General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Maineac1 on November 07, 2025, 08:12:06 AM
Title: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Maineac1 on November 07, 2025, 08:12:06 AM
What's the best, middle of the road priced Gaming PC available from a store that will work well in AH3. Graphics, speed, etc. I have a very old PC and this stuff is not in my wheelhouse. ( Bestbuy, Costco, etc...) Thanks in advance
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Max on November 07, 2025, 08:28:59 AM
Minimum requirements as per the the HTC website: Requirements Aces High III CPU/Processor: 2.4 Ghz OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10 System Memory: 4 GB Video Card: DirectX 9.0 512MB NVidia 9800GTX class, or better Internet Connection: A 28.8 modem or faster Internet connection Sound Card: DirectX compatible sound card Input Devices: Joystick or mouse. Optional:Speakers, microphone, or VR headsets (Oculus or HTC).
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: mERv on November 07, 2025, 08:37:36 AM
I don’t have any good advice. I’m a degenerate who has always bought low end or mid grade laptops on sale from pawn shops. I’m usually in for $700 for x2 machines @$30 a month per subscription.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Maineac1 on November 07, 2025, 08:40:23 AM
I don’t have any good advice. I’m a degenerate who has always bought low end or mid grade laptops on sale from pawn shops. I’m usually in for $700 for x2 machines @$30 a month per subscription.
Is that you FineTime........?
me also, but for the price, looking for a mild upgrade for the money.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: The Fugitive on November 07, 2025, 08:57:31 AM
me also, but for the price, looking for a mild upgrade for the money.
For Aces High, pretty much any new "gaming" computer will be more than enough. If on the other hand you are going to be playing other, newer games.... you might need a bit more.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: hazmatt on November 07, 2025, 08:59:50 AM
Most likely your GPU is the bottleneck. I picked up a RX 570 for $49 on Amazon which is like 8 times the speed of the 9800GTX.
My kids use the RX 570 with a 3470 (almost 14 year old CPU) with 16GB of RAM and their computers are capable of running AH3 at max detail in 1080P and in VR (depending on the headset)
Can you give us the specs on your current rig? I suspect you don't need an entire new one, unless you just want one. In that case most of the pre-built systems I've seen, they seem to come with an overkill CPU and a weak GPU.
This advice is for AH3 only. If you plan to run other stuff like DCS, requirements will be different.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: mERv on November 07, 2025, 09:14:40 AM
For Aces High, pretty much any new "gaming" computer will be more than enough. If on the other hand you are going to be playing other, newer games.... you might need a bit more.
Great point! AH may be your primary game but invest wisely to take advantage of other great games if you so choose in the future.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: mERv on November 07, 2025, 09:16:04 AM
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Eagler on November 07, 2025, 09:45:49 AM
Your price range would help..
Black Friday sales should help you..
Eagler
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: hazmatt on November 07, 2025, 09:54:22 AM
Another thing of note is I upgraded from a 12100 to a 12700 after a bunch of people telling me that my CPU was the bottleneck although I suspected it was not. I saw less then 10 fps overall increase in AH3, IL2 and Warthunder.
From what i understand DCS needs a CPU with a bunch of horsepower but most other games do not. A CPU with good single thread performance will give you most of the performance of a more expensive one that would have a bunch of idling cores in many games.
Just something to keep in mind. My advice would be to put most of the money into the GPU as I said earlier because that is usually the bottleneck.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 10:09:30 AM
I bought a Dell refurb a while back for like $151. Has an i7 6700 CPU. I bought it for a specific purpose. Added a little memory, a cheap SSD, and a cheap video card. I just tested it with AHIII DX11. Runs fine. I do not use it for games and would not use it for any other sim.
I added the cheap video card because I control this machine through RDP and I found the internal graphics to be unreliable for this purpose.
DCS needs the CPU for the AI controlled units. A dedicated server offloads that from the clients.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 10:16:56 AM
If you go with a refurb know that Intel gen 8 or later is required to upgrade to Windows 11. You can workaround this however but who knows how reliable that will be. I pushed my refurb i7 6700 to Windows 11 and it seems fine with the latest version.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: uptown on November 07, 2025, 10:19:27 AM
$719.99 for the cheapest gaming desktop Newegg has. Hold off until Black Friday and Walmart will have even cheaper ones that'll play AcesHigh just fine. :salute
A player named Gaboon gave me a full CH fight controls one time to play this game, and I'd like to give back to someone here in his honor. He passed away years ago and he was a good dude. I was going to give this stuff to my son, but he won't bring his rig over so I can upgrade his. I'm tired of fooling with him. :rolleyes:
I have some stuff I'd just give you if ya want..... Gen4 Intel B660 motherboard...CPU included, ram and a 3050 graphics card if you wanna tackle installing in the case you have now. Watch some YouTube videos and figure it out. If I can figure it out, anyone can. Do you know any specs on what you have now?
You'd probably need a M.2 Gen4 SSD drive...as I'm keeping mine to add to my upgraded setup, and a CPU fan as the pins are fubar on this one. It would work but not very good.... (It doesn't seal to the CPU good.) Replace pins maybe? It handled DCS just fine on all maps. :salute
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 10:49:27 AM
The video card I added to my refurb was a new Nvidia GT 1030. I just made a video of AHIII using DX11. This card can be had for $80 or less. The GT series do not support ShadowPlay so I made the video with my phone. If it ever finishes downloading from the icloud I'll post it. You can use it as a reference to determine whether it is enough GPU horsepower for whatever machine you decided on.
