Where can i purchase a good gaming pc

[zshikara]

If you happen to live in the Dallas/fort worth area of texas I can build one for you. Just send me a note. My labor rates are fair and I can build high performance systems relatively cheaply too.

[ligerdream]

what store can i purchase a good gaming pc

I have bought from Cyberpower and had no luck. My opinion they cut corners on ram and hardrives. I couldn't afford Digital Storm or Alienware. My buddy recommended Ironside computers. I checked his Ironside build it worked fine . He had it for 6 months, so I felt confident it was a good build. Shortly after that I bought a Pc from Ironside and it worked fine . I like their customer service and the price was pretty good. I also special ordered a Noctua d-14 heatsink, it wasn't on their site, but they got it for me anyway.
GOOD LUCK!!

[inboundpaper]

Microcenter is pretty neat if you have one near you, don't know if they build for you though.

[slimj091]

I dont understand why people buy their systems built, building isnt hard and no more difficult that putting together a lego set.

a lego set that will never work if you happen to not ground yourself before handling the big flag green piece you put everything else on. but yeah that's not even hard. some people are not good with directions. you and i might be able to install everything in a new machine in under 15 minutes, but most people wouldn't have the first clue where to plug their hhd into the mobo.

tbh you are not really paying much over cost (except shipping) than if you were to just buy the parts, and put the machine together yourself. unless you are getting parts at dealer rates. then that is another story. which the average person wouldn't have access to anyways.

[Gheld]

the automatic build your own response is nice, but it's not so easy for some people

and if you fuck up you can be out a good chunk of money

I think I'm going to try ibuypower or cybperpower myself. alienpower is way overpriced.

I don't think I can build one tbh, it seems like a lot of trouble. I'm not sure though.

Well it depends. The mother board mounts to the case through the screw holes, everything is obvious and super obvious. All CPUs are pretty much LGA these days, and LGA CPU's are fairly impossible to damage when installing, since they typically have a notched corner that only allows them to go in the proper way and because you drop the CPU onto the pins you don't need to push on it to install it; it falls into place if it's at the right angle, otherwise it doesn't and you just turn it to the proper orientation and drop it in. Boxed cpu's typically come with a tiny package of thermal paste that is the EXACT amount required to install the CPU, thus as long as you squeeze it all out of the pouch and spread it evenly you are good to go.

The best part is I know at least one local computer parts store here boot tests every single motherboard they sell, so if you buy a CPU, memory, and a motherboard all at once they'll install the CPU and memory for you for free in order to do the boot test and 99% of the time they'll fit back nicely into the motherboards packaging for the ride home. Also typically while an OEM will throw all the components into a single warranty, although it's a pain in the ass to deal with a different warranty for every single part you buy, some individual parts will have warranties that are longer than an OEM's blanket warranty, in fact I find most parts have a longer warranty when purchased separately.

But it's not necessarily always cheaper to build vs. buying. Huge OEMs like Dell for example obviously have huge bulk buy discounts on certain components, and they manufacture some of their own components such as motherboards and in some cases video cards, allowing them to keep the cost lower. Not to mention if productivity software is important for you again OEMs get bulk licensing discounts on them so while Office might cost you 300 dollars otherwise it might only be accounting for about 100 dollars of the cost on an OEM box.

BUT the advantage to building vs. buying is that you can sit down, work out your own needs and come up with the most cost effective solution for your own unique needs and sometimes you are able to shave off components and software from the list that might have been mandatory from an OEM. An OEM might be doing all it's hard drives through Seagate for example, and they might be able to get you the latest Seagate hard-drive for cheaper, but Western Digital might have a cheaper and comparable drive available. Plus certain new technologies such as solid state drives are starting to mature, which means prices will ultimately become explosively competitive within the next couple of quarters, and if you decide you want to go SSD for your hard drives you'll probably be able to snag a good discount, whereas an OEM might be committed to one particular brand of drive that might be slower to compete.

So it is reckless to say "build, don't buy" because depending on ones needs buy could actually be a more cost effective option. But with patience, and if you don't suffer from full on tremors (I'm a little shakey sometimes and I do open computer surgery all the time), and if you follow instruction manuals and good online tutorials the "dangers" of building you'll find don't really exist.

