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Ask Slashdot: Buy Or Build a High End Gaming PC?
An anonymous reader writes: Looking at some Black Friday ads, I'm seeing some good deals on Alienware and other gaming rigs that would be cheaper than building them from scratch. If you built or were to build a high end gaming rig, what would you suggest? Or would you just get a prebuilt system and customize it to your needs? I'm not looking for cheap, I want best quality and performance, but not overkill that would rival supercomputers and at the same time break my bank account. It would be a Windows system to keep my family happy, but possibly dual boot with Linux to keep me happy. It will be located in the livingroom hooked up to a regular monitor and the big screen TV, replacing a budget PC that's in there now.
The only good way to get what you want is to build one.
It's also a good exercise.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Next question.
I'm not looking for cheap, I want best quality and performance
Unless you're buying a 'package deal' from a retailer and know down to the last fastener exactly what's going into the box you're buying, always build your own box if you can. Even then, if it's me, I'd end up auditing the entire pre-build anyway, to make sure their tech didn't do something stupid that would end up biting me in the ass down the road. But either way, if you have the capability to do so, spec out and build your system yourself, picking the best quality components and case, so you get exactly what you want, instead of what had the best profit margin for someone else.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I would recommend checking out the reddit forum for building PCs. They often know of deals and resources that can be helpful. People there will also be willing to help you spec out a PC and pick parts / find the cheapest prices.
Also pcpartspicker.com is a great resource.
That said, I've built pretty much all of my PCs for the last 20 years until this week. I found a good deal on an Asus G11 Desktop with an i7-6700 and a GTX 980. I could have saved a little building myself, but I decided to go the pre-built route this time and it's been great so far. Ultimately it comes down to what you prefer. The price is usually upgradability. In my case if I want to add additional components, there's only two PCIe 1x slots on the board that are open, so I'd probably need to get a new motherboard and case if I wanted to do anything other than swap out parts or add hard drives. So consider if you're ok with that before you buy.
That really is the big issue with a self build: If something goes wrong, you have to track it down and handle all the support. If you get a pre-built from a good vendor, they'll handle it all. Say what you want about Dell, but all you have to do is run their diags (baked in to the UEFI) and call them with the code, they'll send a dude with the parts needed.
So that should be the major thing you think about. If you don't want to do support, then buy it from a vendor that will provide you with support to the level you require. I tend to recommend Dell because their hardware is reasonable and they have support available everywhere. They subcontract it, but it all works well. We use it at work all the time.
If you are willing to do support yourself, then building it gets you precisely what you want. I build my system at home because I have very exacting requirements for what I'm after and nobody has that kind of thing for sale. Like I don't want a "good large power supply", I want a Seasonic Platinum 1000, nothing else.
Also you'll find that generally at the higher end of things you save money building a system. For more consumer/office range stuff it usually is a wash: They build the mass market systems around as cheap as you could afford to. However when you start talking higher end gaming stuff, you can pay a large premium for things.
As an example I just built a system for a good friend of mine. He wanted some very, very high end hardware and pretty specific requirements. Origin PC would get him what he wanted... for about $9,000. I put it together for around $6,000. The gamer stuff often commands a hefty premium.
I'd go with "build" all the time. There's no "good deal" that can top building your own. And if you're getting better deals with prebuilt rigs then you are looking at the wrong stores for parts.
Build it. Reddit has a great community for this, http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc. http://www.logicalincrements.com/ is also a useful site.
I looked at an alienware once, and the components they were using were about 2 standard deviations away from top of the line, whereas the best price point is about one standard deviation from top of the line. Even at that alienware with lower performance was much more expensive than the build I ended up doing. I built my PC about 4 years ago and it still exceeds my gaming needs. Don't see needing to build a replacement one for at least another 4 or 5 years.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I prefer to build personal computers for myself and brother. I know the technology and expansion capabilities when I buy the motherboard and my computers typically last 3-4 years until I feel the need to upgrade. My current PC has a SSD/HDD combo for acceptable speed and storage requirements at a cost I'm content about so I could see my current system being in place until a major component fails (motherboard or cpu). Just a peace of mind I like to have with my personal computer.
As other posters have said - Build!
What I haven't seen noted yet - Skip SLI graphics cards. I went SLI on the gaming machine I built in 2005. What I found was that a top end graphics cards can play games at high settings for a while, and that the extra $450 would've been more effective if spent 50% of the way through the life of the PC (i.e. 2 years later) on another high end card of the next generation.
There are no 'good' deals on pre-built systems. The cost on these hosts is anywhere from 50% to 200% markup on the cost of the components. Mind you there is a good deal of investment on the part of the manufacturer to ensure component integration is without defect, but it isn't guaranteed that some bug will crop up.
If you have the excess cash and don't wish to spend the time researching/building/risk taking involved in building a custom rig then purchase one from a common dealer.
If you would like an affordable system and are willing to add time in both researching building and addressing unforeseen issues then build one.
The markup cost is so great and the advantages just don't seem to be there. I usually will opt to build one and invest some time into research. I no longer actually need to do this, but the miser in me just won't let me purchase a pre-built rig.
Here are my cost saving and stability recommendations:
* Don't worry about overclocking... leave that to the kiddies who want to burn up their shit.
* The cheapest defense is in Herd Immunity or Apple Research. You can lean towards a very popular board on newegg or just buy a hackintosh board. I have found these to be extremly stable and they tend to work when dealing with things like sleep/resume on wake.
* Trailing edge of technology is both affordable and less buggy. I typically purchase the high end components that are being phased out. These will often be very comparable with the latest generation, but at a fraction of the cost.
