So my eight-year-old wants a desktop PC. He’s kind of a budding gamer, but right now, he almost exclusively plays Roblox on his iPad and will definitely carry this over to the PC. As he gets older, he may want to graduate to more demanding titles. On the other hand, he may also get bored with it and stick with consoles and mobile gaming.

I don’t want to spend a ton on a PC for a very young child who may not take to PC gaming seriously, but I also want to get something that might be upgradeable as he grows if he wants to join the PC master race.

In my research, I came across this.

The recommendation I saw in PCMag that led me to the PC above suggested that the integrated graphics with the Ryzen 5 5600G could serve as a starting point for low level gaming and allow me to spend on a GPU card later if it’s justified. The price and functionality appear to offer exactly the path I want.

I’ve seen other, more expensive versions of this pre-built, and I’ve also looked at the possibility of building it myself. I like this particular chip because it’s only a generation or so back and it still appears to be well-regarded by the community. If I went with one of the cheap old workstation conversions, I’d be limited by proprietary hardware and fewer options–a lot of the stuff out there, especially Intel stuff, is very old and won’t be able to run Windows 11 when it becomes necessary. What I’m finding suggests this path could see us through quite a few years to come and allow us to upgrade as needed.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here, or does this seem like it could work the way I want?

UPDATE: I’ve decided to buy the pre built deal I found with the 6500G. I would like to go to a fancier build, but the price of the AM5 chips and motherboards takes them off of the table for me right now. I think what I’m getting will be good enough as some of you have said.

Thanks to everyone for your help! If y’all are interested, I’ll post an update when I get it.