Need help choosing a computer for gaming

hethmar

I wish youd made my sons Joe, he must have spent £1500 on it easy by now and still reckons its not perfect.

joe_pesci

They will never be perfect, just get what you want. Im in process of buying a new gaming rig. Hard trying to find right one to get, a few on here have helped me alot.
Even if you got best system round for 3k, 2 months time it would not be the best.

As people say, set a budget and find best value for money.

jaydeeuk1

Could get a damn good PC for around £600, I know, I've built a few. Ati 4850 for £75 at scan today!

Percy1983

Last gaming PC a built for a friend had the following spec:

Intel E5200 - Overclocked to 3.72Ghz (uprated cooler used)
Abit IP35 motherboard (P35 chipset)
ATI 4890 1GB
2x500GB HD's in raid 0
4GB DDR2
Vista Home premium
Wireless keyboard and mouse
DVD-RW
850w PSU (I will admit its a winpower 850w, so probably pushing closer to 650w)

And that came in at £600, I must admit I got the board used on ebay and vista for £50.

Now tell me a game that can't run? it even runs crysis/warhead on top settings at 1080p with 2xaa, but I will admit the frame rate drops where bad at points so we opted for 720p with 4xaa and its runs perfectly.

Basically it gets to a point where prices go up out of proportion to the performance, I can say for sure that a £1200 alienware PC will not be 2x better it would probably only be 25% faster at most.

joe_pesci

Why would anyone buy Alienware. Just like the Dell XPS "gaming" systems they are very poor for what they cost. I pity anyone who buys either.

Knub

joe_pesci wrote: »

Why would anyone buy Alienware. Just like the Dell XPS "gaming" systems they are very poor for what they cost. I pity anyone who buys either.

Exactly what I said in my first post condemning what he posted as absolute bull.

People who buy alienware are obviously happy paying £1000 for a custom case and a brand name, because we all know the hardware inside can be bought/built a lot cheaper.

To hethmar:- your son sounds like he is addicted to electronics and PC Building. The problem with this is you are never "in date" for long before somehting new comes out. I suspect this is why he is looking to pay £500 for a graphics card solution.

The sad thing is in 1 years time it will be worth less than half that probably. It is generally a large waste of money, the key to being good at it is knowing your system and when its time for an upgrade ~3-5 years. Also knowing what tech is available on the market and getting the cheapest deals at the right time of buying (usually when a new range of tech is introduced, the older stuff goes down in price).