Hi all My kid will get a gaming pc soon. I can’t swallow the cost of a whole setup at the moment. I’m thinking of getting a good motherboard with a decent second hand graphics card (a colleague I trust can find me one). And over time upgrade where needed. For monitor I would be using my TV.

Is this a smart idea? We’d have a wireless mouse/keyboard and some table thing to game from the couch.

At the moment my kid is into Roblox and Minecraft, but I assume once his pc can run more; he’ll play ‘real’ games. We are also looking to learn to program (scratch/python). Would that work on a TV?

The TV is an older model (10 years old).

Edit; Thanks everyone for the ideas and advice. We’ll try the TV first. And will also look into a steamdeck. It’s nice to get such positive feedback from everyone!

I appreciate that you’re doing this on a budget. The only thing I can say is that a monitor doesn’t represent a significant portion of the build budget. A basic monitor can be had for under $100. Honestly a lot of tech-oriented people have extras laying around. I’ve had 3 extra 1080p monitors in my garage for the last few years. It’s entirely possible that someone may be giving one away near you.

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I was at a goodwill recently and there was a slew of second hand cheap 1080p monitors

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I get tons at work during the ewaste drives, I use them at work but occasionally bring them home to upgrade friends or family

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