the comparison. It makes the cost of console gaming £100 if you nab a deal off eBay. We can't rely on those prices, which aren't the average people spend.

Out of interest what is the specs of you office PC?

Windows XP Desktop is an Athlon XP 2400 with an ATi 9800 I think from a friend who upgraded his GPU. I replaced the desktop with a Core2Duo Win 7 laptop which is my main machine. I know plenty of households where the home computer is either a laptop or a Mac or an old PC. If they didn't have a console and wanted to get into gaming, and asked about the price of a PC to game on, what would you tell them?

 

[Svensk Viking]

A so-called "office PC" often have bad PSUs IME. The case isn't always that good either.
I'm also very doubtful about the Pentium Dual Core being able to outrun the consoles, many games as of late seem to push even the better Core 2 Duos


The used market of course lets you build a PC for cheaper, but the same is true for getting used consoles. I'd also never recommend for someone I know to get used GPUs, CPUs etc, I've mostly had bad experiences with that.

 

[almighty]

I'm done with this thread.... Not being able to use used parts because it complicates the comparison is rubbish and is only not allowed because it then makes PC way more worth while from a financial point of view.

Consoles are way more unreliable then used PC parts.

You can take an old PC and for £200 at the absolute max you can chuck in there a used Quad-core CPU, motherboard, 4Gb+ memory, a dedicated GPU and a new power supply.

There is no consoles that offers that kind of cheap, easy and more importantly, POWERFUL gaming machine for the money.

But because its used parts and makes things a little complex it's not allowed, this is a very biased thread, should of known though as its in the console section.

And as the for whole a used console is only £100 you can get a used AMD APU bundle for less then that which would still be faster.

If you already have a PC no matter what the age then of you keep the case, HDD and optical drive and spend the money that you were going to spend on a console you can end up with a much much faster machine from using used parts.