* Avoid Version A... Never alpha test hardware for a manufacturer. I've seen gigabyte release limited updates for version A's and Asus tends to crap on them as much as possible.
* Read the motherboard compatibility guide. The motherboard manfacturer does a limited amount of tested with existing memory. While I have found compatability issues not really a big of deal as they used to be the old timer in me says just read the book and pick something on the list.
* Be Prepared to RMA
- Kingston and Western Digital have been the friendliest when dealing with RMAs in the past. Corsair used too (this may not be true) would only deal with the retailer for an RMA and most retailers won't deal with returns past 30 days. Make sure you know what the replace and repair process is with the manufacturer. In the event you do have an issue you are able to troubleshoot it can save you anywhere from a 100-200 depending on the component failure.
It may not be 'cheaper', but you can specify the exact parts. And you build it, instead of the 19 year old intern, with 2 weeks on the job, struggling through a monday morning hangover.
Build quality.
It's also a good exercise.
I do three sets of ten computers three times a week. And I cross train by laying fiber optic cable - it's for cardio. Cat 6 when I'm bored or overtrained.
Build it! For all of the reasons previously posted. I've been building mine since it entailed soldering discrete components onto a PC board - it had a hot Z80 CPU and 64K of RAM. :-)
Yeah - it's been a while.
Most Alienware computers are not gaming rigs. Or at least, they are so poorly optimized for the role that it would be shameful to call them such.
A gaming rig is a computer defined by its ability to play videogames well. For that, the single most important component is the graphics card or GPU, as most of the work done by a videogame is through the graphics APIs. It also needs a processor powerful enough to feed the graphics card. For modern games (since the late 00's), the processor doesn't need high single-threaded performance (because again, the work is done on the GPU, just needs to feed the GPU), but it is preferable to have more usable threads for some games (like Planetside 2) that track lots of physics.
Alienware computers typically are defined by having very high price tags (more on this later), powerful processors (typically top end i5's and i7's), but relatively weak graphics cards. Because of this, they typically play games at *lower* performance that their components might suggest (and certainly their price tags would). The reason for this bizarre design might have something to do with kickbacks from Intel (at least was true in the past), but also something akin to the MHz Myth for gaming and processor power, which allows Dell to sell PCs while still having a pretty fat profit margin.
When you buy an Alienware, you are paying close to retail (or usually a little more than retail) for the parts, plus some amount for labor, plus a pretty large (40-50%) profit margin on top of that.
Because of those things, you can oftentimes build a BETTER gaming rig for less than *half* the cost of an Alienware if you assemble yourself.
A good first build would have something like a low range i5, an FX-6300, or an FX-8350 combined with the most powerful graphics card you can afford. Right now the market is pretty much dominated by the GTX 960, 970, and 980 because of their amazing power, power/price point and their low power draw (about half the power draw of ATI/AMD's offerings). You can fit 2x GTX 960s plus an FX-6300 and the rest of the computer on a single 500W PSU, which is pretty remarkable.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Gaming in the living room? Dual boot? Tv?
This computer will never be ready to dd what you want. By the time you dual boot into linux someone will want to watch Netflix. Turn down that stupid gam, we are trying to watch TV over here. Dad, I need the computer for homework.
Honey what happened to my recipes and what does Ubuntu mean?
It wont work. Its a fools errand. She who must be obeyed will put her foot down. Buy her some nice-ish computer and sneak the gamer in later.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1. You get the chance to overspec case silencing components, slow running fans / fanless configuration. You woun't care about noise - until you do
2. You get to specify memory specs / hard drive specs / processors
3. You get the chance to specify your graphics card - especially useful if you're dual booting Linux
4. You get the chance to specify a case size that you can work with / no tool assembly
5 If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces - but you can also upgrade at your own pace
Some of the component shops around here have PC-builders, basically you pick (from their approved selection) case, psu, mobo, cpu, ram, graphics card(s), disks etc. and they'll assemble and test it for you. If you want to start fresh and not use any parts from your existing setup that's a quite practical way to getting the parts you want without fiddling with screws and cables and DOA components (well unless they fail during shipping). Personally I rarely start over from scratch though, it's rare that everything is so outdated it's best to start over.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Seriously though, the only way to get what you want is to go custom. I'd consider a pre-made box only if it was a shockingly good deal. Every time I run the numbers though, I always see that what I can build myself is usually cheaper than what someone else sells pre-made.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Do you want to spend time or money to assemble the parts? That's basically the question. Do you want to hire someone to put your parts together or do you want to do it yourself?
We're not talking about pre-built PCs loaded with bloatware. That's not an option, at all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Putting a "gaming" PC in the living room often is not well received by the family. If you really think you can get away with it, make sure you go out of your way to make it as unobtrusive as possible; muted colors, quiet fans, minimal external cabling, etc. If you can fit it in some kind of cabinet or other structure where you can close the doors to hide it completely, that would be even better yet.
A lot of those important bits are counter to how a lot of people - and companies - like to build "gaming" PCs.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
On how much time you want to spend maintaining it. I personally don't want to spend any time fiddling with the hardware. I want to pay for somebody to do it for me (i.e. pay for warranty, on-site repair etc.). In any case I'd say buy an entire PC from some manufacturer. I bet the individual parts (mobo/disk etc.) will be of better quality than those you buy retail.
If you stick with the Dell corporate models, ie: Optiplex/Latitude/Precision, there IS no bloatware. Admittedly you do pay a bit more for the corporate models, and you cannot walk into WorstBuy/Costco and buy one, but the quality/warrantee/support on these models are significantly better.. Source: Retired sysadmin, who supported said Dell corporate systems for more than 10 years...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
If it's for standard office use or similar, just buy a pre-built one. You can get nifty tiny, silent cases that are vastly overpowered for anything you might want to do with it. If you need more power, I would select the components myself, but leave the grunt work of building to a retailer. Where I live that costs about 75 euro and gets you three years of warranty, so it's a great deal.
