[SOLVED] A Gaming PC Built By A 9-Year-Old

[Moe Alsayed]

Hi all!

I hope everyone is staying safe.

In return for excellent grades in school, I bought some parts for my 9-year-old son to build his own gaming PC. My condition to him was that he needs to do all the research, decide on parts, and learn how to build it all by himself.

The components he chose were a z490 board, Core i7 10700, 32GB ram, 2070 super graphics. And lots of RGB fans.

He has since been doing some summer work, and I already promised him that he can upgrade up to a budget of $1,000 plus whatever he makes from his summer work (let's assume a total of $1,500.

My question to all the experts out there is: What upgrades and/or changes would you recommend to improve his gaming experience? All of this would be connected to a 1080p TV (so no 4K capability would be needed). He mainly plays Fortnite, Robolox, and some FPS games (obviously ones without any inappropriate visuals such as excessive blood & guts, etc.)

While I do have a little basic PC knowledge, I'm a Mac user, so I'm no expert by any means when it comes to choosing the right parts for a PC build or upgrade. So any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanking you all in advance. And please stay safe.

Moe.

Mod Edit - No Self Promotion/.YouTube Channel Links

 

[jeremyj_83]

He is going to need a pretty beefy CPU cooler as the 10th Gen Intel can suck up a lot of power. While the CPU is listed as a 65W TDP, Intel allows for it to draw up to 224W for 28 seconds. That means if you don't have a big cooling system it will throttle down due to CPU temps getting very high. An alternative to that would be to use a Ryzen 7 3700X, that is a 65W TDP CPU that maxes at 88W and comes with a cooler rated for 125W. You can add a different cooler with a higher TDP just to keep the system quieter. You would need an AMD motherboard that supports the Ryzen 3000 series out of the box. Those would be any X570 or B550 motherboard as well as all MSI B450/X470 motherboards in the MAX series.