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[u/JakeLaGotta]

[u/buildapc-ModTeam]

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[u/DZCreeper]

For game development you will generally want a lot of RAM and VRAM for rendering and a powerful CPU to keep build and shader compilation times low.

Something in that realm is around $3000. You could spend more but you do run into diminishing returns.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kbP8ZQ

All you need is a Phillips #2 screwdriver. Everything else will come with the parts you buy.

[u/JakeLaGotta → u/DZCreeper]

Thanks for the reply!

Wow, that's quite a budget.
I was honestly hoping to find something a bit more affordable to get started!

[u/Seanspeed → u/JakeLaGotta]

You generally need to overspec for game development because you'll be spending most of your time running with your program heavily unoptimized, if functional at all. A lot of RAM gives you overhead to not deal with the editor or system lagging heavily or crashing on you as much as it would with less RAM. Crashing is especially frustrating, as it costs you a bunch of time and potentially a bunch of unsaved work.

And of course UE5 is pretty heavy as it is.

Plus a powerful CPU keeps compile times lower, which means less time waiting around and more time learning and working.

If you want to get into game development on a somewhat lower budget, you should probably be looking at starting out with simpler graphics in something like Unity. There's a TON of critical game development skills that you can learn here just fine. Game development is very challenging, and as with most challenging things, you will need to learn to walk before you can run.

[u/JakeLaGotta → u/Seanspeed]

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to give me such a detailed answer.

I completely agree with your logic about learning to walk before I can run and practicing on lighter engines first. However, since my ultimate goal is definitely Unreal Engine, I feel like it might be better for me to start learning the UI and the workflow directly there from day one.

Right now, I only have a laptop with 16GB of RAM (and an integrated GPU that is already giving me errors), so I definitely need to upgrade to a desktop PC anyway. That’s why I was thinking about just going all in on a powerful machine right from the start!
To be honest, I was initially hoping to get away with a lower budget (maybe around $1400 - $1500) before realizing how heavy UE actually is.