Advice on buying an OLD gaming PC/Laptop

  • Thread starter m355y
  • 3 comments
  • 609 views
m355y

m355y

496
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
I'm posting this here mainly because I've just spent a while Googling this, scouring Reddit etc and am still none the wiser.

I'm in no way a PC guy - I'm not technically minded with that kind of thing, I've never had a gaming PC really. And there's the problem. I've missed out, over the years, on so many games that look incredible- Geoff Crammond's GP series, Mobil Rally Championship, F1 Challenge '99-02, that kind of era. Richard Burns Rally!! And it dawned on me that now might be the time to track down some old gaming PC in the dusty corner of a secondhand shop and start experiencing some of these - better late than never etc. A couple of years ago (during Covid) I got into all the retro consoles etc, but the PC side remains a foreign language to me.

So really I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice on where to find something, what specs/operating systems/graphics cards etc would be needed for some of those games, and roughly what kind of prices these things go for in 2024? I really never expected to find it so difficult to research this!
 

PCGamingWiki PCGW - an encyclopedia of PC game fixes

www.pcgamingwiki.com www.pcgamingwiki.com

Good resource to get started in terms of system requirements to look for. (And possible workarounds y'all might need, how I got THPS4/THUG1/THUG2 working fullscreen on a Windows 8.1 laptop)

Computerwise, you'd be looking at a Windows XP/Vista/7 machine from ~2005-2010. More specific parts to get will depend on what else you intend to play amd what those games need.
 
Thanks. I find this all so confusing, I'll be honest. I've looked at the system requirements for, say, a game like GP3. And then at graphics cards and the prices are all over the shop, some are a tenner and some are hundreds of pounds. Then the operating systems etc, seems XP and before for the older games but then people saying XP can't go online anymore, then I look at another game released at a similar time (Mobil Rally Championship, for instance), and it's all different. I have the ultimate respect for anyone who can make sense of it and I wish I was better researched on it all.
 
Hi there. I would advise against buying an old/used PC precisely because the technical stuff is overwhelming you, and if you can get a buddy that's into PC gaming that would be a helpful guide also. Since you have established your parameters (old PC games) it's time to work a budget, and maybe looking for YouTube videos of cheap builds you get into the subject.

Also, keep in mind, with a PC comes the peripherals (monitor, keyboard, mouse, game pad, headphones...) and the OS (just download Windows 10).
 

Latest Posts

Back