Pre-built gaming systems tend to be unbalanced, throwing lots of money at high-end components where only very marginal gains can be expected in actual real-life performance. You don't need "black" CPUs or hand-picked memory, and you don't need dual graphics cards either - unless you enjoy paying through the nose for a problematic component that will be outgunned six months down the road anyway.
As for the notion that you need to build one yourself to prove your manhood: look buddy, unless you soldered your own graphics card or whatever, all you are doing is clicking together some premade components. A monkey could do it.
There's nothing like getting exactly the parts you want, though that also comes with the risk of incompatibility. Also, as you upgrade you can potentially save money by reusing parts like the case, PSU, heatsink + fans, drives, cables and possibly even the Windows license.
However, if you're starting fresh and want to make things a little easier, consider that the graphics card is the only major difference between a gaming and non-gaming PC. Buying a decent desktop and adding upgrades (video card, decent PSU, possibly a SSD) will often be cheaper and more reliable than assembling everything from scratch.
If you're not experienced assembling and troubleshooting PCs at all, consider one of the frequent 'HP Envy Phoenix' deals. For the past six months they've been selling very decent gaming rigs for below the cost of components; for instance, a couple weeks ago they were offering a system complete with i7-4790K and GTX 980Ti for ~$970, which is about what you'd pay for those two parts alone. Check Slickdeals or your favorite deal site for more information.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Long ago, it was *much* cheaper to build than buy. Then Dell came. Dell sold computers for below the retail cost of the components. It became cheaper to buy. It has since remained cheaper to buy, if you match a pre-built system. It's cheaper to build if you spec a system that nobody sells. Systems rarely have vastly different level components. I built myself a gaming rig. It was built to compete with a friend's I spec'ed the best gaming video card for the budget, and did everything else as cheap as possible (while still of acceptable quality). The result was a computer $200 less than my friend's brand new computer, with better FPS for every game we tried. It was much slower at video encoding, but played games better.
Bought computers are hard to get anything that's not "cheap" "middle" "workstation" or "gamer". You can't have a gamer card in a cheap system, or vice versa. Building is good for flexibility, and picking components. Another time I built, I saw the CPUs as having a poor bang per buck, so I built a good system with the cheapest CPU I could find. 2 years later, when the system was pretty bad, I upgraded the CPU and had what would have been a top-end (out of my price range) computer for budget price, though a little late.
So the decision is personal and fluid, though many here think everyone should do as they do, rather than think for themselves.
Learn to love Alaska
The main benefit is building is getting to decide where you want to spend extra money, and where you're willing to cut corners.
A second massive benefit is that you can ensure that you're getting standard parts. That makes fixing an expensive piece of equipment cheaper and easier, while facilitating upgrades to increase the longevity of your investment.
You'll also know exactly what you're getting. Prebuilt systems tend to provide partial specifications, highlighting selling points while glossing over or even ignoring everything else. Compare that to building your own. You're typically getting far more complete specifications for each component. In some cases, you can even go deeper (e.g. researching the chipset on a mainboard).
Gaming PCs aren't like gaming consoles. Even if you're satisfied with the systems performance and stability, you may be spending between two and ten times as much while expecting to keep up with contemporary games (i.e. game developers are constantly raising the bar on PC games). You may as well do it right.
The only good way to get what you want is to build one.
Absolutely, you get the exact parts that you want. Pre-built always seems to involve some compromise in one part or another.
Careful selection of parts is also very helpful if you want to do something like dual boot Linux.
Building your own is no longer the money saver that it once was though. But quality and compatibility are reason enough.
Overclocking is fine if its only a gaming PC but if it is also used for anything serious, anything where the correct results are important ... do *not* overclock.
... are all variable and will change from one specific CPU to another. Hence the inability to reliably test for overclocking errors. The errors manifest different on every CPU, and the required conditions manifest differently, and these conditions may include being immediately preceded certain instructions or certain data patterns. Instructions and data patterns that also differ CPU to CPU.
... its best to avoid overclocking.
Overclocking errors are not some black and white easy to recognize situation. It is literally a progression through various shades of gray. At the lightest shades of gray, where overclocking errors begin, at perhaps quite modest overclocking settings, the errors are subtle. Literally it may simply give the wrong answer, the wrong numeric value, no crash or anything dramatic. And what instruction yields this simple wrong answer, and beginning at what overclocking setting, and what instructions must precede it if any
So if a PC is just for gaming and other casual use, overclocking does little harm. However if the computer is also used for serious numeric work, software development, etc
A Beowulf cluster of these babies might work, and it's cheap, too!
(no, I'm not being serious, not for a typical gaming rig anyway)
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
For "quiet" video cards you sometimes have to look for a previous generation design that has gone through a new manufacturing process (same circuitry but laid out at a smaller scale, a process with fewer nanometers (nm)). These may get smaller or slower speed fans. Might even go passively cooled if it was a modest GPU to begin with. Of course you won't get the greatest performance but perhaps something good enough for play.
For what its worth I tend to install auxiliary low-RPM fans that blow directly on passively cooled motherboard chipsets (often under a heat sink) and on passively cooled GPUs.
You've got issues - if somebody buys a card rated for 1.2 GHz and won't run there, they should return it and get a refund.
You seem to have taken your cowardly little heuristic for building systems and decided to expect it of everyone. You are as much a fool as the guy who claims he can audit his own builds better than a professional PC tech.
