Hello all, I'm looking to get back into old gaming after being away for some time.

Basically I'm looking to buy a desktop pc to play games such as -

Quake series
Amid evil
Monkey island
Ion fury
System shock

And various of games from the 90s to late 2000s

I'm not looking to break the bank, but as the last pc I bought was way back in 2004 I'm a little behind on modern pc's atm

Would a hp pavilion 690 0011na or similarbe too much for these games?

Any help would be appreciated :)

If you have even a little bit of mechanical skill and the space for a desktop as opposed to a laptop, you could do very well by putting together a PC out of parts bought on ebay and Amazon, for example. You will get better performance for your money with a desktop as opposed to a laptop and you will get better value for money with used parts as opposed to new parts.

There are plenty of youtube channels that can help with the process and one I would recommend is RandomGaminginHD.
I don't know what your budget is, but since you are just getting back into gaming and seem to want to play older and less demanding games, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKLL7PKRVvo&t

A half decent laptop should be able to run those games just fine,..... for about 6 months before you get laptop slowdown!
Whereas desktops dont seem to suffer laptop slowdown.

(On the other hand, i have a sneaking suspicion that if you disable windows updates on any laptop, it wont slow down over time)

But if i was in the OP's position, i would probably just take a snapshot of second hand desktops for sale and just buy the most average one i could find for my budget..... i'm sure that will do the job for the OP!

A quick look at used desktops in the UK finds me several suitable ones, for the games you listed, £130-200. If the graphics are too weak, you can add a graphics card that draws all its power from the socket, like an Nvidia GT1030.

This was in a shop so they give a few months of guarantee.

This is without monitor, keyboard and mouse.


Calling the Pavillion that you linked to a "Gaming Desktop PC" is stretching it a bit if you play 3D games from after 2010 but it should fill your listed needs just fine. Why? Nvidias weakest graphics card from their current generation is around 50% faster than the Nvidia GTX 1050.

Thanks for the replies :)

I was looking at laptops for games but I believe a desktop would be cheaper.

I've recently dug my old pc out and it seems to run fine, but I'm not certain that it'll handle games from here or steam.

It's an alienware, running win xp, but was built to run doom 3 and hl2 so it's pretty ancient. May just download some games and see how they go

A laptop would work too of course, even a used one as long as it is not too old.

I would never buy a second hand graphics card & doubly so in the age of bitcoin mining.
Ram yes.
Motherboard based on inspection.
SSD based off initial purchase date being only at most 2 years old.
power supply you'd want to be 100% on.

Personally I'd wait till AMD has some decent competition going, but hey that could be waiting a long time.
SSD pricing at the moment is fairly good and DDR4 seems to be coming down albiet not dropping back to a rational price.
I managed to snag a 1tb 3000mhz+ NVMe M.2 drive for like $200 off amazon not that long ago so 2-300 for that and at minimum a 1660ti. Use one of those for OS and your base game folder.
Forget massive amounts of cores for your cpu you still only want 4-6 and they should run hard (and natively [without hyperthreading]).
I'm hearing the new zen2+ 7nm CPU's can be fitted to a last gen motherboard with a bios update (ask for it to be done by the store selling it; and don't take my word on it [check]) which could shave off about $150.
Oh and don't pay 2k for one of their bent 2k gaming monitors; monitor frequency can be good up to 144hz, but you really have to know what you need here.
Personally I sit about a meter away from my monitor most of the time and simply put a 40" screen at 4k is the biz for that range; I'm pretty sure there's something around that resolution and size at 100hz, but the market is just in the initial stages of the technology adoptation curve (in lamens terms lots of half decent products, emphasis on the 'half' and lots of price gouging).
Don't go a huge case, trust me on this i've had a cooler master cosmos.
Cost me $300, you could jump onto it and it'd barely flex due to being solid steel... novelty wears off and you start pissing and moaning about the weight even moving it between rooms.
Get an itx with a small case to form fit it with a handle; gut what you don't need make sure the cooling direction etc. makes sense (or more importantly there is enough of it); screw a handle on the bad boy somewhere that won't tear off (unlike a side panel for instance) and start cursing windows for still being the only real pc gaming platform piece of $#!7 that it is.

That's my 2 cents anyways.

Oh yeah and monitors are a pretty good investment or at least they use to be.
They just seem to last really well; more is always better if you accrue others latter.
Peripherals really are a matter of taste (I personally want a wireless mmo finger mouse... was something that was close a good investment... well you can never seem to get what you want and logitech is king in battery life ATM [months]).
The worst component as an investment is arguably the GPU, but i mean what gaming are you going to do without one; better to live with the fact buying just at the level to which you need is less rapey when it dies just outside of warranty than to spend 2k on the latest and greatest to be superceded next fiscal quarter AND still not last.
really on technology moving forwards in that respect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/wiki/builds

Check out Starter build. You can change components to fit your needs more precisely.

Possibly buying a second hand PC on the private sale would be the way to go.

The reason i say that is because i can remember all the times when i have sold a computer..... and every time i am wiping the sweat from my brow thinking about how much money i sank into that pc and not getting a fraction of it back on the sale.... So, why not be the person at the other end of that situation getting the great deal??

If you're feeling really adventurous, you can try one of those PC sticks. Most of them have an Atom processor, with 2-4GB of RAM, and abou 20 GB free of space (some expandable with flash cards). They're about the size of a Firestick and run about $100-$300. Just plug it into an HDMI port on a monitor/TV, and USB transceiver for keyboard/mouse.

Should be able to play games from the early 2000's and earlier. There was a video floating around youtube with someone running Skyrim at about 20fps with one of them (all video setting set to low).

Hi, here is an approximate assembly for an average gaming PC, for different components and price. This will let you know if you need it.
Personally, I’ll say that the technique is still worth updating at least once every 2-3 years, you can put any emulator on modern computers and play even the most ancient games :) Here, https://www.bestadvisor.com/best-gaming-pcs a comparison of the assembly of PC components. I advise you in advance to think carefully about what you want from your PC

I'd advise you to buy the parts individually and assemble the PC yourself, you can find guides on how to do this on youtube or wherever. If not you can still find pre-assembled PCs at prices which aren't too much over the base cost of the parts if you look hard enough. Don't buy Dell or Alienware machines.