But you’re ignoring the fact that the Xbox 360 doesn’t need a hard drive to play games. And if you want to use that comparison, an Xbox 360 with extras is probably going to be cheaper than a PC with extras.
Also, making a PC that costs 2.5X the price of the cheapest Xbox 360 configuration is not making a superior gaming PC for less than a console in any way, shape or form.
Haha, you just did exactly what I said you’d do in the part you quoted there.
“Yeah, you can take any reasonably modern PC and add a video card and you’ve got a gaming pc for cheaper than a console”
“Yeah but what if someone is posting to this board through telepathy and doesn’t have a PC? What then? WHAT WILL IT COST?”
“Well, if you have to start from scratch, obviously it’s going to cost more. My point was that you already had a PC, so the true cost of turning it into a gaming PC is just the added cost of a video card. So now if I quote you a higher price for an entire PC, you’re going to say HAHA SEE THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID. I WIN! But fine, what price are you looking at?”
“HAHA SEE THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID! I WIN!”
Of course they will. Because that’s the EXACT opposite of what the title of this thread claims.
You are lying. I might say you misunderstand me, but you claimed to read my OP 4 times. In that OP:
I am absolutely clear that I’m talking about turning your PC into a gaming PC for less than the cost of a console, since I discuss it at several points in the thread, and the whole notion of the thread is “how do I get from having no gaming device to having a gaming device for cheap?” and my proposal is clearly “turn your PC into a gaming machine.”
There is no ambiguity. To claim that in my thread I said you could build a computer from the ground up for under $179 is a lie.
The breadth of genres on the PC is much wider, even if in terms of actual titles it is less. There’s nothing like the Silent Hunter series on a console.
And as far as mods go, that is a huge edge for me for PCs over consoles-I’ve probably modded just about every single game I own, in small part or large, and I’m hardly some hardcore code guru. It’s not that a game is “broken” exactly, but some genius fans can often tweak things in a game that the original designers are often amazed at. Like AIX for Battlefield 2-just flat out impressive work. Yes it can be a bit of a hassle tracking down that “one” mod, but for me that’s part of the fun (YMMV and all that). Even just addon content (maps or tracks or levels or what-have-you) can keep a game fresh for literally years (c.f. Grand Prix Legends). I will say that some mod communities police themselves very well and keep things reasonably organized where they talk to each other-while others are a total zoo and it’s very easy to get lost. For me, it’s so that I cannot conceive of buying a game where it is impossible to mod it, so on that basis consoles hold very little appeal to me.
MLG, which has been televised on ESPN.
Holy Christ. Your OP TITLE:
You can make a superior gaming PC for less than a console
You can write an OP post containing the lyrics of “When She’s Comin’ 'Round the Mountain” and it doesn’t change that.
Regardless, how fucking hard is it to do this (prices and sources totally made up):
Basic CPU <min specs here>: $80 (craigslist)
Video card capable of more than Minesweeper <min specs here>: $125 (newomlette.com)
Power cords, supply, thingamajiggies: $25 (RadioHut)
1.21 gigawatts of RAM: $100 (Dr. Brown’s Depot)
Mouse, keyboard: $40 (your mom)
Speakers: $20
Sound board <min specs here>: 43 cents
TOTAL: $410.43
It would be practical, easy for ANYone to understand (hopefully me - I’m retarded when it comes to what’s inside my computer), serve as at the very minimum a jumping off point, and make your TLDR OP digestible.
SB, when the contents of your post are at total odds against your title, you are not being “absolutely clear”. I would hope that you meant your thread to be helpful to those who do not have a gaming console, are intimidated by PCs in general, and really don’t have that much of an idea what they need. Currently, it’s just a forum for yet another PC v. console debate against those who already know everything you’re talking about, and is as accessible as K2.
Even if that were clear from the start, the “how” aspect is sufficiently vague to be non-existent.
Never said you claimed that. Merely stated that you hadn’t done so yet.
Sure, I could’ve written the OP as “if you have a reasonably modern computer then you can turn it into a gaming machine for less than the price of a console” but that’s pretty long, and here’s the kicker - I have the text of the message in which to explain what I meant, which I made clear.
The people reading my post have a computer. Most of those computers are reasonably modern, and could function well enough as a gaming machine if they got a decent video card. I even sepcifically offered to field questions and help people figure out if their computer would work well enough with just the addition of a video card, but no one has asked for help.
You read my OP. To say “Oh sure the body of your text says this specifically, but your title could be construed this other way, even though you clearly explain yourself in the text of the message” is dishonest at best.
My whole point in the thread was that you’ve already sunk most of the costs into a “gaming pc” by having a PC. You just need to add the gaming part. It wasn’t a do it yourself build guide.
However, I would be willing to do that too. Which is why I asked in a previous post to give me a target budget.
My concern with that is that EVEN THOUGH I MADE IT 100% CLEAR IN THE OP THAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT UPGRADING AN EXISTING COMPUTER that if I listed off the components and price a pc built from scratch, people would jump on me and say “BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAID! YOU LOSE!” … which is exactly what happened.
