How to Get Started in PC Gaming

hey guys level-cap here today I have some tips for people who want to get into PC gaming for the first time computer gaming offers a lot of benefits when compared to a traditional console gaming like access to a larger volume of games free multiplayer service better graphics options and the ability to create a system that caters to your specific needs as a gamer of course this also comes with the complications of PC gaming who do I buy from how much money should I spend what's a good mouse and keyboard or graphics card what mouse sensitivity should I use and many more questions hopefully we can get through all the major questions in today's video but before we get into it I have a quick word from our sponsors today's video is sponsored by Dollar Shave Club we all know Dollar Shave Club offers high quality inexpensive razors delivered to your doorstep but did you know that they can also handle your complete grooming experience you can customize the kit they send you to include things 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lot more than console gaming this isn't necessarily true especially for the thrifty individual you can certainly build an entry level gaming PC for the cost of a brand new and if you factor in the money saved from Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus those savings can be put towards bumping your system specs that much further in my opinion though there is a bit of a sweet spot for system building at around 600 to 800 dollars where you can get a very capable entry-level PC that will allow you to play competitively and all the latest multiplayer games regardless of your budget though I'd like this guy to be all-inclusive so let's start off with the tower build that big box in which all your components are housed there are many companies that can ship you a pre-built computer and if you've never built or worked with a PC before this is a decent option to start with however it's important to research PC builders as often the cheapest builders mean you're going to get a lot of bloatware pre-installed on your computer's operating system and probably get a PC built with some of the lowest cost and less reliable components this isn't necessarily always a bad way to go in fact that's how I learned how to build pcs I got something cheap and started to replace the components one by one over several years until the only thing left in my original build was just the case now if you're up to the challenge of building from scratch you can save a little bit of money but you have to make sure you do the research if you plug everything in and the computer won't turn on it's up to you to troubleshoot and figure out what you did wrong so really I'd only recommend this option for first-time PC gamers if you know someone experienced who can help you put it all together building a PC is a lot easier than it used to be and for the most part all you need is a screwdriver and an anti-static cable but it's not to say it doesn't come with its own pitfalls in you got to know a little bit about what you're doing alright so say you want to avoid custom building your first PC but you also don't want to build a really cheap PC that comes with bloatware and is prone to failure ordering from a high-end company can come with a lot of benefits companies like Origin PC which full disclosure I am sponsored by offers things like 24/7 tech support high-end parts professional overclocking that makes buying and setting up a much easier process I'm personally so busy these days that it makes a lot of sense for me to buy pre-built rather than custom build my own computer and even with 20 plus years of experience it can be nice to have a tech support line to call up when I have some complicated questions regardless of which route you choose to go you'll still need to pick your hardware even on custom PC building sites things can be a little bit complicated because you have to choose a motherboard CPU Ram GPU also known as a graphics card hard drives and usually a bunch of other miscellaneous components I would always recommend doing a little bit of research before randomly picking any of your parts but where do you start with this process as it's probably very daunting jumping into a sea of random computer components and trying to figure out which ones you want well say you're getting a computer to play a specific game most PC gamers or people getting into PC play or focus on one or two specific games if that game was for example battlefield 5 EA has listed minimum and recommended system requirements to play that game comfortably in fact you can search for system requirements for most games that'll give you an idea of what hardware you need to play unfortunately sometimes the hardware listed can be a little bit older and it can be tricky figuring out how an old GPU compares to a new GPU generally speaking newer graphics cards tend to be faster than old ones but you can always look at something like Tom's Hardware GPU benchmarks to confirm GPU speeds and make sure that what you're buying is in fact fast enough to play the recommended requirements of a game the same goes for your processor aka CPU as a small amount of research will go a long way letting you know what you're getting in terms of game performance when it comes to CPUs though a good rule of thumb is to look at clock speed instead of cores most games benefit far greater from faster clock speeds instead of lots of course this can be a bit misleading as more expensive CPUs may actually play games slower because they have lots of cores but slower clock speeds you game oriented pc builders like origin PC will have pre-selected gaming CPUs for you to select from that way you can't pick a CPU that's not going to be very good at playing games if you want to dig a little bit deeper into your cpu benchmark you can even find specific games that you're interested in playing and