Buying New Gaming PC, Looking for Opinions

I've finally decided to attempt to get rid of my 6 year old PC.

I'm currently surfing Newegg for some new PC's. They have great prices, my only problem is, most computers come with an Intergrated Graphics card and I'd rather not have to shell out money for a graphics card too.

I'm looking around the Gaming section to see if I can find some decently priced ones.

Also if anyone else knows a good computer website where I could find a decent gaming PC for under 1,000 dollars that would be great (although it's unlikely).


Edit:

I'm currently looking at 4 ATM. Here they are from Most Expensive To Least

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883227356
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883227357
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... %29&Page=1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... %29&Page=1

Just wanted some opinions on them.

Can you plug components into each other? Your best bet for price would be to buy them independently and connect them yourself. It's scary the first time until you realize how easy it actually is.

Well ATM I'm leaning towards

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... %29&Page=1

I'd not buy that one, GT520 card is pretty low, don't know it well but know I wouldn't play games on it.
Let me ask this, if your goal is "under $1000" why are you shooting for less than half of your budget?

If you are willing to spend the 1-2 hours putting it together yourself something like

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBund ... 33-_-Combo

With

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102949

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6832116986

And

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835103065 <~This is for overclocking, probably the best budget heatsink you can buy


It would come in under a thousand and absolutely murder the 500 dollar pc you were looking at. And if you didnt want to overclock, or wanted to trade down to an amd quad core, you could knock a few hundred off that price easy. The one you are looking at comes with an nvidia 520 graphics card, which is about 1/4th the speed of my almost 3 year old ati 4890, which is itself only about half the speed of the 6950 i linked. My 4890, backed by a 3.8ghz quad core, isnt enough to run WoW at max settings and still get >30fps in town. The computer you are looking at is little more than an email machine.



Edit: if i had to get 1 of the four machines you posted to play games on, it would be the second one, for sure. It has the best graphics card of the lot.

Aergis wrote:I'd not buy that one, GT520 card is pretty low, don't know it well but know I wouldn't play games on it.
Let me ask this, if your goal is "under $1000" why are you shooting for less than half of your budget?

Just trying to keep it low. I've found some ones around 690 that are pretty good.

The last under 500 one I'm considering is

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... %29&Page=1

Someone gave me a website that compares graphics cards and it was around 400 points ahead of the other one.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Zota ... 20/18.html

Here is a video card review, it should default to WoW with that link, if not, there is a drop down box, and there are several other games as well. That list has the 520gt as well as the 5570. In your first four computers, the one i would have picked has a 6790, that is a bit faster than either the 5770 or the 550ti, which you can see in the test. If you are dead set on a prebuilt pc, from the ones you linked, take the one with the 6790.

Also, keep in mind that the test setup they use for those cards is somewhat stronger than the one you are talking about buying, it has more clockspeed, better performance per clock, and better memory bandwidth (its an intel i7, instead of an amd athlon II). So with the computer you linked, none of the cards will even reach quite the speeds you see in those tests.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 83-227-314

Heres another one a guy thats helping me linked me.

I actually really like this one

The cpu is a bit better, its a phenom II instead of an athlon II, but the 6670 is still considerably slower than the 6790 in WoW. It is a very large step up from the gt520 though.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_6670/17.html

I have one better than all of these sitting in my garage that I don't use for anything. PhenomII x6 1090T, 6870, Crossfire IV board, antec 900 case. Maybe it's time for a garage sale.

Any of you have experience with Cyberpower computers

I've heard mixed reviews about how reliable they are

500 dollar prebuilt computers, from pretty much any company, are going to come with low feature cheap motherboards, low speed ram, and cheap power supplies with overstated ratings that cant be hit in a reasonable temperature window.

You can tell this is true of the ones you linked simply by looking through the specs, you dont get a brand for the hard drive, you dont get a brand for the memory, you dont get a brand for the power supply, and any wattage rating not from a reputable psu is worthless. These parts are going to be the cheapest ones they could find, stuffed into the cheapest box they could find.


Consider the computer you linked for 500, and the parts i linked for a bit less than a thousand. The parts i linked have

the second best cpu on the market for gaming right now

one of the best motherboards on the market, with great power circuitry, probably the best integrated sound a motherboard can come with (x-fi 2)

A reasonable power supply (not the best, not even close to it, but not one of the ultra cheap smoke your hardware specials that come in the 500 dollar pc's

A video card that is easily 3-4 times faster than the ones you are looking at, if not more

Name brand, higher speed memory, and double the amount at that

An aftermarket cooler, which will keep the chip cooler than the factory one

The ability to overclock, should you desire to learn how

And the ability to add a second graphics card, the motherboard is crossfire or sli capable


The difference is that for 500 dollars you get a pc that was already outdated 2 years ago, and for a thousand you get one that is extremely capable today, with at least some room for upgrading 2 years from now. Even if you dont want to spend a thousand, you want to build the thing yourself. Instead of paying someone some of your very limited budget to pick the cheapest parts the can and put them together for you, you can pick reasonable quality, low cost parts, and get a more reliable computer because you didnt have to spend part of the budget on them putting it together. Plus, if you know where to look, you have the option of used parts, which can save money, if you keep up with what things are worth.

I'm gonna go with Tullock's opinion

The main reason is the lack of information that Cyberpower gives about the pc. No electrical test numbers for the PSU worries me A LOT, no timing on the ram worries me less since its not that noticable, but its still something to worry about...

