r/ComputerBuild

Hi, I'm an independent musician and I also like to game. I run a mix of legacy music and video gear (00s gear, mainly) with more recent stuff and I want a solid PC that can suit most of my needs. To start my top budget is around $1.2k, although I'd like to stay under if possible. For the music and visuals I run REAPER, GIMP, and DaVinci Resolve, along with plugins like Arturia Analog Lab and WAVES plugins. My 2019 gaming laptop isn't really cutting it anymore and can't run as many Steam games, so I'm looking for something that can keep up with newer production software. REAPER of course has a light footprint, but DaVinci is already way too heavy.

***The big thing I'm looking for is a motherboard that can support a FireWire card. I own an old DV camera and right now it's impossible to transfer my tapes to digital.***

For gaming, I don't need top tier, it just has to be usable for most titles and perform well.

I don't know a lot about computers but I'm happy to answer any clarification questions

Edit: Yes, I live close to a microcenter for anyone wondering. Not sure why this thread is hiding comments.

Hi, as the title says Im trying to build a good pc for that budget but need some help since its my first build and don't want to mess it up. I want to have something such as the 9070xt or better if possible with my budget. this budget is only for the pc . Thank you.

Also I would be able to go over since I’m not against second hand so I can find cheaper.

I've built before, so no need to baby me, but it's been a few years since I've paid attention to the parts market and I'm not fully sure what specs are "good better best" these days. I thought if you could help me spec a starting point that could make my research much faster.

Uses:

• Writing, including some background research that means a lot of open chromium tabs
• Gaming -- I tend to play more processor and memory intensive games vs graphics intensive (I also have a PS5, so the priority on PC is games that don't make sense on console). Think stuff like Oxygen Not Included
• Light video editing, mostly I use CapCut at the moment
• Light graphic design
• Streaming said processor intensive games would be a nice to have
• App development
  • This is probably the most intensive thing I actually do regularly
  • Need to be able to run multiple emulators/simulators at once at the same time as multiple instances of AI (Claude), who is probably running multiple agents
  • While all this is going on I ideally need to be able to casually use the machine (browser, youtube, obsidian etc) while I wait for the AI results
  • For reference, this is for side projects, I do very similar workflows on my work laptop which is an MacBook M3 Pro with 36GB memory and does it work? Yes. But the part where I'd casually do other stuff at the same time? Dicey, heavily dependent on what Claude is up to.

I'm in France, though I could order parts in the US and pick up during a visit in July (I have family there). But then with US trade relations right now idk if that's actually cheaper. I'd like to stay under 2000€ but I have no clue if that's feasible for the needs I have, and I'm an adult with adult money so I can save a bit if needed.

Other thoughts/questions:

• Smaller form factors preferred, but also, does a mini PC exist that would do what I want reliably? Only thinking mini because traveling with it could be nice (especially if I'm going home for a week or two at a time where I already have monitors).
• Are there any anticipated hardware drops this year that are worth waiting for?

So yeah, 1k budget, can go a little higher probably, planning on using Bazzite as the OS. Really just hoping to play cyberpunk on whatever the preset is before path tracing at like 30-40fps. Buying from the US

I’m looking to buy a gaming PC with a budget of around £900 and want to make sure I’m getting the best performance for the price. My main goal is to play Fortnite competitively and ideally reach around 240 FPS (I’m happy to use performance mode / low settings for that), as I want smoother gameplay to improve. I also want the PC to comfortably run other games like Warzone, Rust, Roblox, and similar titles without issues.

I’m not building it myself, so I’m mainly looking at prebuilt systems, but I’ve noticed some of them don’t include things like storage or end up costing more at checkout, so I want to avoid that. Ideally I want something with a solid CPU (since I’ve heard Fortnite is quite CPU-heavy), a good GPU, 16GB RAM, and at least 1TB SSD included.

If possible, I’d like something that can consistently run high FPS (not just peaks) and will last me a few years without needing upgrades. Any recommendations or things I should avoid would be really helpful.