see how each CPU performs with those games so if you wanted to build a PC specifically for Battlefield you could find the best processor for Battlefield now selecting all of your hardware components can take a little while without question two of the most important parts of your PC are the CPU and GPU but be sure not to neglect a little research on ram motherboards and hard drives before throwing them up on your PC build list reliability is important with these items especially motherboards Amazon reviews can be a good place to figure out if the motherboard you have selected is worth the money also many motherboards come with expensive features you probably won't use on your first gaming PC expensive surround sound options Wi-Fi fancy raid controllers overclocking features etc most gaming PC's don't need a lot of the bells and whistles so don't waste your money on a motherboard in which you're only going to use 10% of the expensive features there are plenty of good inexpensive options out there now we could literally talk about internal computer hardware all day but for the sake of actually completing this guide let's move on to computer peripherals this is another part of PC building where costs can fluctuate massively depending on what you want keyboards mice monitors headphones can all be cheap or insanely expensive fortunately for the consumers though years of competition and hardware refinement means that there's plenty of good inexpensive options starting off with monitors probably the most important peripheral of your PC if you're going the budget gaming route you'll certainly want to look at a 1080p resolution screen that's 1920 by 1080 pixels the P actually stands for progressive not pixels but it's a barely relevant term these days as almost all displays are progressive now if you're playing shooters you'll absolutely want something with a greater refresh rate than 60 it says this is one of the main advantages of PC gaming over console gaming usually if a monitor doesn't state its refresh rate or Hertz on the sales page it means it's a standard 60 Hertz refresh rate if you haven't played it over 60 frames per second well then you're in for a real treat with PC gaming Acer Asus and Ben Q all make good options in this area and currently you can get a 144 Hertz refresh rate monitor for under $200 24 to 27 inches is pretty common sizing for most desktop setups bigger than that and you're gonna want to push the monitor further back on your desk and I don't personally recommend anything bigger than 27 inches for competitive PC gaming also do not buy a TV for PC gaming make sure it's a monitor yes it's possible to PC game on a TV but they are rarely designed with good latency and gaming features now say you're willing to spend a little bit more money in the monitor department a 1440 resolution high refresh rate g-sync IPS panel can make an ugly game look good IPS technology offers amazing color accuracy and gsync for NVIDIA GPUs or free sync for AMD GPUs allows for good visuals with a fluctuating framerate most PC games offer vsync options that match your framerate to the monitor refresh rate to avoid screen tearing but it almost always comes with issues like input lag so g-sync and free sync are designed to solve this problem now a higher resolution display will always look better when slowly panning your camera around a game environment but if you're interested in fast-paced competitive gaming especially with shooters then opting for a faster frame rate is always more beneficial than higher resolution if you have to pick one or the other I would say go for frame rate now of course if you have crazy money to spend you can always get one of the new 4k 144 Hertz panels but they're not only crazy expensive but you need a monster PC to drive them properly getting one of these panels as you're just getting into PC gaming is like getting your driver's license and buying a Bugatti it doesn't make a whole lot of sense until you really know what you do but if you want a little bit more info one what one of these monster panels can do for your gaming experience check out the video I made I'll link it in the video description absolutely be sure to do your research on gaming monitors as it's one of the more important components in any gaming build it blows my mind how often people play games on a 60 Hertz panel when they can run the game at over a hundred frames per second don't be that guy get a good high refresh rate monitor they are cheaper than ever now mice keyboards and mouse pads are easy items to waste your money on if you don't know what you want it can also be one of the more difficult areas if you're not able to test the feeling of a keyboard or a mouse in person sometimes it's best to buy these items in a local store where you can return them if you really don't enjoy how they feel as it's different for everyone nowadays the most popular gaming mice from razer logitech rocket SteelSeries are pretty safe bets but even so if you don't like the feeling of a mouse then that's that hand size and mouse size can be somewhat incompatible and my best recommendation here is to test as much as you can if your gaming mouse grip is bad you can get hand cramps and develop bad hand posture habits personally i'm using an expensive wireless logitech g9o 3 but they have much cheaper wired options as well i also really like the razer deathadder Roccat Kone and cone cure expect to spend around 40 to 50 dollars on a good gaming mouse now high-end mouse pads are one of those things that usually get a little too over marketed and colorized with silly looks I've been using the SteelSeries qck heavy for years and I just recently got another one do not limit yourself with a small mouse pad as it will dictate your mouse sensitivity many competitive first-person shooter gamers use an average of 40 centimeters or more to perform a full 360 degree turn in a game this isn't doable on a