The PSU will f you up bigtime. Its the no1 place people look to cut costs and its the no1 place that bites them back. A bad psu can fry your components, burn itself, and cause damage to your power socket at times. I've seen all 3 occur to the same one.

Its listed at 600W, which means it can produce a total of 600W on all rails as a peak. What its not saying is under which temperatures the test was conducted. Load of companys conduct these tests at -10 degrees and produce a result that can be 100-150W higher of what it is supposed to. Hence why I'm worried about serial numbers. Whereas Tullock's reckomendation says its tested at 40C, in a continuous test, with 80% efficiency

Personally, go with Tullock's list of components. The one you listed can work for you, but for how long? You might quite possibly be looking for a replacement PC 2 years from now, simply because of how much horsepower new games are gunning. To give you an idea, I run two 570's in SLI, and I can't max out Rift completely (AA etc).

If you are absolutely certain you're not going to play anything other than wow and lol for the next 5 years, and you are willing to take the risk of a shoddy PSU, a bad motherboard, and low speed, questionable brand RAM, then maybe the Cyber one is for you. Otherwise, what Tullock said is perfect. You can always ask for downgrades in costs, and we'll offer the advice, but in general, understand that if you build the pc on your own, you'll get more value out of the 600$, over if you buy that cyber pc.

If this was for me, I would not come close to the CyberPC no matter what. In the end of the day, its better to save up another 2-3 months for the extra cash, and buy something proper, rather than get a PC that will break down in a years time, and make you regret buying it

I'd rather not build my own PC as that can only end in disaster

If you want to pursue the cyberPC, or any prebuilt PC road, I'll make a list of newegg stuff thats worthwile, and you can email newegg and ask for the details on the PSU, RAM etc. Whatever you do, don't go buy something without checking out the details.

Also, building a pc is not hard. Any friends that know how?

Or you could buy mine...

It would certainly beat the hell out of the cyberpower ones he has been listing. Better processer, better motherboard, better video card. And without knowing what kind of ram and psu you used, i can still say with confidence that they couldnt be worse than what comes in the cyberpower ones

laterna wrote:Also, building a pc is not hard. Any friends that know how?

None that I know of unless they have a Batcave where they do it

Aergis wrote:Or you could buy mine...

Was it one you built a while back?

Yeah, probably a bit over a year ago. I upgraded to the new Intel Sandy Bridge when they came out early this year, and since it wouldn't fit on the AMD motherboard socket I had to get new board, and decided to switch to Nvidia for CUDA rendering etc so I ended up with a whole new computer instead of just upgrading a piece or two.

Now the other one is sitting in my garage and I always intended to do something with it but now I dunno what. I guess just sell it.

I'm sure Aergis is a reputable pre-built PC seller.

I need help too

I'm not really familiar with AMD processors, having worked all my life with Intels, up to and including i3s and i5s at work, but I want to buy/build a new rig and was thinking of this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productco ... terCombo=1

What would you favor?

Klaudandus wrote:I need help too

I'm not really familiar with AMD processors, having worked all my life with Intels, up to and including i3s and i5s at work, but I want to buy/build a new rig and was thinking of this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productco ... terCombo=1

What would you favor?

If you're really trying to save money, getting a cheap Phenom X4 or something might be worth it. Bulldozers (FX-XXXX) are generally worse than equivalently-priced intel chips, and only really pull their weight in heavily threaded applications - ie, not games. In general, sandy bridge is amazing - very strong single-threaded performance, lower power consumption than the AMD processors, and lots of overclocking headroom if you get a 2500k or 2600k - and very reasonably priced, so it's hard to avoid recommending it.

Note that option #2 requires a video card, it won't function without one. Option #4 has integrated graphics, but don't expect to game on it. Option #3 has integrated graphics that aren't completely useless, but if you're playing a lot of games (and not on an extremely low budget) a decent discrete card is much, much better.

I would aim for either:
- i5 2300/2400, H67 motherboard, radeon 6850 (low budget) + RAM/HDD/Case/PSU
- i5 2500k, P67 or Z68 motherboard, Radeon 6950 or Geforce 560Ti (the Ti is important, there's also a plain 560 that's worse) + RAM/HDD/case/PSU (more expensive, better performance)

I had a quick look through the newegg bundles, and there's a couple of 2500k + mobo + ram/HDD/case/PSU combos (these, just add a decentish CPU cooler (Coolermaster Hyper 212+ or 212 Evo, the evo is newer and slightly better) and a video card and you're good to go.

Of course, this all assumes you are gaming - if you're not gaming, the Phenom X6s are a decent lower-end choice, though it's still hard not to recommend Sandy Bridge. Main difference is you don't need much video horsepower if you're not gaming.

the CPU Cooler is with the assumption of overclocking, right?

And well, the only game I actually play is WoW, or I'd not be here =P

Also, I want to keep everything under $650... if it's under $600, even better.

Klaudandus wrote:the CPU Cooler is with the assumption of overclocking, right?

And well, the only game I actually play is WoW, or I'd not be here =P

Also, I want to keep everything under $650... if it's under $600, even better.

Right. Get the cheapest phenom x4 bundle you can then, and buy the best video card you can afford. Putting wow on a SSD makes a big difference in loading times, but I doubt you can squeeze it into that budget.