It finished. Was hard to hold the phone and fly with a mouse.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: knorB on November 07, 2025, 11:00:09 AM
The video card I added to my refurb was a new Nvidia GT 1030. I just made a video of AHIII using DX11. This card can be had for $80 or less. The GT series do not support ShadowPlay so I made the video with my phone. If it ever finishes downloading from the icloud I'll post it. You can use it as a reference to determine whether it is enough GPU horsepower for whatever machine you decided on.
It finished. Was hard to hold the phone and fly with a mouse.
Fly it towards the base with all drones circling and AI firing on them. Just to see if that drags it down a bit
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 11:15:46 AM
I was using the default settings and AA is off. I turned that on and circled the base a while. AA looked better and didn't have much impact. It's noticeably less smooth than my machine with a 3070. I would consider this level of performance as low as I would go.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Shuffler on November 07, 2025, 11:18:58 AM
I have a friend that bought a bunch of cheap parts and built a girlfriend. He said she really blows... but all in all... that ain't bad.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Eagler on November 07, 2025, 11:21:39 AM
Yep it all depends on the level of activity..
I'd start with a win11 box, ssd, 32mb ram with a 4000 series card in it..unless you only want to play AH and solitaire..
Eagler
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: knorB on November 07, 2025, 11:27:01 AM
I was using the default settings and AA is off. I turned that on and circled the base a while. AA looked better and didn't have much impact. It's noticeably less smooth than my machine with a 3070. I would consider this level of performance as low as I would go.
:aok
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 11:41:03 AM
Though the GT 1030 (not 1300 as i said) is newer than the AH min of Geforce 960, the 960 is faster. I had a 960 10 years ago and played AH with it. Was smooth spread across three monitors. It won't cost much to get good performance from AHIII. There is wide requirement gap between that and DCS. So if you plan to dabble in some other games or sims do some research.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: hazmatt on November 07, 2025, 11:48:38 AM
The video card I added to my refurb was a new Nvidia GT 1030. I just made a video of AHIII using DX11. This card can be had for $80 or less.
I have used the GT 1030 in a low profile setup and it worked but then I found the RX 570 which is a full size card that is 3 times faster for around the the same price. I would look into both of these if you're looking for a decent GPU for under $100.
That said you can't beat Uptowns deal: I have some stuff I'd just give you if ya want..... Gen4 Intel B660 motherboard...CPU included, ram and a 3050 graphics card
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 11:55:07 AM
I was just looking for a cheap low profile card when I bought that machine a couple of years ago. Serves its purpose well.
The 960 I bought 10 years ago for $209. Replaced it with a 970 a year and half later. Remember when $200 for a video card seemed expensive?
I have used the GT 1030 in a low profile setup and it worked but then I found the RX 570 which is a full size card that is 3 times faster for around the the same price. I would look into both of these if you're looking for a decent GPU for under $100.
That said you can't beat Uptowns deal: I have some stuff I'd just give you if ya want..... Gen4 Intel B660 motherboard...CPU included, ram and a 3050 graphics card
That RX 570 or 580 oughta handle AHIII DX11 nicely.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Randy1 on November 07, 2025, 01:31:56 PM
AH is more demanding than iracing on my PC. Iracing spent some money looking for things that used the PC horsepower when it did nothing for the game.
AH is not very efficient in the area of computer wasted horsepower. Keep in mind lower PC rating equipment shortens long distant viewing. I built my own PC which save about 25%. It took quite a bit of shopping for sales.
Microcenter has sales on prebuilt gaming PCs of and on. https://www.microcenter.com/site/products/desktop-computers.aspx (https://www.microcenter.com/site/products/desktop-computers.aspx)
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 01:52:14 PM
I'll have to visit Microcenter one of these days for the nostalgia. Most of my computer visits were to Fry's back in the 90's and 2000's with an occasional visit to Microcenter. Moved away in Feb '08. Back now. Well, driving distance anyhow.
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: JimmyD3 on November 07, 2025, 01:59:15 PM
We have Micro Center here in Dallas, a year ago this month I bought one of their Power Spec gaming PC's, it came with an RTX 4070ti. So far no problems and I'm very happy with it. I paid $1600.00 brand new. Virgle got one as well. :rock
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: AKIron on November 07, 2025, 02:06:17 PM
I lived in Allen '95-'08. There was a used computer and parts store on the corner near where we lived when we first moved there. I bought way too much junk there including 3 or 4 Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS HOTAS sets. But hey, they were cheap! ;)
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: The Fugitive on November 07, 2025, 02:37:58 PM
Im starting to look into laptops myself. It looks like Ill be traveling to Vegas a few times year for some extended stays and was hoping to find a decent laptop that wont break the bank, but plays AH no problem. Any leads please post them here.
Thanks
Title: Re: Best gaming PC from a store for AH3
Post by: Banshee7 on November 07, 2025, 03:30:08 PM
What's the best, middle of the road priced Gaming PC available from a store that will work well in AH3. Graphics, speed, etc. I have a very old PC and this stuff is not in my wheelhouse. ( Bestbuy, Costco, etc...) Thanks in advance
I wish I would've known. I would have sold you my old PC dirt cheap. It's overkill for AH3 but doesn't meet requirements for new games.