Buy a Gaming PC

Alienware makes sweet gaming PC's.
Dell has their XPS Series, too...

 

I am still of the opinion that you should assemble your own computer or have someone do that for you. Still, I'll see if I can find some stock builds that are good. What kind of budget are you on?

 

I can make you a list of parts, all you have to do is plug them in.....and if you manage to plug something in the wrong place: I want to see a picture of that!

 

Well I just made my first PC, and it was easier than expected. I put A LOT of research into it though, such as parts and how to build it etc,

There is a load of how to build gaming pcs on the net, for instance: Newegg TV: How To Build a Computer - Part 1 - Choosing Your Components - YouTube

If you are still not fully confident in building it yourself then you can buy a pre-built system from a pc specialist. For you it might be a site like: GR-TEK Custom Built Computers Core i7 & Gaming Computers Sorry I'm not familiar with retail sites for AU. These sort of retailers usually let you mix and match components then put it all together for you so you get the pc that you truely want/need. You will need to do lots of shopping around for the place with the best price/right components/good service.

Hope that helps!

 

Build it. It's just the better solution. It's not that hard; it's not like you're soldering parts to the motherboard or anything. Watch a few YouTube tutorials and you'll be on your merry way.

 

Build a PC. It's the best option. Just watch YouTube tutorials. But, if you insist on buying pre built, what's your budget?

 

I agree that building is the best solution.....however, I don't have any custom PC's around anymore (it used to be that all of mine were).

So what changed? I realized that my time in building the machine was valuable, and was willing to pay someone else to do that for me...to a point. For example, the machine that I'm writing this on right now is an HP something-or-other configured-to-order. While that is more expensive in terms of dollars than doing it myself, it winds up with the same end result - I have exactly the components that I want in the machine, and I didn't waste my time doing it.

So I said "to a point" in the previous paragraph. There are certain things that just don't make sense to do that way. If you want more RAM, for example, for goodness sake do NOT pay the highway robbery prices that these people charge. It's easy to throw it in, and not time-consuming. Same goes for hard drives (though the prices that they charge are more in line with what you could get them for).

 

A friend of mine swears by his Alienware gaming set-up. Mega expensive though...

 

Also, many times, manufacturers cheapen out on things like the case and other components. They also make things more proprietary so upgrading something might be more of a hassle than a custom build. Another con to a pre-built system is the sheer amount of bloatware manufacturers (the amount varies from company to company) put on their system that just take up space and resources.

Basically, if you want the most flexibility and want to pay less, a custom build is a no-brainer. If you're lazy/have no time, and have some extra money, get an ASUS or something.

 

I do not mean to hijack this topic, but I have a couple of questions.

Where in the US are good places to buy the parts to build a computer?
How expensive is it to build a computer?

 

Newegg, amazon, and tigerdirect are good places to buy parts. The cost to build a PC varies greatly, I could be as low as $500 for a budget build or as high as $8000 for something crazy and over the top.

 

I've found that to get something fairly reasonably-priced, yet sufficiently awesome, the price range is around $1000. Less than that and you won't be able to run the latest games like butter, and any more is unnecessary IMO unless you want to keep the same PC competitively powerful with no upgrades for like twenty years.

 

Do NOT buy an Alienware. I have had my Alienware for two years and so far I've had to replace the keyboard, AC adapter (twice) and have had many other issues. My battery is broken and their "all inclusive" warranty doesn't include batteries. If you try to reload the system software yourself you're likely to mess up and spend 8 hours with an annoying customer support agent who will end up making you pay another $300 for an "all inclusive" warranty so they can send you a new hard drive. They don't even sell my type of Alienware anymore (the 15x). After dealing with all the crap I've dealt with during the two years of having this laptop I don't know if I will even get anything from Dell again. If you want my advice I suggest you build you own, that way you won't have to worry about dealing with the company every time something starts going south.

 

Odd, because a lot of my friends have Alienwares, and they all love them. Never had any problems like that.

 

The price of buying parts varies greatly depending on what sort of PC you want to build. For instance a generic Gaming PC setup from micro center or use one of the alternatives that Stridenttube provided:

Processor: i5 3570K 3.4GHz : $190
Motherboard: P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Z77 ATX: $190
Hard drive: Caviar Black 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" : $105
SSD: 128GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive (SSD): $105
RAM: Vengeance Series 16GB DDR3-1600 : $100
GPU/Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660: $250
Power Supply: Enthusiast Series TX750M 750 Watt : $120
Case: Phantom 410 Mid Tower ATX Computer Case : $80
CD/DVD Drive: SATA DVD-RW Burner: $17
CPU Cooler: Hyper 212 EVO Universal CPU Cooler: $30

Total: $1187

Now obviously this is just a list of parts that you could use. I'm fairly certain that the above PC could handle pretty much anything thrown at it. The motherboard can even auto overclock your system to a safe/suitable level if you are unsure of how to do it yourself. If you don't do any gaming on your pc then you can expect the price to drop conciderably, you don't even need to buy a GPU as the 3570k has built in graphics.

Remember to mix and match the parts you want/need after all that's one of the main reasons your buying the part's: so you can get exactly what you need.

And with regard to building a pc, all you need is the know how and a screwdriver. That's it, all the compenents should come with everything you need to install them.

 

Thanks for the info. I will do some more digging into building a computer.
The main reason I am looking into it is because my main computer is getting a little old and it is struggling with the large photos from my DLSR.

I am currently running an Intel Core2 Quad CPU @ 2.33 GHz with an NVidia 9500 GS with 512MB dedicated and 4095 MB shared, and 8GB ram. I dug into it and found that because this is a propriety card, I have to change the power supply, and possibly the mother board to add a better video card.

I looked at BestBuy and several other retailers including TigerDirect, Newegg, and Dell and I cannot find a prebuilt computer with more than 1 GB dedicated video card.

The other issue causing me to look at new computers is that this computer currently has 2 monitors connected to it. One via HDMI and the other via DVI. The color between the 2 monitors has always been a little off due to the different connections. I want to be able to connect both monitors via DVI as according HP; I cannot go higher than my current 1920 X 1080 unless I go DVI. All of the prebuilds that I have seen only have 1 HDMI, 1 display port, and 1 DVI.

 

My Radeon HD 6850 is currently driving 3 1920x1080 DVI displays (2 connected via DVI, and one via an active DisplayPort->DVI converter - you have to be very careful to get an ACTIVE converter if you want to do this. I got a passive one originally and it won't drive more than 2 displays that way).

The HD 6850 has 2 DisplayPort connections, 2 DVI, and 1 HDMI. However, because of the limitations I mentioned before of no more than 2 non-DP displays (either native DP or active conversion will work), you really can only drive 4 displays off of it.