Hi All, My laptop I was using to run Train Simulator has finally given up the ghost and am now looking for a gaming Desktop to replace it. Im spending time looking at websites but a lot of the information given goes right over my head when it comes to PC Specs. I don't have the time available to build one myself so can anyone recommend any pre built set ups available that are suitable for 64Bit Train sim + DLC as well as some other games such as Euro Truck and Cities Skylines? Budget is pretty loose but looking no more than around £1,200. Thanks in advance.
You want a decent graphics card in general, something like a NVIDIA or a Radeon. The gaming lab at our local college uses a 1080, but that's top-end and expensive, and my budget one has a 1060 that is very sufficient. I added extra RAM, so I'm sitting apparently at 24 GB of RAM (I thought I had a 16 and a 4, for 20, but I was wrong). Those were the two big things I went for, as the RAM enhances PC performance and the graphics card makes for good gaming. There may be others that people suggest. Also, 16 GB of RAM should be plenty most of the time. I will suggest have lots of USB ports for things you might need as accessories, but this is outside of TS also.
Mine was a pre-built. Not a Dell fan, but one was around $1,000 without the memory upgrade, and I decided that was good enough as any custom build would have cost more even for the same parts and money was tight. Next time, I may go a bit more into the tech.
You could try PC Specialist or Chillblast for some flexibility in terms of build for your budget? You can look at PC specs on there, tweak certain bits and it'll flag if anything is wrong (i.e you need a beefier PSU, for example). Kind of semi custom builds. Although from what I keep reading, and to an extent with my own experiences with subtle overclocking, you won't gain anything by having loads of CPU cores. Just decent power per core (4GHz or so) and a decent, but not top end, graphics card. SSD an advantage and 16GB+ of RAM. Something in that ballpark should come in at about £650-£900, not including Windows, a monitor or peripherals. If peripherals are not an issue you could obviously go a bit higher in terms of your graphics card or what have you, and come in at about a grand.
I got a new system early last year for around £1,200 including keyboard/mouse set and very nice Philips monitor from CCL. I wanted a system that would run Train Simulator of course but also video editing software and anticipated the future purchase of TSW which I got in January. It looked to me as if one of their off the peg Ryzen 5 systems would be a good starting point but I deliberately made my initial enquiry a little vague mentioning what I wanted to do but not being too specific about hardware specs. They suggested a very suitable system close to what I had in mind and proved very open to questions and discussion. My system eschews all that RGB nonsense in favour of a quiet case, runs TS nicely at QHD and I remain very happy with it. Usual disclaimer.
