I doubt anyone will remember me, but I used to be pretty active around here and I'm looking to get back into PC gaming. I just got out of an abusive relationship where I basically had to give up gaming for the past 3-4 years and sell every gaming related thing I own. A couple years in I had to stop coming to GB because it was driving me nuts hearing about stuff I knew I could never play. But hey! I'm free from all that now, and it just dawned on me tonight that I can do this and no one's keeping me from it any more! Yay me! So as part of my recovery process I'm trying to get back into old hobbies and PC gaming was my life for many years. So this is one of my new short term goalson my road to recovery/normalcy.

I don't really have a budget in mind at the moment, and I'm mostly trying to get an idea of what hardware to keep an eye out for these days. Any advice on what to look for and what places to go to re-learn is appreciated. Here's what I know so far:

• I'm looking to start with catching up on games I missed from like 3-4 years ago before even contemplating recent stuff. When I checked out of gaming Shadow of Mordor was what everyone was going nuts for. To help give you a time frame of the games I will be looking to play. Short list of games I know I want to be able to play that are more recent, I think, are Blood Bowl 2, and Total War Warhammer. Still can't believe they didn't call it Total Warhammer. I think there might even be a second Total Warhammer. Man is it tough being so out of date.
• Because of my living situation a desktop is sadly not an option, so I'm going to need a laptop. What's the standards in graphics cards and processors I should be looking for if I eventually want to play more recent games? Is AMD still terrible? Is the i7 processor still high end? Is 8GB of RAM still good enough? What about installation inflation? Are games 100 GB yet? Would a 1-2 TB hard drive still be enough? Are higher capacity SSD affordable yet? Have SSD been replaced yet? Do I need to install a port anywhere on my body yet? What part of the body has the smallest amount of irritation for the port? I'm not expecting to run whatever the new hot thing is maxed out, but I would like to be able to play the odd more recent game from time to time.

That's all I can think to ask at the moment. Apologies if I'm not posting correctly. I will rewatch Brad's old video to build a PC. I'm sure it's still relevant!

Hey there! I know it's a little late, but welcome back to GB and the community! I'm not sure how much you've already discovered on your own, but I'll do my best to give you the answers you're looking for.

There is a ton that has happened in gaming over the past 3-4 years. It would be impossible to list out every major release, let alone all of the indie gems that happened. My best recommendation would be to go through each of the GOTY's that you may have missed from GB and friends. The guest lists will help fill in some gaps that the staff might've missed.

Even though you're not building a desktop, I would recommend using a popular building website PCPartPicker, along with maybe a dedicated subreddit/forum to brush up on the latest hardware trends. In short:

• AMD isn't terrible, Ryzen is a great new chipset that is very much worth looking into, especially since those chips are not vulnerable to the recent Meltdown security vulnerability and won't have large performance hits from patches. I currently run an i7 but for my next build I will definitely be looking into Ryzen. I would recommend looking up performance benchmarks for Ryzen and newer i7 chips.
• RAM prices have skyrocketed. I've been running 16GB for the past 3-4 years and it's been fine. I think most standard pre-builts use that option as the most common.
• SSDs have gotten more affordable, yes. I run a 500GB SSD and it's been great to me for loading times. Besides the standard SATA connector, you might want to look into M.2 SSDs, it's a faster connector.
• Videocard prices have gone the way of RAM prices due to cryptocurrency mining. Stuff is way too expensive to be parting out a PC yourself. But in general, the 10xx GTX series (Pascal chipset) from NVIDIA has been the new king in performance for the past year or so. Not sure about AMD, but they have a new line of cards with the name "VEGA". Again I would look into benchmarks for that stuff and draw your own conclusions on power per dollar.

As a final note, I've heard that it's actually better to buy a pre-built desktop or even a laptop for gaming these days because of how outrageous the RAM/GPU prices have gotten, so you're lucking out on that front. Hopefully that's enough information to get you started, best of luck!

i haven't played it yet, but you should probably get yourself a copy of that there Doom for a state-of-the-art shooter.

