Ryzen 3 (Radeon vega 8)

It depends on what games he wants to play I suspect it will play some games at low to medium settings ok as its on board but will struggle with other games on these settings. It all comes down to what he wants to play and the amount of eye candy he wants. You see so many pcs advertised with gt710 / gt720 graphics cards as gaming pcs which is again ok for low end games but they are not really for gaming at all. It all comes down to the games he wants to play and expectations. Someone will be along with more knowledge and will probably give you a better idea.

As a CPU it’s a fantastic bargain and very capable. But if you want to play the latest titles it’s not for you.

However, if you go into this with realistic expectations re resolution and frame rates and add something like a GTX 1060 when you can afford it, you won’t be throwing money down the drain.

Definitely get a B450 motherboard for many reasons, something like the Gigabyte B450M DS3H or ASUS TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING. They have 4 ram slots allowing more flexible memory upgrades later and can properly handle M2 drives. Don’t get anything other than an M2, preferably an NVMe ADATA XPG SX Pro for bang per buck.

Whatever happens the motherboard is the key to any system. Adding or changing anything plugged into it is relatively easy. Changing the motherboard isn’t. The A320 boards really are for office machines only.

If he decides on a 3000 series CPU get the motherboard from CCL Online as they will do the required BIOS update for free before shipping. I’ve not tried a 3000 series yet due to the price savings for 2000 and very little loss in performance, however for the Ryzen 3 3200G it’s only £2!

With a fast NNMe drive and 8GB of ram this will really fly as a PC. For games it’ll be meh to start with, but with the good motherboard as a base you will be creating a machine that can be scaled up as and when.

BTW The latest drivers as in the big release for this yeaR. Added way better support between the pc ram and the cpu gpu relationship and as such games run much better on a SOC. I have the lowley Athlon 200GE and it now plays ye old NFS underground 2 from 2004 @ full eyecandy with perfect AA at 60fps. Prier to the latest drivers this was not possible.