I admit they f*** up a lot. But so will you pompous jackanapes.
I'm surprised you haven't been modded up for giving bad advice.
you technically can't install Windows 7 without a CD-ROM
What the fuck are you talking about?
... then you can't afford a "high end" gaming rig.
Dual-boot is NOT where you want to go with a gaming machine, you'll be fighting drivers on the Linux side every time you get a fresh-off-the-shelf expensive hardware component. If you care enough about gaming performance to even consider building a machine from scratch, then commit to that - rather than trying to make it a jack of all trades.
I've been using Linux since 1992, Windows a few years longer. In that time, I've built up dozens of machines. My suggestion: build a Linux box with components that you know will work with Linux - for example, I stay clear of nVidia because many of those cards are a nightmare on Linux. On my gaming machine I run a $300 nVidia card, etc etc.
Hardware is cheap. What's your time worth?
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Building your own can be an important part of learning enough to no longer be a noob. Research too, not just the build and debugging.
Build.
Having bought an Alienware Aurora R4 in 2012 I've found it to be a good machine, but not without consistent issues. Keyboard/mouse died. Video card died. Other random quirks like randomly not booting for a week (thought the MB died, but then just started working after being unplugged for several days), one weird windows issues that i suspect was a combination of hardware/software. etc...
I had built many systems prior but thought I'd splurge and try an Alienware to get everything in a single box.
For the Alienware machine I bought, which included a monitor and nice Bose speakers, I got a "good deal" via my employer's partner discount, speaking with financing at the right time who dropped the price further by opting for interest free financing vs. credit card (paid in full before interest kicked in). But it still worked out to be 1.5 - 2x the amount I would have paid for a self-build with better quality parts.
Dell bundles and scrimps where they can so the no-name accessories and components will not be the same as if you bought direct from EVGA/ASUS/Gigabyte in my opinion.
Perhaps the only benefit of a high-end alienware is the default watercooling setup (which does not cover the video card mind you) and the potentially comprehensive warranty, but if you are considering build vs. buy the warranty is not worth much anyway.
You're generally saving yourself trouble in the long run by building it yourself. As other have said, buying a pre-built system means you're going to have to worry about bloatware, firmware issues, and dealing with support if something goes wrong.
While it's true that you can find gaming systems for cheaper than you can build something yourself, it's almost impossible to beat the value of building it yourself. You can pick which components to spend big on, and which to scale back on. Pre-built systems will often have odd scaling issues between different parts.
For example, moving from a "medium" system to a "high-end" system may involve upgrading the video card and the CPU for $500. While it can be true that adding those two components individually does indeed add up to $500, you may get 90% of the performance increase from the video card. By building yourself, you can find the price/performance/features sweet spot for each individual component.
Good luck with your build!
The current upper-mid to top end cards can just barely keep up with 4k right now, if the OP wants to go that route. You're better off with two mid-range cards in SLI if you want to do 4k at the highest settings.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I somewhat disagree. A budget build (by that I mean somewhere between $200 and $500) will use rather low power components, so that an old case with bad cooling is enough. Graphics cards in the 60-65 watt or 100-110 watt power ranges may need to be looked for.
Inexpensive motherboards tend to be the most reliable (with modern hardware, without a FSB or third party chipset) because they're made in high numbers, and the most expensive motherboards tend to be the most unreliable. So around the low middle is nice..
Power supply is the most critical, if you're doing a really low end PC you'll have to spend a bit more on the power supply than on the CPU.
OEM PC are more unfixable. For example a buddy's PC had to be downgraded from two sticks of RAM to just one, because you can't do shit all in the BIOS. With a real motherboard and BIOS, slowing the RAM down would have made it stable again. But you can't do anything, just set up time/date and boot order. And the motherboards are the worst crap available anyway (Packard Bell, HP, etc. etc.)
One point I haven't read in the contents so far it's:
Building your own system gives you access to higher quality parts ON YOUR PARTS. Most systems you buy will overspend on the CPU, because people buy based on 'the mega hurts' and pull budget away from things that User doesn't think about, like the power supply. Nearly every single issue that a nerd needs to tech support around family and friends comes down to a piece of hardware unable to deal with signal/power fluctuations that better components could handle just fine, AND that higher quality components would fix outright so as not to wear down components further in.
The point about support is important, above. Home builders should only buy components like the Asus "pro" series, that have warranties of their own. Not that you want to use them, but that you CAN use them makes the engineers pay closer attention and the company invest in failsafes.
Had a friend who is quite bright, but inexperienced with root cause elimination. 6 months ago, he went down the path of "building" his own home theatre/PC gaming rig. After several rounds of buying what the online rags suggested as the best bang for the buck, he had three collections of incompatible parts and not one working PC.
I'd done him a couple of favors in the past and he was emotionally defeated with the whole project. He ended up giving me the whole lot. The one thing all his platforms had in common was Gigabyte motherboards with a high density buzz words on the spec sheet and rave online reviews. I've not yet diagnosed all the problems, but I now have a heck of a HPC system after swagging the Gigabyte board for a ASRock that actually retails for 40% less. Turns out that dual bios feature of Gigabyte boards, is REALLY flaky.
https://www.google.com/search?...
At the end of the day, unless you are ready to learn troubleshooting skills related to the tasks, you probably ought to buy something you can box up and ship back if it doesn't work.
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
2) Will you enjoy building it? Then chances are you should build it yourself. Screw the money, go for the XP!
3) Is your time valuable? Because if you won't enjoy it and want to save the money, then chances are any cash you do save will not be worth your time.