Cuphead looks like nothing else (gonna presume you don't have an xbox).

and my reviewer's tilt is XCOM 2 with the DLC expansion- because xcom 2 is awesome.

A 500gb SSD is where it's at, worth every penny. It makes everything super snappy including games, and you don't have to keep uninstalling stuff when you run out of space on a 256gb SSD, especially considering games like The Division are 70gb! There are m.2 SSDs which looks like a little RAM chip that screws into the motherboard, and normal SATA SSDs, which look like a laptop hard drive size. SATA may be easier to install.

The video card market is supposed to be really crazy right now because of bitcoin miners. I wish they would all go back to panning for gold, :(

Don't think of it as being "really out of date", but think of it as you can skip all the bad games, and just play only the good ones with the benefit of crowd-sourced hindsight, LOL.

I like the idea of you going back and getting a ton of old games for really cheap. Maybe go back and read some GiantBomb Game of the Year lists, for the last couple of years, and pick up the titles that are mentioned a lot on the cheap on Steam, GOG, or Humble Store, starting with the oldest and working forward.

Not sure if you've done anything with the PS4, but you could get a used one and a stack of good used games on disc for a small amount of money.

Also Google the term PUBG, and pensively contemplate why millions of people are playing basically a standalone Arma 2 mod.......Perhaps, try the free to play "Fortnite: Battle Royale" first to get the gist of it. I can imagine that jumping right into PUBG would be very frustrating if you get viciously murdered over and over. I recommend 4 player matchmaking to get in a squad of stone cold killers to learn the ropes.

And most of all: HAVE FUN!!!

Also, I highly recommend Tom's Hardware articles for best video card for the money, best PC build for the money, tiered by budget. Really helpful!

http://www.tomshardware.com/t/builds/

Witcher 3, Metal Gear Solid V and Hitman are games you want to play.

I know it might be asking too much, but is a desktop really out of the question? Perhaps connecting it to your TV to save space and not have to connect it to desk? The reason I ask is because you are going to get SO much more power from a gaming standpoint and your $$$ is going to go so much further. Its really night and day and I highly recommend seeing if there's anyway you could swing a desktop. Building a micro desktop is an option these days and they're small but would still offer the power.

@damoo recommended checking out prebuilt machines. I second this, with a caveat/caution. I went prebuilt about 2 years ago because I got a great deal on it. The thing is a beast, and is still a beast *BUT* adding/removing components is nearly impossible. I got burned on that and am now having to look at rebuilding as I need more storage space but I can't do it with the case and components I have. This is due to the way that the case was built and put together. They are *NOT* all like this, so you can still go this route and get a great deal. Just be aware of what you're getting and do your research.

GPU prices are definitely stupidly high because of crypto miners. Its just something to be aware of. It doesn't mean to hold off building a machine or getting a laptop, just be aware of the fact that this is a thing.

RAM prices are also high so, be aware of that. You can still get machines for a decent cost overall, but if you thought the cost may have come down over the past 3-4 years, sadly that's not the case.

Enjoy the process and welcome back to PC gaming!

Wait.

Sean Astin was in Encino Man?

Is this video still relevant at this point?

@jacjon: Noooot really. The fact that he mentioned "sata and not those ribbon cables" shows how crazy outdated that video is. But the general parts are still the same. Are you looking at building a PC?

I am looking at building one in the very near future, yes.

@jacjon: Once you get to that point. let me know your budget and the games you want to play and I can help you figure out parts to use via pcpartpicker.com. Just know Power supply, Graphic Cards and RAM prices are all super inflated right now so it isn't the BEST time to build a budget PC, but still doable.

Agree that these are high priority.

Also:

• Zelda BOTW
• Horizon ZD
• Shovel Knight
• Bloodborne
• Rocket League
• Hollow Knight
• XCom 2 (with all DLC)
• Ori and the blind forest
• Axiom Verge
• Thumper
• Firewatch
• PUBG
• Hacknet
• both Wolfensteins