Hello all, I'm considering fully switching from console gaming to PC gaming. I have an outdated PC a friend helped me build from exactly 10 years ago, and it has never been upgraded. I currently have a Nintendo Switch and Xbox (360, One, and most recently Series X). I did this mainly because I liked physical games, such that I have kept boxes, manuals, and discs for my games. However, I have been getting more and more frustrated with console gaming as the years progress and am thinking of switching to fully PC, including emulation up to Switch of older game systems. I know nothing about building a PC, the one I had in college was for games technically but was not top of the line even then, and I mostly used it for torrenting, CAD modeling, and old emulation (up to Nintendo 64 at the time). I'm thinking of transitioning that fully to a NAS if possible as I build out my media library, and build a new one from scratch for gaming. Any advice on what a price range would be and components to look for would be appreciated! I see secondhand builds on Facebook marketplace or similar but don't have a good feel for if they are even good deals or not. For what it's worth, I will probably need new everything (hardware, case, and peripherals like mouse, keyboard, and monitors). So, if anyone could help guide to me what a good price I should be expecting would be and some benchmark specifications that I could keep an eye out, that would be lovely.
Edit: for what it's worth, I generally play games a few years after release when they go on sale, unless they came up on Xbox game pass or I received it as a gift to play. Additionally, I had an Oculus Rift hooked up to my PC but it struggled with many things on it, so I plan to upgrade that at some point with maybe the Valve Index system. That doesn't need to be an immediate buy as I'd rather my money go into the computer hardware itself first.
I was considering Linux but I don't think I'd use it daily for gaming. I am interested in using Playnite which I believe is Windows only for my main games launcher.
Fyi an alternative to Playnite with a similar goal is Lutris. You can even integrate several platforms like Steam and GOG to download games directly through the Lutris interface.
On top of that, it's super easy to install games via exe's, custom install scripts, add existing install folders, etc. The UI is a little bit spartan compared to Playnite, but it's very powerful.
I say this because, among other things, a huge benefit of Linux is that it's great for older hardware. From the sounds of it, you aren't looking for the latest and greatest in terms of build specs, so Linux may be right up your alley (also no built in spyware, ads, forced online connections, and resource hogging processes that can't be disabled).
Yeah I have been considering switching to Linux at home, if nothing else other than to be familiar with multiple OS styles (I use Windows for work, and used MacOS in college). Do you know if Lutris have an ability to integrate some achievement unlocking ability/tracker? Additionally, do you suggest an OS/desktop environment to setup?
I think you may be out of luck with a built in achievement tracker unfortunately, although I personally haven't looked into it. I've never been a big achievement hunter, but I'm sure there are external Linux compatible tools for tracking such things.
As for recommendations, you're going to see a million names thrown around. As a broad suggestion, I might start with something based on Debian (tried and true, tons of resources, huge community). Maybe Pop! Or Mint. There are purpose built gaming distros with more tools and optimizations out of the box, however these are often small projects with shorter histories so I'm hesitant to recommend them.
As for desktop environment, it depends on what you want. KDE is my go to. By default it handles very similarly to Windows, but it's incredibly customizable so you can really set it up however you want. KDE also has basic HDR support, which can't really be found elsewhere. Gnome is a little more MacOS like, but it's really its own beast. Gnome is great if you leave it default but I think it sort of falls apart when you try to customize it.
Also, if you do decide to go with Linux, I emplore you to look at getting an AMD graphics card. Their drivers are built into the Linux kernel so they require little to no setup, and usually perform better than NVidia. NVidia cards often have niche, hard to solve issues (speaking from experience. I spent a few years with a GTX1080 and often had the strangest bugs that I just couldn't solve. Switched to an RX7600XT and everything just works). As a bonus, AMD is also usually cheaper than NVidia.
Those are all good reasons for AMD, and cheaper is always a good thing to hear! That's a shame about the achievement tracking, I enjoy having it on Xbox and retro achievements. If this is only going to be used for gaming (probably 95%+ of the time), then I don't mind setting it up and not really digging too far into customization as long as it's functional. I'll use some web browsing with Firefox, and maybe some small uses of gimp but otherwise I don't foresee much else as the other PC will be dedicated to torrenting/jellyfin server. Thanks for the recommendations! AMD for graphics card, but does it matter for CPU or other hardware?
I'm biased towards AMD in general, I just find them to be a slightly better value, but Intel CPUs are great too, and I don't think they have any noticable issus on Linux.
As for other hardware, it depends. Just make sure to do a bit of research and compare multiple options, especially for something like the storage, motherboard, RAM, or power supply. It's usually pretty easy to sus out which brands are trying to catch your eye with low prices and tons of RGB, and which brands are offering a great product (I will suggest Seasonic for a power supply. They aren't the cheapest but the build quality is excellent).