Basically, if this sounds like a fun time, then do it. But don't expect to make a monetary profit.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You've got issues - if somebody buys a card rated for 1.2 GHz and won't run there, they should return it and get a refund.
I agree with this; if the silicon (and the implementation) weren't tested during development at a reasonable margin for temperature and supply rail voltage, then someone did a sloppy job and you shouldn't have to put up with it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
4k is a very real reason for it
For items where you can get the benefit of OEM pricing (e.g. for Windows) while customizing a system, it may make sense to purchase the bare-bones of what you'll want from someplace like Dell where you can customize, then add other items like graphics cards and SSDs on your own. If you don't care much about the motherboard details, power supply, case, etc. this may be the way to go.
On the other hand, you'll get an overall better system if you build from components - brand power supply, possibly a better case (though the manufacturers target easy/quick assembly and maintenance to keep labor costs down), etc. Take a look at the Logical Increments Guide at http://www.logicalincrements.com/ for reasonable recommendations at various price points.
If you know what you're looking for and can spread your purchasing over 2-3 weeks you can also get a lot of components at good discounts by watching sites like SlickDeals and possibly FatWallet for sales - SlickDeals has a lot of component sale announcements in the forums, not sure about other sites.
fencepost
just a little off
Look what you want in a self build system and then look if you can buy anything like it. If not, you build it.
That said, I always build because I like doing it. But then I only upgrade and not buy a new machine. So to me that means:
New Mobo, CPU and memory if I need a new machine. And when I need a new videocard, I just add that.
I have 3 videocards, 4 monitors, so I do not have a standard setup that I can just buy and I only run Linux.
http://pcpartpicker.com/ can be a nice place to start.
Advantage of pre-build and running Windows is that the PCs are full of shareware who pay for your Licence. Companies get money to put their crap on your PC.
And to be honest, instead of dualboot, I would go with two systems, unless thye both need to be gaming systems.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you're building a "high-end gaming PC" as the summary asked about, you are never going to save money buying it. Never. Not. Ever.
Here's how I usually budget and build a gaming desktop:
- Motherboard: $250-ish. No more than $300. Always full-ATX unless there's a specific need for a smaller board. Always ASUS, but that's personal preference.
- CPU: $300 because Intel won't let this price point go. This is always where the top-end i7 lands. I never buy AMD anymore. I wish their glory days would return once again, but I don't think it will happen anytime reasonably soon. It's unfortunate, but that's life.
- GPU: $300. Maybe allow up to $350 if there's a really good deal on something that's normally way more than that. Always nVidia. I've had good results with EVGA cards. I've had poor results with ASUS. Don't bother doing an SLI/Crossfire setup. If you had money to spare, you wouldn't be asking if it was cost-effective to buy vs. build.
- RAM: $150. Get whatever spec is cheap and compatible with the motherboard. Get at least 16GB.
- SSD: $150. That's currently about a 512GB drive.
- HDD: $100. That's currently about a 2TB drive. Use this as a slow bulk storage space and a place to put the swap partition so it doesn't wear-level your SSD to its grave.
- PSU: $100. Get the minimum that will power everything. Likely this will be around 650W because video cards and Intel CPU's are power hogs.
- Case: $150. Get a decent brand like Antec, Cooler Master, or Corsair. Your un-cut knuckles will thank you.
- Other hardware: $250. Use this budget for optional stuff like optical drives, flash card readers, hot-swap bays, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and any accessories or bling you want to add right away.
- Windows: $140. Get the Pro version. Always. Just get OEM, as there's nothing special about the retail version anymore. They all activation-lock to the first motherboard you install to.
That comes to about $1900 plus a couple hours of your time to put it together and kick off Windows Setup.
Paid less than 900€ for a better rig than you can get for 1600€ at the store. You must be really rich if you'd rather pay 700€ to avoid 3-4 hours of fun tinkering.
i.e. game developers are constantly raising the bar on PC games
But you can turn down the detail level in options. The effort to also sell on PS3 was encouraging developers to make available settings suitable for a 2006 GPU, and this is continuing on PS4 which has essentially a laptop chipset.
But can consoles play anything but the vanilla version of a game? Many PC games have plenty of community-made mods that extend the game's replay value.
Good list. I would also add 2 things you missed:
COOL: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
PASTE: Artic Silver 5
I've built several desktops and htpcs in recent years but for my last desktop I bought a HP 750se. I got it for less than $900 with a special coupon (keep an eye on techbargains.com). I got it with a GT970, skylake quad core, 12 GB of RAM and 500 watt power supply. I was hesitant to go with a huge pile (aka HP) but after thinking about how much time and effort to build one and how I couldn't build one at that price I decided to take a chance.
I couldn't be happier with it. Incredible performance and so nice and quiet. Time will tell if the parts hold up (especially the power supply).
For me it came down to price and time that I didn't have with a family and full time job. With that kind of budget though you could build a nice high end system. If you want to save some money and get a midrange system keep an eye on techbargains.com
I've had a couple of Alienware PCs over the years. They used to be pretty good, but I wouldn't touch them these days. The "headline" parts (CPU, RAM, graphics card) might look ok, but they cheap out like crazy on everything else. Even their highest-end PCs tend to have fairly nasty motherboards and the storage drives will be the cheapest and most failure-prone around.
As others above have said, self-build is the optimum choice if you have the time, expertise and confidence. But if you don't have any of the above, there are still decent pre-built options, though some of them will be highly region-specific.
I decided I couldn't be bothered with self-build for the latest machine and went to a UK company called Novatech. They let me choose the parts pretty much down to the last screw in the case. When it arrived, I whipped the side off the case and did some fiddling; I wasn't 100% happy with how they'd arranged some of the cables and did a bit of tidying, but it was basically a well-built machine. The price was maybe the equivalent of $100 above a self-build (for a very, very expensive PC).