small mousepad now over the years as a gamer I went from high sensitivity to low sensitivity when I was playing with high sensitivity I wanted is little resistance on my mousepad as possible so I went for one of the harder mouse mats glass can work or some of the harder textured plastic mouse mats can work really well for this is you want as little resistance to make micro movements however if you start to play with a lower sensitivity and generally have bigger movements using something with medium resistance can help you finesse your aim quite a bit people have been arguing about what the best mouse sensitivity is since the dawn of competitive PC gaming basically but the truth of the matter is there's no right answer here you just don't want to limit yourself to a small mousepad and high sensitivity give yourself some options at the start especially if you're getting into gaming I highly recommend trying a lot of different options how about keyboards they tend to be a little less important for entry level gaming high-end mechanical switches are the big things companies advertise these days but they probably won't be that important for an entry-level gamer again razer logitech and most of the other big brand-name companies offer good options here currently I'm using a razer blackwidow tournament edition chroma version to stealth keyboard Jesus that's a long name you don't need this keyboard it's cool and expensive and I appreciate the quieter keystrokes that don't annoy the people I'm gaming with but really any well reviewed $30.00 gaming keyboard on Amazon should do the trick be careful with the linear MX switches though if you've never used them before it can be fun to play around with different types of mechanical switches and see what works best for you but I recommend from the start going with something in the middle ground like Cherry MX browns or something like that something with enough resistance so you're not clicking things by accident in game also if you do a lot of voice communication you might want to go for some of the quieter switches out there which is why I bought the stealth edition of my keyboard because it doesn't pick up on your microphone as much and it annoys the people you're gaming with a lot less let's move on to headsets so obviously so much of gaming these days is done online playing with friends using voice comms don't be that guy who uses bookshelf speakers or monitor speakers and blast teammates with tons of background noise every time you shoot your gun or even with push-to-talk setup it still can be insanely annoying when you're playing with somebody who uses speakers a gaming headset with a built-in microphone is a good straightforward option to receive audio and transmit clean audio to your teammates picking a headset however is deeply personal comfort is obviously a huge factor here I have a large head size so there aren't a lot of headsets that fit me comfortably also if my head gets too hot I get a bit irritable so I like to use open-back headphones that breathe a lot better and dissipate the heat you also have to consider what kind of gaming you do do you like deep cinematic experiences with good bass or are you more interested in deciphering all the nuanced audio around you to better locate your enemies you often have to decide between these two features and I find that a lot of the lesser expensive gaming headset options focus on bass and like kind of richer sounds that aren't necessarily as good for competitive gaming you can certainly play with them just fine but once you start to refine your taste and headphones and sound quality or what you're looking for you might want to opt for something a little more expensive really for PC gaming you have unlimited options especially if you're willing to break up your headphones and your microphone into different components then the sky's the limit with what you use years ago when I was on a tighter budget I was using the standard pair of logitech gaming headsets they were fine but they ultimately broke and I ended up getting a pair of audio Technica's and have never looked back talking about the sound equipment anymore it's gonna get a little dangerous as we'll just go down the audio file path and honestly it's just endless with the amount of hardware and setups that you can mess around with for the ultimate experience anyway I really wanted to put together a basic guide for somebody getting into PC gaming who doesn't know a lot about it there is a huge amount of information here it doesn't have to be overly complicated when you first start out and learning about hardware and equipment and technology along the way it can be a really fun process as it was for me you certainly don't need to spend a huge amount of money to be competitive in PC gaming and just many things in life the more money you throw at something will give you diminishing returns so the difference between a six to eight hundred dollar PC and five thousand dollar PC can be somewhat significant but it doesn't mean the person on the lesser Hardware is gonna get demolished by the guy on the higher end system I've seen plenty of amazing gamers on really low end Hardware anyway I hope this guide helps you guys out as always thanks for watching and I'll see you next time this is level-cap signing off [Music]

Channel: LevelCapGaming

Views: 1,011,692

Rating: 4.8909669 out of 5

Keywords: pc gaming, pc, gaming pc, gaming, pc games, pc gamers, microsoft, fortnite, ps4, xbox, pc vs xbox, gamers, pc master race, xbox one, computer, pc vs console, pc build, getting into pc gaming, pc gaming information, pc gaming in general, pc exclusives, upcoming pc exclusives, things you need to know about pc gaming, positives about pc gaming, negatives about pc gaming, pc gaming cons, pc gaming pros, things to know about pc gaming, pc gaming things to know

Id: q-j2RDqsp1g

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 31 2018