Starting Gaming Cafe in Mexico. Need help

[handorow]

Hi guys, I currently am in Mexico and would like to start a Gaming Cafe here in my City. Im close to the border and can cross to get PC from the U.S.

 

Was wondering is it possible that with a $1000 USD budget I can get a decent PC for people to come in and have a descent gaming expierence?

 

What do you recommend? Should I go prebuilt? Where is a good place to get a descent PC at this price point. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Arika]

for $1000? absolutely not.

 

A gaming cafe needs more than 1 PC. There will be massive upfront costs such as leasing a place, business internet, insurance, multiple PCs, networking gear, food/drink facilities (and associated serving licenses).

 

That there's also the issue of, is there even a market for it in your city? Why would someone come to your business as opposed to staying at home and using their own computer? how much will you charge to be able to pay rent and utilities for your cafe?

 

These are all things you need to have figured out first before you even consider buying the first PC

[handorow]

26 minutes ago, Arika S said:

for $1000? absolutely not.

 

A gaming cafe needs more than 1 PC. There will be massive upfront costs such as leasing a place, business internet, insurance, multiple PCs, networking gear, food/drink facilities (and associated serving licenses).

 

That there's also the issue of, is there even a market for it in your city? Why would someone come to your business as opposed to staying at home and using their own computer? how much will you charge to be able to pay rent and utilities for your cafe?

 

These are all things you need to have figured out first before you even consider buying the first PC

Oh yeah the plan is to buy 10 PC's to start. The $1000 USD budget is just for each tower. Not including monitor, keyboard or headphones, chair etc. That will have its own budget.

 

 I believe there is a market for it here. Just not sure if the budget is enough to offer a descent gaming expierence. Should I up the budget per tower?

 

Do you recommend a pre-built or building myself?

 

Also any recommendations for networking gear?

[SorryBella]

41 minutes ago, handorow said:

Oh yeah the plan is to buy 10 PC's to start. The $1000 USD budget is just for each tower. Not including monitor, keyboard or headphones, chair etc. That will have its own budget.

 I believe there is a market for it here. Just not sure if the budget is enough to offer a decent gaming expierence. Should I up the budget per tower?

Honestly it HEAVILY depends on what kind of games do you wanna focus on. For esports and AAA/VR gaming at not so maxxed out settings thats already pretty dang plenty, especially for 1080p144. The issue is of course the 1-2 Punch of COVID-19 Restrictions globally and the silicon shortage means that your entry price will seriously balloons with how hard it is to get GPUs even as a business, and how hard it is to comply with the regulations to avoid crowding and keep social distancing in place.

 

47 minutes ago, handorow said:

Do you recommend a pre-built or building myself?

 

Also any recommendations for networking gear?

As i eluded to before, self build will be a struggle with GPU shortage, but prebuilt will make you super tied down in upgrading which is very crucial in keeping up with game demand and lowering cost to upgrade because afterall itll be cheaper to just slap in new GPU and CPU every few years in interval instead of throwing your entire goddamn rig. So imo for ecafe, you will want custom period, or atleast prebuilts from those who are running standardized component that are ATX compliant like iBuyPower, CyberPower, some HP Omen, etc.

 

For networking i would say that 2.5gbit uplink for every system is already plenty, and considering the NICs for those (or you wont need one considering more and more board includes 2.5gbit onboard networking) are going down in price, thatll be your best bet with a 10 gigabit managed switches. But imo, focus on getting a good ISP deal instead. Connection dropoff from overloaded network line to ISP is unacceptable in ecafe, its a bad outlook when a customer cant open youtube without taking the entire ecafe connection down with them.

[handorow]

11 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

Honestly it HEAVILY depends on what kind of games do you wanna focus on. For esports and AAA/VR gaming at not so maxxed out settings thats already pretty dang plenty, especially for 1080p144. The issue is of course the 1-2 Punch of COVID-19 Restrictions globally and the silicon shortage means that your entry price will seriously balloons with how hard it is to get GPUs even as a business, and how hard it is to comply with the regulations to avoid crowding and keep social distancing in place.

 

As i eluded to before, self build will be a struggle with GPU shortage, but prebuilt will make you super tied down in upgrading which is very crucial in keeping up with game demand and lowering cost to upgrade because afterall itll be cheaper to just slap in new GPU and CPU every few years in interval instead of throwing your entire goddamn rig. So imo for ecafe, you will want custom period, or atleast prebuilts from those who are running standardized component that are ATX compliant like iBuyPower, CyberPower, some HP Omen, etc.

 

For networking i would say that 2.5gbit uplink for every system is already plenty, and considering the NICs for those (or you wont need one considering more and more board includes 2.5gbit onboard networking) are going down in price, thatll be your best bet with a 10 gigabit managed switches. But imo, focus on getting a good ISP deal instead. Connection dropoff from overloaded network line to ISP is unacceptable in ecafe, its a bad outlook when a customer cant open youtube without taking the entire ecafe connection down with them.

Thanks so much. This comment is so helpful and I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out.

 

Yeah with the shortage and Covid it really does seem like a hard task to make this work but hopefully I can make it work and just give it my all as this has been a dream of mine. 

 

Would also like to have an area for people to play card games like MTG and others. 

 

Again thanks so much for the help.

 

Just one other question. Do you think its important to have a 20 series graphics card or above for DLSS? 

 

Many of the prebuilds I see at this price point or a little higher than budget are 2060 or 1660 super. Or is AMD graphics a things to consider?  What are your thoughts on this?

[SorryBella]

Just now, handorow said:

Just one other question. Do you think its important to have a 20 series graphics card or above for DLSS?

Honestly in an ecafe, raw performance per dollar is better than being able to turn RTX ON, so RX 6000 series can be in contention.

9 minutes ago, handorow said:

Many of the prebuilds I see at this price point or a little higher than budget are 2060 or 1660 super. Or is AMD graphics a things to consider?  What are your thoughts on this?

That genuinely sounds like a stock clearance prebuilts imo. But that should be pretty good in a vacuum with a good CPU pairing, but again as i say the prebuilt will rear its ugly head in equipment renewal.