My computer has decided it's too tired to go on and it's been years since I had to get a new one.
Can someone give me a guideline of what I need to get to be able to play games.

Thank you!

Ana

You'll want at least 16 GB of memory.
If money is tight, at least 12 GB.

Pretty much any modern processor will do for adventure games.
I'd get a Ryzen, but it's up to you.
At least a quad core for a gaming machine.

You may want both a hard drive and an SSD. If you need a lot of disk space for storage, hard drives are still less expensive per GB. SSD's are faster and some games recommend them, but some games are really large.

The most important thing is the video card, and you'll need a power supply that provides enough power to support the video card along with the hard drive, the rest of the computer, and any USB peripherals you plan to use.

As for which video card, check the "recommended" system requirements of the most demanding game you play, or want to play. Usually you can just type the name of the game and the words "system requirements" in a search engine. You may see something like these, which are two sites I often use:
https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=23342&game=Divinity:%20Original%20Sin%20II

or this
https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/divinity-original-sin-2/13396

So those websites recommend
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 or AMD R9 280

You'd want a card at least that fast to play that particular game.

For something like Quern,
https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/quern-undying-thoughts/15090
or
https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=24343&game=Quern%20-%20Undying%20Thoughts

recommend
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 270 HIS IceQ X²
or nVidia GeForce GTX 950

You probably want a video card with at least 4 GB of video memory if you're playing any demanding 3D games.

I don't know what the most demanding adventure game is these days. Most of what I play now is the Carol Reed games and pixel art games like those from Wadjet Eye, and a few casual games -- games that run fine on computers over 10 years old. Motion sickness saves me a lot of money.

So a lot depends on what you play, but you want to plan for the most demanding game you want to play, not the average.

Draclvr would probably know more since I think she still plays modern adventures and Darkside games.

New graphics cards aren't always any better than older ones. NVidia is notorious for rebranding their old cards, often with the only modifications being to save on manufacturing cost. So you may want to either check benchmarks for a particular card or ask in here if you're looking at a particular card. You can put the name of the card and the word "benchmark" into a search engine.

For an example, here are two similar cards by different manufacturers
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125963
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125906

You can type
GTX 1060 vs Radeon RX 580
into a search engine and find benchmarks or comparisons
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-RX-580-vs-GeForce-GTX-1060
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1060-6GB-vs-AMD-RX-580/3639vs3923

You can also check older cards versus new ones of the same manufacturer to see if the newer one is really faster. Video memory won't effect the speed of the benchmarks, though it may effect whether you have a slowdown when playing your game for hours.

Definitely agree on the GTX 1060 (for Darkside games), that's a great card at its price point between $200-400 depending on the version. So far, Nvidia's 10 series hasn't seen as much of the rebranding issue, this vid does a nice job in showing the performance from the 1050Ti-1080 GTX ---> GTX 1050 Ti vs. GTX 1060 vs. GTX 1070 vs. GTX 1080 (Frame-Rate Test) . While visually it's hard to see the difference in the vid, the stats tell the story accurately.

I currently run a 1070 and previously ran a 1060, both EVGA OC cards and can see a noticeable difference in clarity, lighting effects and stutter reduction from one to the other - that's playing fairly demanding Darkside games on a regular basis. The price jump from the 1060 to 1070 is fairly substantial though, add $100-200 to the 1060 base price, again depending on the version (onboard memory, clock speed and so on)

TM

Excellent posts from Jenny and Trail. Nvidia seems to have learned their lesson from the 2015 rebranding debacle. That video Trail posted is a good one... the stats don't lie.

But the bottom line is always going to be your budget. I'm still running a 3rd generation Core i5 3470 and a GTX 660Ti and can play games like Witcher 3 on the highest settings with no issues. Also played both Bioshock games and the new Prey game on high settings. The GTX 1060 or 1070 will get you a lot of gaming power. The 1080 runs the price into the stratosphere for me! The new 2000 series cards are pushing $1,000! And of course, a good power supply to run it all... definitely no less than 650 wats.

I'm flying out to Denver on Sunday to build a gaming computer with my almost 15 years old grandson. His mom and dad told him if he could bring up his grades, he could build a gaming rig with Grandma - which he's been wanting to do for years. So, he's getting all A's and taking honors classes! I shopped the sales like mad between Thanksgiving and Christmas and got some really good deals. I got an 8th generation Coffee Lake Core i7 CPU for a bit over $300 and a GTX 1070 Ti for about $475. The motherboard is a 300 series Asus to match up with the 300 series CPU. Had to match up the 16 GB of Ram to that motherboard too. I think the whole thing came to about $1200 even counting the Windows 10 Pro download I scored for only $80. He's using my old Antec 900 case and my power supply to save a couple hundred bucks - I shipped everything out there a couple of weeks ago. I think mom and dad are kicking in about $800, he's using about $200 of his own money and grandpa and grandma are paying for the rest.

So, once you know your budget, you can start shopping! eCollegePC is a good place to put computers together to compare prices for different components even if you don't buy from them.

Now, that is what I call a wonderful Grandma and pa!!!!

Thanks, Winfrey... but it's all about the kids!

I don't know why I didn't get any notifications on my post, I thought no one answered me! You all are the best! Thank you so very much! I installed a new hared drive and just finished setting up all the major needs for now but my goal is to get me a new computer to replace my gaming one which is ancient by the end of the year. Your input helps me greatly!

Ana

Ha, ha! We were here!