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.

Comments

Build one

[Z00L00K]

The only good way to get what you want is to build one.

It's also a good exercise.

Re:Build one

[phantomfive]

You always feel better after building your own system.

At least, I've never met anyone who didn't feel good afterwards.

BUILD

[zenlessyank]

Next question.

Re:BUILD

[zenlessyank]

The question was about the fact of better, not cheaper. It is always better to build it yourself. And the reason is this.....If Origin PC closes up shop, the warranty is dead, since it was purchased through OEM channels. An OEM warranty is not the same as a Retail warranty. I can always send back my retail motherboard to EVGA and my retail hard drive to Western Digital. If I try to send back an OEM to WD, they will deny it. Been there, done that. Now if we were talking about cheaper then you are correct. You can find companies who basically use standard parts purchased under OEM discounts. But I will NEVER use them. Because it is NOT BETTER. NEXT QUESTION.

Re:BUILD

[ranton]

And what if a pre-assembled PC is cheaper than your custom built PC by $300-$400 provided certain minor things are inferior to your custom PC?

This never happens. Not for a high end gaming PC anyway. For budget computers that are sold for a few hundred dollars that may be true but not for anything that will accommodate high end gaming. It is in fact the other way around, where a custom built PC can be up to and above $1000 cheaper than a pre-assembled one.

Take a simple example of an Alienware Area-51 PC with an i7-5930K, 16 GB 2133MHz DDR4 RAM, GTX 970, and 512 GB SSD. Not top of the line but certainly a great gaming PC. It costs $2750. Going to Newegg, I can get the processor (460), motherboard($150), ram (100), video card (350), intel 480 GB ssd (270), a high endcoolermaster case w/850W PS (280), and OS(100) for $1710. That is a $1000 difference. When looking for a higher end machine with 32 GB RAM and dual GTX 980 the difference came to almost $1250. That is pretty extreme.

Be sure they really are cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Be sure they really are cheaper

[plover]

I second using a site like pcpartspicker. It can help you avoid some petty technical mistakes, like buying an under capacity CPU cooler, or a power supply without enough of the correct connectors and voltages for your cards.

One thing I've noticed about homebuilt rigs is that they are occasionally louder than normal. I think a lot of builders don't think about noise or airflow, and a lot of the cabinetmakers just provide a bunch of fan mounting points but they can't really consider the cooling needs of the particular motherboard and CPU you're dealing with. If noise is important (perhaps you're going to use it as a media PC in a home theater, too) then you can factor that in as well, or consider options like liquid cooling solutions.

Depends if you want to support it

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Depends if you want to support it

[LVSlushdat]

I'm a retired sysadmin, supported Dell products exclusively for the last 10 years before I retired. The advice about Dell is spot-on, but with ONE stipulation.. With Dell, its kind of like there is two separate "Dell" companies.. One that makes the cheap consumer-grade stuff you find at CostCo/BestBuy, with brand names like "Inspiron/XPS/Alienware", then there is the "company" that makes the corporate models, namely Optiplex/Latitude/Precision... The consumer-grade machines come with very short warrantees, offshore/phonetree "support" and they're LOADED with bloatware/crapware.. The corporate models, however, come with 3-year warrantees, US-based support, and a clean copy of the OS, with only necessary drivers loaded.. You do pay a bit more for the corporate models, and they're only available thru the Dell website. Prior to about 2000, I used to build my own systems, but once I learned about the Dell Outlet, with their refurb'ed systems, that come with a significant discount over a build-to-order from the regular Dell website, all of my systems, both workstation and laptops, have come from there... Unless the time needed to build the system is worthless to me, I can't build a system for what I can get a Dell Outlet refurb for... YMMV

Build! And skip SLI.

[sheetsda]

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.

It sure is.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Too many tasks

[icebike]

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.

Overclocking errors can be a simple wrong number

[perpenso]

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.

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 ... 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.

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 ... its best to avoid overclocking.

If you can't afford two computers...

[ZeroPly]

... 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?