Now that's a UK-specific vendor, but I've found that there are lots of regional variants on that theme around the world.
If you're worried that you'll not build your PC correctly and it'll fail to work, then one alternative to that is to find a good whitebox shifter that lets you customise everything. Of course, you'll have to check they'll not overcharge for components (they sneakily don't put the absolute price for each one up, instead picking a "default" component and then displaying the +/- delta price difference between the default and each alternative you can pick from a list).
You will be restricted to what components they let you pick of course, so make sure there's nothing too restrictive. At the end of the day, you'll get a well-tested box that can be purchased without an OS if you're only going to run Linux on it. My "trick" is to order the best bang for buck components that can't be easily replaced (CPU is the scariest - I know you'll say it's easy, but it's just too frightening to change IMHO simply because of the high chance of damage of what's often the most expensive component) and then get the minimum of what can be easily swapped out/upgraded later (disk, RAM, graphics cards and the like).
Oh and I'm fussy about keeping my PCs quiet - I think there should be a decibel rating for all components and an overall one for the final built PC. There's nothing worse than firing up a PC and having it sound like a jumbo jet on the runway. I order silent/quiet components for as much as I can and add soundproofing if the case doesn't come with it (make sure that's an option for your whitebox shifter). The acid test is: can you sleep overnight in the same room as your running PC? I can with my current PC from a whitebox shifter...
Oculus Rift requires high end single cards to get adequate performance but for smooth, stutter free VR SLI is a must.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I had to make this decision about five years ago and I had a buddy at the office willing to help me pick out components and put it together. I ordered the components and we did some of the work of putting it together in my office. I did most of the work but had somebody to ask questions if I didn't know what to do. The downside was that the motherboard was recalled shortly after I put it together so I had to take it apart and put it back together again but I am glad that I went through the experience. I'd recommend doing it with someone that has some experience, either in-person or online. If you're in a forum that has a section or thread for building a computer - so much the better. You might find someone that you already know online that can help you out. On family PCs - I think things work out better when everyone has their own system as you don't have contention issues. The skills that you get building your own are useful with other systems at work, with friends and with relatives in that you should wind up better at diagnosing problems and potentially fixing hardware issues.
The last time I "built" (actually just spec'd the components) a "custom" machine was well over 10 years ago, about when nVidia SLI came out. It seemed much easier then or maybe I'm just older and stupeder now.
Pre-built is cheaper for the same hardware. Build your own avoids custom case, space limitations, proprietary bits like power supply allowing you to upgrade easily in the future.
I don't know where this myth comes from, but it's bullshit. If you properly test the system, you'll catch any error producing instability before depending on it. A bit flipped is a bit flipped. They happen on stock systems too. This is why any sane system handling critical data has built in sanity checks.
No, the BS myth is that you can test for instability. Every manufactured CPU is unique. Its weaknesses unique. The point and manner that it fails unique. Some failing with a modest amount of overclocking, other not failing until much greater overclocking. And again, the failure is not necessarily something resulting in a crash. The mildest of overclocking errors can simply be an erroneous result of a mathematical operation.
Where a bit flips will vary from one CPU to the next. How can you test for that? And in a specific case when a bit flips in an instruction may depend upon the preceding sequence of instructions and upon a specific data pattern. How can you test for that, the prerequisites are unknown and vary one individual CPU to the next?
Testing by a manufacturer can involve things far more probative than running a software test. So a CPU rated for a certain speed can be confidently run at that speed. However once overclocked the confidence is lost. How much tolerance there is for overclocking can vary from one design to the next, one manufacturing process to the next, and from one individual CPU to the next.
As has been said so much already, build it. What I havn't seen being said is that you should just use the integraded graphics from an Intel CPU for a couple more months (or an old graphics card you already have) and wait for the new cards that are coming out in the next 6-7 months.
The existing cards are all still being built on the 28nm process, which has been in use for over 3 years now. Delays and problems have kept the graphics cards from being built on modern process nodes for the last 1.5 years. The next set of cards due out in the first half of 2016 are going to be using 16nm FinFet. The current high end graphics card from Nvidia, Titan X, has 8 million transistors in it. The next generation cards have been leaked to have 17 million transistors. Transistor count has in the past almost always been associated very closely with performance. We are really looking at the next generation of graphics cards having at least double the performance of the current generation, which is something that hasn't happened in about 7 years.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Given the games aren't exactly demanding the top of line cards, i would focus on making something with low noise and high reliability rather than going for high expensive performance that will not have anything to use in a sane fashion for the next 4 years or so.
I'm a proponent of usually building your own gaming PC rig, BUT the fact is, the whole warranty thing is dicey at best these days, regardless of buying individual components and building it yourself.
For example, I bought a high-end video card made by Gigabyte last year. Right out of the box, it would freeze up the PC or cause a random reboot within 2-5 minutes of playing anything using 3D graphics. Just running standard 2D applications though, it'd run fine all day long. Everyone told me I needed a bigger/better power supply, or I needed to take off the heat-sink and fan, add better heatsink compound and re-seat it, or I just needed to try other versions of the ATI drivers, or I had an overheating problem because my case wasn't cooling well enough..... I forked out some $'s for a great power supply, and nope -- same issue. Also tried a few different driver versions but clearly that wasn't the answer. So after wasting all of that time + money, I requested an RMA from Gigabyte and sent it back in.
Well, Gigabyte sat on my card for about 3 months, meaning I had a non-working system that whole time while I waited for it. When I finally got it back one day? It looked like nobody even touched it. It just had a note in the box stating the RMA had been "processed" - with no explanation of it defects were actually found. I tried it out, and same issue!