I did offer to help and answer questions, which was part of my intent in starting the thread. Someone did PM me for advice (I guess they didn’t want to step into an argument looking for an education) and I browsed newegg and gave them a list of parts that fit their budget and needs.
Well, you’re saying that I claimed that a PC could be built from the ground up for cheaper than a console. The going rate of “console” here is being judged by the cheapest possible current gen console. Ergo, you know that if you hold me to a standard I never made claims about (that you can build a PC from scratch for that price) then it looks like I’m wrong. But it’s totally clear from my OP what it was that I was claiming, and that wasn’t it.
If I claimed “you can have a car with a sun roof by installing one yourself for a few hundred dollars instead of having to buy a new car that comes with a sun roof”, and you said “but new cars cost over $10,000! You’re wrong!” that’s about as silly as this is. You know what I said, but you’re demanding I defend a position I specifically did not take anyway.
How about “You can upgrade the average PC into a gaming PC for less than a console”? That’s 3 extra words.
The very last thing I would do is classify your OP as “clearly explaining” anything. I read it. 4 times. Still don’t really understand it. Probably my fault - but it sure doesn’t bridge the gap, if that’s what you were hoping to do.
That is not exactly what happened. That, in fact, isn’t even close to what happened. Why don’t you try it and see what happens? From the ground up - yeah, it’s going to be more. For the guy who all he needs is a new video card - it’ll be less. But what about the guy who only has a work laptop that they don’t allow games on? What about the guy who has to disable flash from his browser so it doesn’t crash (or whatever)? Why not just make it easily digestible for someone to go piece by piece and say, “I need parts B, C, E and H. $275.” Or “I just need part A. $30.”
You can say that again and again, and you’ll still be just as wrong.
Tough shit. So you lose ground on an argument you backed away from the moment you were done writing the title. Move on.
I’m not demanding anything. Nor did I ever, at any point, bring up the price of a console (new car). I could honestly care less about the outcome of the PC v. console debate - it’s a pointless waste of time. What would be worthwhile is finding out what the fucking minimum cost would be on a decent gaming rig from the ground up.
Here, from upthread:
“My computer is a perfect example of this. It cost me $400 brand new off ebay about a year ago, and has an AMD dual core 64-bit processor, 4GB RAM and an Nvidia 9600GT video card. I already had an OS disk, monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc from my older computer so it ended up being pretty cheap. And I can play really graphics-intensive games like Crysis that would choke a 360 to death.”
And that’s with a new case, power supply, motherboard, etc which aren’t always necessary to upgrade. Can’t you downward extrapolate from that?
You’re right. If I put more thought into it, I might’ve realized that someone might’ve pulled the old “sure, you explain it in your OP, but your title wasn’t totally clear, therefore you have to defend an argument you never made” routine on me and made the title more clear.
Points in the OP.
A) It doesn’t cost thousands of dollars to build a gaming PC.
B) If you have a halfway decent general purpose computer, you’re most of the way there and just another $100-150 will get you a good gaming rig.
C) Here are some of the advantages of PC gaming.
That is what happened. See posts 60, and then 61. I estimated it’d come to $400-500 after saying specifically that building a system from scratch was not what I was talking about in the OP, so don’t jump on it as some sort of victory, and in the very next post he said essentially “see! more than an xbox! wrong!”
In the OP, I said that if you have a 2ghz core duo CPU or better (pretty common on anything made in the last 3 years), and 2gb of ram or better, you probably have everything you need except a decent video card. I should’ve specified desktop, since I’m not that familiar with laptop hardware - it didn’t cross my mind at the time. I should’ve also added that you need a graphics card slot - the vast majority of computers do, but some prebuilt very cheap computers may have integrated graphics exclusively with no option to expand.
I also added " If you want to know if yours is good enough to convert it into one I’ll try to tell you." to the end of the OP.
You said that you are holding me to the implications of the title of my thread while ignoring the content of my OP. This holds me in an unfavorable light because my thread title was ill-conceived even though my OP fully explains what I meant.
Your position is ridiculous. My argument was clear from the content of the OP. You are attempting to make me defend a position that I never took. Yes, my OP was badly worded because it can imply that you can build a computer from scratch for less than a console. This was a mistake on my part, in the sense that that was not the message I wished to convey. However, it is completely clear from the content of the message what I did wish to convey. Your “your OP content doesn’t matter, only the title does!” line of arguing is dishonest.
This is the rig I suggested to the person who sent me PMs last night. The total price was around $600, which is more expensive than you need to go, but that was his budget so I targetted the best hardware in that price range.
The reason I suggested rebuilding rather than just adding a video card is because his computer is about 7 years old and struggles to do normal general computing tasks, so it’s better to start over at that point.
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP-45-UD3L $85
CPU Intel core 2 duo E7500 $119
Ram G.skill DDR2 800 2x2gb $99
Case Antec 300 $65
PSU OCZ 550w $65
GPU Radeon 5750 $145
DVD Burner Lite on 24x dvd writer $34
There’s also $45 in mail in rebates that I didn’t include in those prices.
That doesn’t include a hard drive because he wanted to keep his current one. But you could get a 320gb drive for $50
Now, as I said, my point in the OP was that if you had a relatively modern desktop, you would have most of those components that were good enough. You’d only need the video card in that case. But this is built from the ground up.
