I think it's time for a new PC

It's not a great time to be buying components especially GPU's. CPU's have also suffered shortages this past 12 months, even some Cases have been hard to get.

It kind of depends on what you can recycle from your current PC. RAM, Case, PSU etc. and what your expectations are with regards to output e.g. 1080 @60fps, 1440P or 4k etc.

PSU wise you are looking at 650W ideally if you want a great 1080/decent 1440 GPU (3060Ti). Good luck getting a 3060Ti at close to RRP though

As others have said, it is a tough time to be getting computer parts. You can get most components, but the GPU is where the real difficulties come from. And, yep, much of that is down to crypto (just checked and start of this year apparently saw 25% being sold for mining), but also general chip shortage, shipping issues and everyone being into tech and games due to lockdown. When GPUs are available, you aren't going to be getting them for anywhere near RRP.

Pre-built might be a better option, although usual warnings around that apply. I assume prices are a bit inflated too, although for £1,500 you should get something tasty.

General component advise for today is AMD for CPU would be ideal. 5600 with 6 cores will probably be fine. 5800 might be handy if you are using the computer for more than just games. Intel will be fine if that is what you can get, probably want either i5 or i7.

RAM I would go with 16GB as the minimum, but 32GB will have you sorted for some time. AMD processor likes faster RAM, with 3600MHz being the recommended. Anything above 3000MHz will be good though. Pricing isn't too bad, so might as well get the fastest you can.

For GPU, Nvidia is still top dog, but AMD have narrowed the gap considerably. I don't know the AMD side too much, but for Nvidia at 1080p 3060 would be more than enough. 3080 or 3090 (which would be all your budget, if not more) are only necessary for 4K or really high refresh rates. 3070 would be good for 1440p, but may want to consider 3080 for future proofing at that res and if you have a monitor with 100+ refresh rate. Might be overkill though and will be pricey.

Storage will obviously be SSD. We are in a position now where you should be able to just use SSD and not worry about mechanical drives, unless you are looking for very large amounts of space. PCI-E 4 SSDs are still expensive though and you may want to settle for PCI-E 3 for now.

Don't skimp on the PSU - you want that to last. Go for a 700w minimum and gold rated - these GPUs are getting more power hungry with each revision not having to change the PSU if you upgrade in the future is worth it. As others have said, not a good time to buy a GPU - an example is the 3080 has an RRP of around £1000 but they are in the region of £1500 currently. I prefer Nvidia as DLSS is mighty useful (playing at 4k with 1440p performance).

Seeing as you're a Stateside Dweller now, Dirtbox, isn't the mania of Black Friday just around the corner? Feels like that'd be the time to get your build on.

Maybe start trying to source a GPU about now though.

If you want future proof for gaming, make sure you get a PCI-Express V4 board. That'll take the NVMe drives that are at least as fast as what's in the latest conslols, so if any games come out that mandate that speed you'll be covered.

Other than that, it's hard to go wrong nowadays. AMD CPUs have largely caught up with Intel, so you have a choice there. Nvidia is probably where you want your GPU bucks to go though - DLSS and their second gen RayTracing is the dog's bollocks.

Another thing worth noting, the idea that you save by going AMD instead of Intel/Nvidia is no longer true. They bumped their prices up when they became popular and competitive. It really is a bit of a much of muchness as to which one you go for, although Nvidia GPUs gives you DLSS and normally seem to perform slightly better, whilst AMD processors are more effecient and do better with multi-core computing (unlikely to have noticeable difference in games though).

If you are prepared to gather parts over a period of weeks rather than wanting it all delivered at once you can get deals on most components and it's definitely possible to self build more cheaply than comparable prebuilds with one big caveat.

As people have said the GPU remains the big problem and to some extent, it's fairly pointless spending much energy on all the other parts until you've secured one at a decent price because this aspect can take time. Still think the best bet is to sign up to discord stock alert services and try and get an FE from Scan as it's just about the only way to get a current gen card for RRP. Assuming you have the patience, it's worth trying this for a few weeks. If you don't get lucky then prebuilds are a way to get a GPU at a vaguely sensible price.

Once you've got a GPU, the rest is pretty straightforward. I'd suggest setting up price alerts on pcpartpicker.com/ and www.hotukdeals.com/ for the monitor, CPU, motherboard, RAM and case you want. You shouldn't expect to pay full RRP on any of this stuff, as deals crop up all the time. As an example, there is currently a 20% off voucher for certain Ebay sellers (which include reputable components stores) and the discount stacks with existing promos. I had a look yesterday and there were plenty of PC components available.

You could buy yourself a Ryzen 5600G or 5700G with integrated Vega graphics. It should have fairly similar performance as their CPU-only counterparts, and will give you something to fall back to (mind, I'd be surprised if you could play the more modern games at anything higher than 720p and low settings) while the GPU shortages continue.

Assuming you don't already have an older graphics card that you can use. So what do you currently have?

maybe pause state is for downloads and not the install and since its already been downloaded locally its just progressing. Can you not purge the update folder and see if it is prevented from being redownloaded ?

<windows folder>\SoftwareDistribution\download

I'll see if I can do that. Cheers.

Looking a decent pc for my 12 year old gamer grandson. Anybody know best place to get a refurbished one around £400-£700

In the uk?

I'm also looking for a new desktop, but not necesarily for gaming (but that would be nice), actually for game design with Unity and Blender etc. I'm normally coding and my laptop has been fine for that but recently started with game dev and the laptop is blowing. Is Palicomp pretty good? I've seen them mentioned a few places. I've not been into the PC scene for a long time, I have no idea what's good anymore, how is this (Google if you like) ?

I understand your suspicion but I was on EG for years under the name Apostle something or other. I only just found out the other day the forum had shut down. I can remove the link if you want, I don't mind

Baldur's Gate 3?