I need advice from computer savvy people. I guess normal people will do as well. Pretend you’re me, except with more computer experience and less sexiness. You need a new computer for around $500. You also play World of Warcraft, which means this computer would be excreting hot, steaming loads of 2003 era graphics for 2-18+ hours a day, not even including general internet nerdistry (message boards, pornography etc.) This computer doesn’t need tons of agility. It just needs stamina and resilience. What do you do?
Is it feasible for a person with no obvious physical or mental defects to build it at home? I know what the inside of a computer looks like. At some point, when all of my previous computers have crapped out, I’ve taken them apart looking for obviously wrong stuff. I’ve even put them back together successfully.
Does it even make sense to build it at home? I don’t think I’m a high powered user, but I am a heavy duty user. I want a machine that gets good enough graphics for WoW and porn for many hours a day. I’m simply not convinced of the quality of conventional $500 budget systems.
Does anyone with experience have tips? If I decide homebuilt is the way to go, I’ll surely do my research. Don’t worry about that. If you have any words of warning that can only come from experience, I would be ever so grateful.
I wrestled with this recently and am pretty savvy. I think the answer is BUY, because the prices on some of the system package deals you can get are just unbeatable if you purchase on a component basis.
Do your homework, but I was able to get an HP with a 1TB drive, quad core Amd chip, decent graphics card, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM for $540 delivered. It was a refurb but I think you can get the same deal brand new for ~100 more. You simply cannot get specs like that if you buy piecemeal.
Most important for you is to make sure the graphics are decent. Just do a little homework but for WoW you can hardly go wrong.
If WoW is the toughest graphics application you need to satisfy, I’d say look at buying a computer. Also look at stepping down a level or 2 from what you think you need, and then get an upgraded video card for it. You will still probably come out cheaper then building your own. Do you have someplace like Microcenter? They can have some pretty decent offers on refurb machines.
This is an option I considered. My only concern is that my graphics won’t improve terribly if I only step up my video card. If I’m already gimped by a cheesy processor, I’m wondering how much gain there is to be had just through GPU improvement.
That is fairly mindblowing. Despite the rigours I intend to put my machine through, I still don’t think I need anywhere close to a 1tb drive, 8 gigs, or possibly even quad core. I want there to be a way to take your price, step the specs down slightly, and use components that keep ticking with compulsive usage, but not intense usage.
We’ve done this before. Unless you want the pride in building it yourself, with the components you want, you are better off buying. If you buy, you can get a build to order model with more than enough room for expansion you can add on your own later.