Recommend a Games PC

[Buran]

My PC is now almost five years old with a graphics card three years old, its getting more than a little outdated for current PC's

I have Farcry 2, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Crysis Warhead and Red Alert 3 sitting on my bookshelf needing a PC powerful enough to play them.

I've done a little research but I profess to be being confused about the current state of the PC industry.

A friend recommended one of these two PC's:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=Acer+...B+DV&x=20&y=11

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151919

I'd also need a good monitor.

I'm in the UK and my upper limit is £1000.

Should I buy now or is there some major piece of hardware in the immediate pipeline I should wait for?

Thanks!

[Kinthalis]

The second PC there will definitely provide you with better gaming performance. The first one lacks a decent video card and the CPU is a bit underpowered as well.

This might help you out in terms of what you should be looking for hardware wise:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...thon,2058.html

If you were in the states, I could help you out more.

[Darkhold]

I'd like to recommend phoning or emailing http://www.cougar-extreme.co.uk/ and talking to them I got my last computer from them and they were great. Reasonable price and when I had some issues with the Ethernet Port not working and phoned them they didn't treat me like some moron and read step by step trouble-shooting instructions. Which is something I really appreciated.

[Gukumatz]

Don't be afraid to buy a used monitor - you can probably shave off some £ and get a better monitor rather than devaluing your hardware.

Building your own PC can also go a long way to get a 1:1 cost/benefit rating, if you're smart about what retailers you use. (For instance, I use the Norwegian NetShop, which has a physical storehouse about 20 minutes away from me by car. If I pick it up there, there's no shipping and handling fees as I can pretty literally just get it from the shelf myself.)

It's not too hard to put them together, either - I've been doing it since I was 14 - as the instructions are quite detailed and you'll get great help on the net, as well. The only biggy with building yourself is that you have to research your parts thoroughly to be absolutely sure they're compatible with each other. But we can certainly help you with that.

[Buran]

Thanks everyone!

Don't think I'll try building it myself, if only for the fact that I don't really have the spare time for a project like that at the moment....

[Uosdwis R. Dewoh]

Originally Posted by Buran

Thanks everyone!

Don't think I'll try building it myself, if only for the fact that I don't really have the spare time for a project like that at the moment....

A few months ago i built my own rig for the first time, it took me an afternoon. It was a lot easier than i expected, like building a Meccano set.

[Garula]

Originally Posted by Uosdwis R. Dewoh

A few months ago i built my own rig for the first time, it took me an afternoon. It was a lot easier than i expected, like building a Meccano set.

I put together a new machine a week ago. Went off without a hitch. However, the system I put together 3 years ago went horribly. Two power supplies failed on me almost immediately, the raid drivers were utterly archaic, and a hard drive failed on me. From parts to up and running took weeks. Yeah, sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it is definitely not worth it.

On the plus side, I am now way better at diagnosing hardware failures.

[Quasimodem]

Hey,

I am in the US and I too need a recommendation for a gaming computer to replace my Dell Dim 3 K which has been tweaked about as much I am able.

Don't need a monitor though.

Thanks!

Quasi

[Kinthalis]

Are you looking to build your own, or purchase a complete system? Are you going to mostly game with this machine, or will you also be doing other hardware intensive things like video encoding? Also, will you be needing software, an OS? Finally, what's your budget? And with that I mean: give me the amount of dollars you WANT to spend.

Usually in these threads people say their budget is $1,000 so I fill that up with high end hardware and then everyone gets mad at me 'cause I didn't try to squeeze the system into $500. So give us a range to work with instead.

[Quasimodem]

Hi


6-$700.00 Gaming only. Nothing else any fancier than surfing the net.

And thank you!

Quasi

[Quasimodem]

Oh and I don't want to build my own.

Thanks again

Q

[Quasimodem]

Anybody??????

Thanks,

Q

[Quasimodem]

Jumping back in to let y'all know I can go as high as 900.00 USD now.

Thanks

Q

[Kinthalis]

I've heard good things about www.cyberpowerpc.com. You can customize the rig to whatever hardware you want and they'll build it for you.

I'd suggest you go for a Intel core 2 duo or core 2 quad, 4 gigs of RAM 500 Watt power supply and an nvidia 9800 GT or a 260. I built on there and they quoted me $900 for a slamming rig and with a free 4 gig usb drive and Microsoft Flight Simulator X for free.

[John DiFool]

I just got a Cyberpower PC a couple of months ago, and have been perfectly happy with it. It runs just about every game I have at maximum settings without issues or slideshow framerates. I haven't installed anything of a cutting-edge nature (graphics-wise) yet, however.

Until (bad timing award, at least in terms of this thread) I was playing a game last night, and suddenly the machine just immediately shut down completely. I had no other appliances or lights on at the time, and we do get occasional brownouts around here, so I don't know if it was the local power company experiencing a hiccup, or something on my end. It rebooted just fine, no harmful effects this morning. I'll play something else and see if it happens again.

[Robin Goodfellow]

Kinthalis jumped in with my usual suggested way upthread. My favorite part about upgrading my PC is doing research, and the system builder marathon has a really good summary of the most worthwhile parts for the money.

If you want to gather or contract some of the parts listed there and put them together, you can have a better PC for ~500 USD than most gamers had at the beginning of the year. My suggestion would be, rather than going with a prefab box of limited warranty and upgradability, pick and choose your parts and have a reputable local computer shop build it for a reasonable fee.

[John DiFool]

Followup-haven't had that problem (if it was my problem) occur again. I was running a semi-official mod of a game of mine, where the map was much larger than default, and...well even with my system it was lagging a bit. Long story short Cyberpower is a brand I would certainly recommend.

[SenorBeef]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

The second PC there will definitely provide you with better gaming performance. The first one lacks a decent video card and the CPU is a bit underpowered as well.

This might help you out in terms of what you should be looking for hardware wise:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...thon,2058.html

If you were in the states, I could help you out more.

I gotta say, if you were referring to the $1500 mainstream PC... that list is pretty bad.

$150 water cooling rig for a "mainstream" pc? 2x4850s - SLI/crossfire is not good for anything except the high end cutting edge market market, it can be a minor pain in the ass to configure and its price/performance ratio is much lower than just buying a better single card solution.

X38 chipset is certainly not a mainstream chipset, and a $180 case is overkill.



I could give you a list of parts for a price range, but you're not interested in building. I have absolutely no idea what prebuilt gaming PCs cost, but I know some brands (falcon, alienware) are overpriced.