Parenting is an experience that I never take for granted. I have three children – two sons, 10 and 12, and a daughter, aged 14 – I have been fortunate enough to watch them grow and form their own interests and beliefs. My boys are game enthusiasts. They play countless games every day, and when not playing, they are watching streaming players or YouTube videos to learn the latest “tricks”. My daughter already plays video games, but she likes to play a random series of movies on Netflix or Hulu.
Last fall, I had the opportunity to build a gaming PC with my boys. We used NZXT’s BLD Kit guided them through every step with a playful book. At the end of the experience, when the PC boots into Windows, my eldest son commented, “I started this project as a boy, and now I’m leaving as a man.” We both learned a lot about what makes a computer, well, a computer, and we got to spend some quality time together – which is increasingly rare for them to age.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I felt a little guilty about letting my daughter off the construction project. So when AMD contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to build a gaming PC with my kids, I jumped at the chance.
But this time, my daughter will be by my side. Connect wires, install components, and do everything else one does while putting a PC together.
Over the course of a week, mysterious boxes popped up with various parts and components sent to me by AMD to finish building a gaming PC. Here’s everything my daughter and I used:
The parts we’ve used make up a solid mid-range gaming PC for those looking to play big titles, (I’ll dive into performance more deeply here in a minute) but you don’t have to spend nearly 1,500 dollars to build your own gaming PC. For example, you can buy a CPU that comes with Store CPU cooler instead of buying an add-on. The NZXT 510 Elite case is awesome because it has all the RGB lights built in, but a basic PC case will workalso.
While the GPU might be the most expensive part of any build, you don’t need to spend $580 on one to get a reliable gaming experience. Graphics card prices continue to fall, with cards like RTX 3050 is $359or Radeon RX 6600 for $299. Either card will play games like Fortnite, the latest Call of Duty and the like.
If you’re having trouble figuring out the parts list for a gaming PC build, NewEgg’s PC Builder is a great tool to help you find parts within a specific budget while keeping compatibility in mind.
If you’re second guessing on your build, you can always post on the subreddit Build a computer where you can ask for advice and get input.
My plan for this build was to walk my daughter through everything, explaining what each part or component is and how to do it once we did. And when we do, I show her my usual PC build troubleshooting steps.
It didn’t take long after we started, I realized the build was going to be a little different. It makes the most sense to my daughter when she acts as if she’s having surgery, treating different components as body parts. For example, the CPU is the heart. The motherboard is the brain. The CPU cooler is the lungs, and the GPU is the eyes.
Over the course of two days, we spent about four hours, just the two of us, working on her first PC build. I would do my best to explain like dad what we were doing and why, and mom would make me laugh by acting like she was paying attention. But those are the moments between me explaining how to properly install the RAM stick and not having to worry about pressing down too hard when the real magic happens.
We can chat and talk about life, or other random nonsense, without any of the interruptions that come with a family of five.
There was a small celebration and peak year when we turned on the PC for the first time and we were greeted with a BIOS screen. Since that time, she has installed Windows 11 Home herself with almost no guidance from me.
After we finished the build, I installed and ran some benchmarks to get a good idea of how this setup would compare to the best setup gaming desktops that I reviewed last year. Benchmarks provide a reliable baseline for the performance of a given device.
And the results are right where I would expect a system with these specifications to end up – right in the middle.
Running Geekbench 5, this build scored 1,613 for single-core and 8,715 for multi-core processor performance. The Geekbench OpenCL test gives a result of 125,209. Each of those scores are higher than the low-end pre-configured gaming PCs I’ve tested, but not as high as the three- to four-thousand dollar systems I’ve tested. Running the PCMark 10 benchmark test, this build scored an average of 772, again it’s in the middle of the pack.
What does that mean in real-world usage? You won’t have any problems performing common tasks like surfing the web, shopping, checking email, watching videos or listening to music. You also won’t notice any problems when editing video or audio.
On the gaming front, I spent a few quick Fortnite matches. With all the graphics settings on the Epic and the resolution set to 1080p, I saw an average of 120 to 130 fps (fps). Obviously, 60 fps is generally seen as the standard. The higher up there the better.
With the resolution going up to 2K (2560 x 1440), the fps drops from 85 to 100. Both results are respectable and suggest that it should be fine. PC gaming just started.
BIOS is a word I doubt my daughter will remember, and I can’t blame it. But I hope she recalls the feeling of having built something with her own hands and my guidance.
Really, I felt her pride after she finished installing Windows 11 Home herself, choosing a name for the computer, and using the NZXT Cam software to turn on the RGB lighting in the “all-color” case.
If you and your kids are interested in games, computers, or a combination of the two, I can’t recommend that you share your experience of building a gaming PC together. It is well worth the investment.
