PC gaming for a newbie

Right, I'm finally replacing my old laptop with something a bit more sprightly. At the moment I can just about run Football Manager and anything properly 3D is far too intensive. So it goes without saying that I've never really done much PC gaming.
My new one will hopefully be capable of running most modern games on medium settings at ~30fps; nothing mindblowing, but somewhere between last-gen and current-gen consoles. So, I want to catch up on anything I've missed, learn any tricks I might need and just pick up some newbie tips. I also want to take advantage of some of the Steam sales to play some titles that might otherwise cost significantly more on console.
With a few of you dabbling in PC games I wondered if you might be able to help.

First things first, get on this week's Humble Bundle, a load of Square games for cheap. Also keep an eye on the Weekly Bundles too.

Humble Bundle

Also, mouse/keyboard works for Footy Manager but for "console" type games you'd probably benefit from a controller.

Cheers CPC, I'll have a look at those. I'm thinking about using my DS4 - is anyone doing that successfully? Google suggests it should work

I use a wired Ps3 pad with a faulty trigger myself  lol   very few games I play seem to need enough buttons to need the knackerd trigger but that trigger makes it usless for the ps3 most of the time..

Yeah use Humble bundle, and look at things like Bundle Stars sometimes as well sometimes you can get piles of games for basically almost nothing.

Forgot how much less of a pain it is to set up a new PC these days. LastPass, Chrome Sync and Ninite make it relatively easy. No avoiding all the file transfers though!