First gaming PC?

Someone I work with who is big into PC gaming is offering to sell me his "spare" gaming PC. Now I was looking to trade my PS4 and Bloodborne in for cash at a local game store and buy one using those funds (comes to approx £195) but he is willing to do a straight swap for this PC for my PS4 and game.

The specs he sent me are:

core i5 2310

8gb ddr3 1333

320gb hdd

hd5770 1gb/2gb (unsure on gb) or for £45 could be 7870

500 wat psu

People I know say its a good setup for a first PC and for the price (effectively nothing as Im not playing my PS4) is a bargain.

Just looking for some feedback

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd keep the PS4.

Ps4 is essentially a mid-range slightly higher tier PC. I'm not so sure how'd I feel about the swap, if I were in your shoes I'd probably hang on to the ps4 and save up to build the pc after researching more and seeing what would be affordable but also okay for today's current pc market of games. In all likelihood if you were looking to play some newer pc games maxed out you might find it a bit difficult without some upgrades.

No. Keep your PS4.

Same here...definitely do not get rid of your PS4 for this thing. This PC was mid range at best four or five years ago when it was new. Stay away, unless you can get it for next to nothing and play around with it for fun. It is in no way a replacement for your PS4, though.

Trust me, I would love to see as many people get into PC gaming as possible, and I don't even own consoles...but not like this.

Even though I've got no real plans to buy this gen's consoles (by which I mean I'm almost exclusively a PC gamer these days) but I'd say keep the PS4 in this situation.

You will need to do a total rebuild in the next year or two to keep up with minimum requirements, meaning new processor, which will mean new mobo, which will mean you may as well have never had anything to start with in the first place. I can also tell you that my 7850 is starting to show it's age with the last big releases. Keep the PS4 or trade it in and spend an additional $400 on something that will last you.

@kcin: No, it would need to be rebuilt now. That GPU is several generations old and can't keep up with the PS4 in terms of performance. OP would have a worse experience overall and it would likely kill any excitement about switching to PC. I can't imagine driver support is great for this card either.

@bleedingstarx go visit /r/buildapc and /r/buildapcsales. You can build something that will perform better than your PS4 for about $400-$500 (or whatever your local equivalent is).

A 7870 could almost certainly keep up with a PS4, since mine does, it just doesn't beat it. But whatever. I think the main reason someone would switch from a current-gen console to a PC is either for performance or library variety, and since performance was clearly not the goal here, I wouldn't even consider this trade for the variety difference. The build would sustain mid-tier graphics for another year or two, but the processor and board are just too old for them to be a foundation on which to expand when it is truly necessary to do so - and if you don't have a foundation worth hanging on to, you might as well start from scratch.

@kcin: True, I was referring to the 5770 because I forgot they had the option to buy up.

Sucks to hear. He seemed legit it was a good setup. As a complete noob, whats the best to do for a first rig? Prebuilt or custom?

What they said. Keep the PS4.

Also can you even be 100% sure how hard the system has been driven in the past or if it's been madly overclocked to within an inch of its shortened life.

@bleedingstarx: He's probably not deliberately trying to fleece you. More like he's still thinking of his old PC in the terms of when it was current.

I keep my old gaming PC as a spare and it's not too far from the specs of the one you've been offered - Phenom II BE, 560ti, 8GB RAM. I only use it these days for some light desktop work and occasionally hooking up to the TV when I fancy some emulator action. It'll run Shadow of Mordor on low settings, for example, but not a pleasant experience when compared to a more modern rig or, I'd imagine, a PS4.

As has been said, it might have been overclocked poorly. The only time I bought a used graphics card I ended up with one which had been OC'd far too much.

EDIT - If you think you're up to it, have a go at building one yourself or maybe buy a decent CPU/RAM/PSU combo and fit a graphics card to it. I've got friends who have no interest in building PCs from scratch and have gone down that route.

You'd be looking at a quad core i5, 8GB of RAM at least and then the GPU is what you're willing to spend. My stock answer these days is a 970 but they're pushing 300 quid. A 960 is an excellent mid range card though.

A mate has suggested this

http://www.ebuyer.com/699235-pc-specialist-vortex-venom-xt-gaming-pc-pcs-d768994

Moving a few funds around this could certainly be in my price range if its a good system. Obviously I want to play new games like Phantom Pain, Batman etc

But a huge focus is the back cat such as XCOM, Batman, Dark Souls and F2P like SMITE and Marvel Heroes.

Im not hooked on graphics so if I cant run something on ultra it wouldnt bother me

For most people, I tend to recommend doing the research on your own (with the help of the internet, of course) and building your own. You'll get far more for your money, get exactly the components you want, and learn something about your hobby in the process. Some people just don't have the drive to want to learn how PCs work or how to put them together, or they convince themselves the process is too difficult and don't want to bother with it. I have personally helped a lot of Giant Bomb users over the years build their first PC, and all of them were able to get everything together on their own when it came time to build and are happy PC gamers to this day. It really isn't that difficult.

It depends on what you want to get out of it and how much time, energy, and money you have to invest.

As someone who knew nothing about PCs a few months ago; dude build your own. It is SO much cheaper and you can pick and choose where you can save cash. That being said, if you're to sell your PS4, it's probably not the best idea. I built my first ever PC in February and it's got an AMD R9 280 - the AMD equivalent of a 960. I am running Witcher 3 on low and I still struggle to consistently hit 30 FPS. I bought my PC for DOTA and other nonsense, but as a primary platform, my PS4 runs games better though the games are a lot more expensive.

Regardless, get some research done and build your own rig. I was a complete novice on the subject but if you have people to chat about it, and if you have a lil' patience, you can learn a very handy skill.

There are just hundreds of thousands of resources and threads for building a computer, all of which are updated on a to-the-second basis. Google your question and hundreds have asked it not just before you, but before you today. I'm just saying this because there are so many of these threads on any forum and, frankly, they all are redundant and say the same thing over and over again. You wanna build a PC, you have a budget, you'll have no trouble finding the answers you need and where to buy the parts at the best prices (slickdeals.com) if you take a cursory look around. Good luck, and enjoy your new comp.

While Googling is always a good answer, please don't suggest that our users aren't welcome to post these types of topics on the forums. If people want advice and need help and want to ask the Giant Bomb community, they have always been encouraged to do so and this is not going to change. Feel free to skip over future PC build or upgrade advice topics if you wish, but all GB users are more than welcome to start their own topics for specific questions should they feel like they need help.

Thanks.

Oh, alright!!!!!!!