Ultimately, I wound up trading it plus $100 cash to another computer enthusiast for his nVidia 3D card. (He wanted to tinker with re-flashing the BIOS on it and so forth, to see if he could get it going, and he didn't like his nVidia GTX series card for some reason.) Last I heard, he had to RMA the card again and is in the same boat I was in originally, where there's no word on when it'll get repaired/replaced and Gigabyte is just sitting on it again.
Given my whole fiasco? I almost surely would have been better off buying a pre-built PC, so a failure like this would have hopefully been resolved by swapping out my whole computer or troubleshooting it and replacing the defective card, minus all that uncertainty about power supply wattage/type and so on.
I still prefer the customization made possible only by building your own PC. With cases alone, there are SO many options.... But I'm not completely down on the idea of getting a good pre-made system from a known reputable vendor either.
and more to do with sneaking a gaming PC into married life. A friend of a friend used to buy every console that came out and went to great lengths to hide said purchase from the other half. At least for long enough to him to say, "That old thing? I've had it for ages". These new consoles are a god send, they look like just another piece of home entertainment gear. They can pass for a set top box :).
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With build you can find good quality parts at low local prices.
Find the good RAM, CPU, GPU with features and a quality power supply. A motherboard with the modern fast storage options and amount and quality of fast connections without going over budget. Run power as needed and for later upgrades. Fit well made fans that are well designed for air flow and at a low sound level.
Depending on the brand you have the option not to pay a premium for over clocking support.
When you buy your avoiding the need to install a cpu, fit a better cooler and that press down feel.
Go for a self build just to save on quality parts and get exactly what is needed at a fair price. Buy if a system needs to be ready and tested without the need to install a cpu. Ensure that the product is well supported for the price.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm going to break from the majority here and say it could possibly go either way.
For a higher-end system, I wouldn't bother with any builder who won't tell you the exact parts they're using. I don't know what the situation is with Alienware these days in the Dell era, but if they don't say or use custom parts in key places I say skip 'em.
Something like a custom but still ATX standard case is fine, but a proprietary motherboard or GPU is no good IMO.
From there, just do the math. Look up what the same or an equivalent machine would cost you to build, then figure out how you value a central source for warranty support and the time you'd take to build it yourself.
I've only seen this on the low end rather than the high, but its certainly possible that the volume OEM gets better prices on parts than you do to a point that they can sell you a prebuilt that's either cheaper than you could build on your own or a better value due to the warranty and personal time issues.
All that said, I personally enjoy the process and the ability to select exactly the parts I want to a point that I doubt I'd ever buy a prebuilt for my own use outside of a few appliance-type machines where I can't easily replicate it.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
You are getting the PC for fun (gaming) right? So consider the process of building the hardware and customizing software part of that fun. You get to learn about various technologies available in 2015 and the art of putting them together. If you go with Linux and spend effort to customize your system, you are also getting marketable CS knowledge. All in all, the enjoyment of the process is worth the price of a few games even if you can't compete with Dell purely on price.
Seriously? First, that's going to kill a lot of the gains you get from having the SSD (In Windows, that is), and secondly it's going to take a long time to wear-level a SSD from the page file. Besides it'll mostly likely die of other reasons first (*cough*firmwarebugs*cough). If you're really worried get a cheap under $40 one and put your swap file on that.
You might also consider buying a larger SSD as games nowadays chew through storage pretty quickly. Ditto for Windows. You can always store the games on the HDD but then you lose the advantage of having it in the first place. (though granted I do all my gaming on a PC that still pure HDD so you'll likely be fine)
Why? There's almost no difference between Pro and Home except for a few things that they use to sock it to businesses (like the ability to join domains) that are absolutely of no use on a gaming PC. Well, I suppose with Windows 10 you have the ability to defer updates, which is nice. Though I'd seriously consider buying Windows 8.1 because 1) It's faster than both 7 and 10, 2) It doesn't have the Windows 10 spyware, 3) You can defer updates, and 4) If you're just using it as a launcher for your games the Metro interface won't matter. Be sure to let it update to Windows 10 (so that you reserve your free copy in case you ever want to use it), then roll it back to Windows 8.1 and use that.
Because black-friday gamerdads are more likely to kick your ass than hardware nerds.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
There is a great article by Jeff Atwood on building a system: http://blog.codinghorror.com/t... If you aren't familiar, he's developer that has been blogging for about a decade and is read by a number of developers.
In this article, he references a series of articles wrote back in 2007, when he was building his previous development machine. It includes a section on Overclocking: http://blog.codinghorror.com/b...
The take-away: there is a risk of stability, but it's considered low enough in the the cost/performance ratio that he advocates overclocking his development box.
...For what its worth I tend to install auxiliary low-RPM fans that blow directly on passively cooled motherboard chipsets ...
I do the same thing. Sometimes it is not a case of needing more air flowing through the case, but more directed airflow within the case. I then just assure there's enough airflow through the case to keep the internal temperature where I want it.
That's because they use parts that are inferior to what you'd use if you built it yourself. That is NOT a benefit.
I just built a mid-grade gaming PC. Skylake i5-6500, ASUS H170 PRO gaming motherboard, 8 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD, 1 TB WD Blue Hard drive, Antec 650W 80+ gold PS, Bluray burner and a Radeon 7970 with 3 GB.
I built it for $741.
How did I do it? I went on pcpartpicker, researched and made a list of the parts I wanted. I availed myself of the 25% off at jet.com and scoured buildapcsales on reddit. I even scoped out new parts on Ebay. In the end, I did not settle at all. I got all the parts I wanted for much cheaper than it would cost to buy a pre-built system with those specs.