And as I said, his target was $600, so that’s what I built it for. You could easily shave off some costs there while still having a good computer. You could get a basic combo case/power supply for $60, instead of buying them seperately for a combined $130. You could get a 9800GT graphics card for $104, which is powerful enough to max out most games today at high resolutions, and save $40. You could get 2gb of ram instead of 4, and/or get lower speed ram and save $60 there. You could get an E5200 processor instead of an e7500 and save $55. That puts the system (with hard drive, so everything) at $437, and it would both be several times more powerful than an xbox, and also a solid general computer.
To repeat for the 80th time, I’m not saying that $437 system is cheaper than an xbox, obviously it isn’t. However, as I said in the OP, most people with a home desktop already have most of the costs covered, so for them it is indeed cheaper than an xbox. But even if you don’t, and you’re building it from scratch, for $140 more than the standard model of the xbox 360 you get something that has several times the processing power (both computationally and graphically) and serves as a fast general purpose computer too.
Thank you, SenorBeef, for a useful and informative OP.
I’d certainly be interested in a build-your-own thread. My current PC was put together by Monarch (I don’t think they exist anymore, and I’m not sure of anyone else who will slap the parts together for those of us who are less inclined to do so) with the input of dopers, but it’s nearing the five-year mark, and I definitely can’t play new games (it was below the minimum specs for Fallout 3, although I was able to sort-of get it to work.)
And I see that you already posted some info on builds. Thanks.
I can tailor something to your needs and budget if you tell me what you have, what you need, and what you have to spend.
Thank you. How much is a great deal on an adequate monitor? $125ish?
Like I said before - I have a laptop. I find it pretty annoying in general, especially since I have an iphone. I could probably run most games that I wanted on it - but I got turned off of PC games long ago with the constant tweaking and managing to screw something up. Plus, the keyboard is too small, and there’s no number pad (for some reason I find that very annoying). There’s definitely an uphill battle for your argument, because I think the fear people have of tinkering with something they spent a lot of money on is strong. I know that swapping out a video card isn’t hard - but there’s a mental block of sorts I think that people have.
Part of the problem is that I don’t really know what I want, or if I want to actually build something myself. I kind of worry that I’ll get all the parts, then not actually get everything working and assembled for another 6 months :). That’s why I used Monarch for the current PC.
Another issue is how much I want to salvage from the old PC, if anything. It’s perfectly usable. I could give it to my folks or a sibling. But the case is really nice and I could probably still use the optical drive, and maybe the PSU if using a 5 yr-old one isn’t asking for trouble.
If I DO decide to build something, I’d want it to last a long time. I’m perfectly capable of putting in a new video card or adding memory, so I’d be looking at a processor and board that wouldn’t limit me several years down the road.
There are a number - Cyberpower comes to mind. None of them ( with the exception of the truly high-end specialists ) have stellar reseller reputations, but several like the aforementioned have at least decent ratings and their machines ( at least the ones carefully cherry-picked for reviewers) are generally well-reviewed. Further they can build them virtually as cheap as you can off the shelf, because they use OEM parts and maintain thin margins.
An example of a higher end specialist, with a little higher margins and hence higher prices, but also better reseller rating, would be something like Digital Storm.
Sure. I didn’t realize you really wanted the info, I thought you were just trying to bust my balls.
You can find a decent 19" monitor for $125. I would recommend stepping and paying around $175 for a pretty good 22" monitor.
There is gaming hardware available for laptops, but it’s not the way I’d recommend going and I have no experience with it personally. It’s true that having to build a computer is a turn off and kind of intimidating. It really isn’t as difficult as it may seem at first… things tend to screw in or plug into each other in a fairly obvious way for the most part.
I do wish there was some well known PC assembly company that focused on budget rigs. You have a few boutique designers who specialize in the overpriced high end, and I’m sure there are plenty of people and small businesses that assemble budget-friendly systems, but none of them have any reach or name recognition. There’s a market there, I think, I just wish someone would try to take it.
Your power supply may or may not be usable with new hardware. You’ll need to check (if you know the model number, you can probably find the info online) if it has a 24 pin ATX connector and an 8 pin 12v connector. 5 years ago was right around the transition time when the new ATX standard came out which changed the type of connectors that power supplies use.
Optical drive should be no problem. You can keep hard drives, any peripherals, any sound card, and your case. But it may be worth it just to start from scratch and keep the old system around as a backup, or give it a way.
As far as upgradability - the motherboard and CPU I linked above are on their way out. Core 2 duo is intel’s old line of chips and the I7 line is the current stuff. The i7 line is much more expensive, but it would give you more future proofing. Processors can last longer than they used to - even the “old” core 2 architecture is extremely fast, and games aren’t nearly as CPU-dependent as they used to be… the graphics card/GPU is the bottleneck in most circumstances. I don’t plan on upgrading my CPU anytime soon because my c2d is still more than adequate, so I wouldn’t recommend the latest and greatest in this case if you’re on a budget, but if you’re worried about future proofing that would be the way to go.
What was that supposed to mean?