Time to upgrade but there are a number of considerations. I am somewhat computer savvy but not enough to build my own or edit registry’s, and am only a mildly decent troubleshooter. My latest computer was a gateway and during the beginning I did use customer support alot for driver issues and whatnot. I am however a serious pc gamer so Im going to have to go custom I would imagine. I don’t mind spending around 2600 for a good one. Do i have it custom made? By whom? Any recommendations for a good system? Any custom builders with good reps and some support? Any help appreciated.
Pick up one of the Gaming mags. You will find ads for exactly what you are looking for. Plenty of companies build machines optimized for games.
If you don’t want to buy from them, look at their machine specs and buy something similar. Two things to look at in particular, what video card, and what type of ram. I would guess most of them are probably running the latest video card in the Nvidia G-force line. (Beware, Nvidia can use confusing naming convention, just look at the prices, you will be able to line them up by performance that way.)
custom made pc is the way to go.
$2600 for a PC with a monitor? or without?
All prices quoted in Canadian
Athlon 2000+XP ($359)
GlobalWIN CAKII-38 ($59)
Asus av7-333 Motherboard ($205)
512 DDR Ram ($209)
60GB Maxtor 7200rpm HDrive ($166)
Case ($50)
MSI GeForce4ti4600 128mb ($579)
LG DVD + 12x CDRW ($126)
Audigy Gamer ($138)
Logitech Z560 speakers ($299)
19" Samsung 955df (dynaflat) ($359)
Standard keyboard ($10)
Logitech Optical mouse ($30)
Floppy drive ($18)
Dlink 10/100 Ethernet ($25)
Total = $2632CAN
US conversion… $1684
great stuff, thanks.
umm… I think my post got swallowed. anyhoo, check out www.alienware.com - they make good systems designed specifically for gaming. However, you may want to get an idea of the specs you want from them, and then see how you can do price-wise having one custom-built from someone like PC’s-for-everyone or some such dealer. It may be that their prices are good, but I’ve the feeling you could do better on your own.
FWIW, I bought a Dell last summer, 1.5g P4, 256mb SDRAM, 40GB, blah blah blah with a 19" monitor AND a Lexmark printer/fax/flatbed scanner for just under $2000 (USD), and I mostly use it for gaming. It’s been fantastic so far.
Good luck,
-j
If you don’t want to build your own got to Falcon Northwest or Alienware. I’m partial to Falcon but you can’t really go wrong with either of these guys. For custom hot rod PC’s built by someone else these two have consistently pulled down top honors from reviewers year after year. I’ve owned a Falcon and those guys were great. They even gave me tech support well after my warranty had expired and my wife called them to ask for recommendations for a piece of computer equipment she wanted to buy for my birthday and they obliged her (even though they made no sale themselves on that). Top notch all the way.
I did a quick build at Falcon and came up with the config below for $2,688. Of course, you should visit and tweak to your heart’s content.
Microsoft Windows XP Home
Coolermaster ATC-201 Aluminum Mid Tower
Enermax Whisper 350 Watt Power Supply
Asus A7V-333 5PCI USB2.0 AMD USE PC2700
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Coolermaster Socket A CPU Heatsink/Fan
PC2700DDR 1024MB
IBM Deskstar 120GXP 40GB 7200RPM ATA/100
Teac 1.44mb 3 1/2 Drive
Sony 52X IDE Internal Caddyless 78ms
Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40
nVidia GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB DDR
Belkin Classic KYBD 107 Key PS/2 Black
Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse
Creative Labs Audigy Gamer
Klipsch Promedia 2.1 3PC Set
3-Com 3C905TX 10/100 NIC
3Com 56K V.90 INT PCI Hardware Modem
APC Professional 7T Surge Protector
Known issues with this configuration: None
System Price: $ 2,688.00
Price with UPS Ground 2,771.20
Price with UPS 2nd Day Air 2,856.80
Price with UPS Priority Overnight 2,952.00
Price with UPS to Alaska or Hawaii 2,906.40
P.S. - Check out the EGAD II.
man i would love $2600 to kick around in a new gaming box. Building a machine from scratch really isn’t as difficult as you might think, you can find out pretty much everything you need to know at www.anandtech.com and www.tomshardware.com.
Since you’re seeking suggestions more than facts, I’ll move this over to IMHO.
Why not check out Ars-Technica’s system guide? It’s quite good, updated often, and the God Box is worth a lok if only to drool a bit on it 
I also endorse AlienWare, except for the fact that you can’t choose your OS. Their towers are the coolest I’ve ever seen, however.