So the build vs. buy considerations would be as follows:

Do you require good, licensed productivity software? If yes, buy.

Do you hate keeping lots of different invoices and receipts and are you willing to sacrifice longer warranties on some components in exchange for an easier to deal with blanket warranty? If yes, then again buy.

Is future expandability important to you? If yes then build.(OEMs typically use custom, non standard case designs that sometimes limit space for expandability and upgrades, and will keep costs low by installing the weakest power supply that they can get away with)

Are your performance needs highly specific? If so then building can be a good venture because you might find you don't need certain components that aren't optional to remove from an OEM build.
etc. etc.

For example, I fancy myself fairly hardware savvy, but I'm using a frankendell right now. (It's a dell, but with some upgraded components and all those "Dell happy centre" type applications uninstalled).

So sometimes the best solution is a combination of buy and build too.

[Loaf]

yep some expensive lego set.. and if you mess up and break anything, it might end up costing you an extra £100+. Then you go.. shit i wish i bought pre-built. Imo if your gonna build your own, you should be at least cleaning inside your old PC, and upgrading so you get used to how it all works.

built my first pc ~a month ago. Never knew how to do any of it and the most I've seen inside of a pc was dusting my old one out. I used a guide here on mmo-c in computer section about building one in 9.75 steps or something like that. Was much easier than I thought it was going to be.

[Fibby76]

i do NOT recommend cyperpower.com at all.

Their computers are great, but holy fuck, their customer service sux balls.

Look elsewhere for your computer if you want a computer that lasts longer than 6 months.

[Deleted]

built my first pc ~a month ago. Never knew how to do any of it and the most I've seen inside of a pc was dusting my old one out. I used a guide here on mmo-c in computer section about building one in 9.75 steps or something like that. Was much easier than I thought it was going to be.

hehe yeah but like i said you were at least dusting out your old one .. pretty much the biggest hurdle for someone to overcome is opening up their pc for the first time. Glad you took the plunge and made your own though.

[gruffi]

It takes 30 minutes, there are step by step walkthroughs and youtube vids. You learn once and dont forget and you save money by learning.

How much we actually save if we build ourselves?

[Locruid]

How much we actually save if we build ourselves?

Ive built my own for 20 yrs now (since back in the 486DX days)

In almost every case, I usually will pay the same price as almost any unit you'll see for sale with several big differences. The last system I put together last year, ran me about $500 BUT my cpu was twice as fast, I had a gaming card capable of playing all the modern games in pretty good detail, usually twice the ram, bigger PSUs, hard drive space almost doubled and in a case that I chose.

In all honesty, it is laughably easy to assemble one. EVERY SINGLE PIECE has its "one way and can only go here" attitude. In other words, you are NOT going to "accidentally" put a piece in backwards or in the wrong area IF you are paying half attention (CPU, MB connectors are about as attention as you need to be). And like mentioned before, there are TONS of guides on the net.

As for pre-assembled ones, Ive heard good things about Alienware (but you'll pay a price for em). Dell is still .....ok....but they have come down from their former glory days since back in the 90's. But like I mentioned, you pet a $500 Dell next to a $500 assembled and that assembled will be bigger, faster, and more customized.

[Loaf]

hehe yeah but like i said you were at least dusting out your old one .. pretty much the biggest hurdle for someone to overcome is opening up their pc for the first time. Glad you took the plunge and made your own though.

I didn't know what was what though lol. If you had asked me to point out what my graphics card was or my hdd or anything I woulda been like...ummm....Idk? lol. If it wasn't for that guide, I woulda never have been able to manage it really lol

[Spurmwhale]

i got mine built from ibuypower.com. they took a bit longer than they should have but i was very happy with their build and price. This was a long time ago tho and i read somewhere they're more expensive now but i don't know...

don't buy from Alienware. they're the most overpriced, overrated company in computer builds. they were the first company i had build my computer, think i paid like $3500 at the time for it, and i have a lot of regrets doing that in hindsight. not that the computer was awful, other than my harddrive going bad a year later, but you're just WAY overpaying for something any other builder could do, if not better without the markups. to me Alienware is like that company that puts so much money in their advertising and brand name which allows them to jack up their prices for products that aren't really any better than what your local computer store could probably build.