Hi personally built my own custom pc at a point I was really "grown up" (30) but admittedly it was a great experience and something unforgettable. :)
I never had a chance to buy branded gaming pc though and I know they cost a lot which is another factor I stay away from those. One important thing comes to my mind is warranty factor. Usually those branded pcs have 1 year standard warranty unless you purchase more by paying extra. However, if you built your own pcs then each component can have individual warranties which might start from 2 years + (HD), PSU (3+), CPU(3), MB (3+), Ram (Lifetime) etc.
For me its important that I have paid for something which is backed by support. Also pre-built pcs seems to not have good airflow or cooling system and manufacture quality of components is not as good because of made on large scale in order to cut costs (if you are interested in buying basic pc and want customizing it).
As you mentioned you do not want to pay a lot or do not want extra-ordinary system. I would recommend making your own and it would be a plus if you could get good offers/deals on whole packages (MB+CPU+Ram or whatever available).
There's usually no need to spend so much on the motherboard. The motherboard doesn't really contribute to the gaming performance, so a mid-level board from one of the good brands (Asus, MSI, Gigabyte) is probably good enough.
While you may get slightly higher out-of-the-box clock speeds with the i7 CPUs, a high-end i5 gives better bang for the buck in gaming, as the main difference between i5 and i7 series is Hyper-Threading support in the latter series, and Hyper-Threading doesn't usually increase gaming performance (and some games actually suffer from Hyper-Threading). The CPU performance isn't very critical, as the gaming performance comes mostly from the graphics card, at least in graphics-intensive games and with high resolutions. In general, the graphics card should be the most expensive component in a gaming build, and by a good margin.
It seems that very few games gain anything from more than 8 Gb of RAM. A higher amount of RAM doesn't hurt, of course, but it can be wasted money if the budget is more limited than $2000.
There are very few setups with a single graphics card that won't run with a good 500 W PSU. For example, a computer with a new i5 or i7 CPU and for example GTX 980 will use a bit over 300 W tops under heavy loads (you can find measured power consumption figures in card reviews).
Good cases can be bought for a lot less than $150. Of course, looks are worth taking into consideration, as the case is what you'll actually be looking at.
U+F8FF
Other than a few sandbox games that will run on less than awesome hardware there is virtually no reason not to take the gaming to the console. Building your own machine sounds great, but when you have a problem it is _YOUR_ problem. I experienced this myself several times and the other way to look at it is - you are down not playing games and screwing with the machine. You will probably be playing your console while the money or parts arrive. You can have quite a few XBOX Ones and PS4s for that money... I can't really see the point... other than... like..Warcraft or something that is PC only and doesn't require the best hardware. PC gaming used to be cheap and unique, now it's expensive and the consoles are just as good for most things.
I'm not sure what distribution you're using, but here I am typing into my custom dual-boot gaming/performance PC. I had zero problems running my high-end graphics card.
I've had far fewer problems with Linux (in my case, Ubuntu) than Windows 7 or Windows 10. I can hibernate on Linux but not Windows.
There's a certain amount of discipline enforced when confronted with the grub boot menu: do I want to play (select Windows), or do I want to Get Shit Done (Linux).
Its not just cost/performance. In addition to possibly wasting your time debugging something that is an overclocking induced error, there is the ethics of delivering possibly faulty code to your customers. Real bugs are troublesome enough, no need to plague your customers with a flipped bit in an indexed operation or something.
Also the fact that he believes that testing software indicates stability indicates he doesn't fully understand the failure modes of overclocking. You can gradually increase speed until the software indicates a failure and then reduce speed so that the software runs flawlessly for hours, and there remains a chance that your system has errors. All you may have changed is the prerequisites for an error. At the higher speed the instruction may fail universally, at the slightly lower speed it may only fail selectively depending on preceding instructions and data patterns. Instruction sequences and data patterns that the testing software does not include and can't really be predicted anyway.
Again for casual use not a problem, you only inconvenience yourself. The cost in the cost/performance tradeoff is only paid by you. But for software development you are possibly putting a cost on your customers too. That is unethical.
The "myth" situation was due to chips produced to handle a higher speed than they were tested at and sold as while items in the same batch were tested and sold for the higher speed. The "slower" chips were not rejected at the higher speed since they were never even tested for that speed. Thus things like a Pentium II 450MHz being sold at well under half price as a Celeron 300MHz - needing just the same heatsink as the expensive version to run solid as a rock at the same speed.
Fast forward to today and some people think that situation still exists.
However for a gaming PC the benefit of extra speed may be more important than the CPU doing weird stuff on rare occasions so most failures may not actually matter.
Hello what you want is to build it your self. Do not buy Hp all that you will do is waist your money, a Dell may be. What you will need is a minimum of 4 cores for CPU 2.3 GHz. AMD or Intel. A minimum of 8 GB Ram, Minimum 650 Power Supply. Video card at least a 970 TI Nvidia or 980 AMD. At least $ 42.00 air cooler for CPU, and minimum 1 TB hard drive. The case well that is up to you. Just make sure you have room to work with and expand, good air flow is a must. If you have Windows 7 use it, install it on a 300 GB partition. The rest you partition later for Linux and a 2ND NTFS partition for your Windows files. Use the TV as the Monitor use the HDMI out put from your video card. On Windows scale fonts to 200 for better viewing. If you have a low budget use ninite.com to install other programs free of spam. Like Teracopy, Revo, Malwarebites, and other applications. And to cut the cord use Kodi on Windows or Linux. The specs will give you at least 3 years of use, and room to expand or update. Hope this helps.