Looking to buy a gaming desktop...

[mistaowen]

Wondering if any of you tech gurus could lend me some advice. My laptop is starting to end its ability to play current games and it seems like buying a new desktop PC vs a new gaming laptop is a lot cheaper. I am looking to buy new games like Guild Wars 2 and other higher quality games coming out in the next year, and wont be able to play them with my set up now.

Now -- I've been looking at Cyperpowerpc.com since I have read they have good products, but I am unsure what the different specs mean and what the difference in say a $500 and a $900 pc is. I'm not looking to break the bank on this purchase since computer gaming isn't a huge part of my life, but I'd like a good one that can handle new stuff well at higher settings.

Is there a huge difference between the $500 and $900 ones that would be worth the extra money? I think the max I'd spend would be in the $900 range, but if it isn't significantly better, I'd probably stay on the lower end.

 

[AshamanMat]

Problem with spending 500 vs 900 is, you can probably play the newest games, but games coming out the year after or the year after, you wont be able to play

On top of that, the games may not look as nice as they do in the pictures you see.

I have had the same PC for 4 years, and just upgrade my video card, but Im starting to feel the need to upgrade the RAM Mobo and processor. A good video card makes the world of difference!

 

[TestMo1337]

Depends on who you talk to and what your performance requirement is.

Do you need to play with the graphics maxed out or can you play 800x600 and be happy.

For desktops, you have the option to upgrade and expand as you go. If you start with a good power supply and a case that can hold it all, it will set you well for multiple upgrades.

Rather than set a dollar amount cap, think about what you're looking for. Is Guild Wars 2 the benchmark or is the only goal.

 

[BlueThunder]

I would say future upgradability would be of major importance. Go ahead and get a decent gamer for under $1000 (if that's your limit right now), then throw cash at it in smaller chunks later on. I recently bought a Cyberpower desktop (you can see my post in this forum), and I am very happy with its performance, so you've got a recommendation from me for that company. Their prices are very good. I would get at least the intel i5 quad-core processor (I notice most have a free upgrade to faster i5's, and i7 would be even better) and a video card with at least 1 gig of memory, preferably more. Ram is really cheap right now, so get at least 8 gigs. Remember, you're going to have to buy a monitor, keyboard and mouse as well if you're replacing a laptop. They did include a mouse and keyboard for free, but both are in my closet for emergency back-ups (cheapo's), but they would work until you could upgrade those as well down the line. A 19 inch wide-screen monitor can be had pretty cheap these days. Hell, I got a 27" Asus for $299, and it looks great! Might want to call or email them and ask what processors the MB your thinking about will support for future upgrades. I'm not sure about the diffent sockets. Have to ask Roland about that. But adding more Ram and more powerful video cards in the future won't be a problem. The rest of the stuff like the case, optical drive, hard drive size etc is personal preference. A new system with roughly these stats would keep you gaming happily for quite awhile. Be sure to post your stats here so we can see what you got! Good luck!

This one seems fine to me, and if you order on or before April 2nd, they have some great free upgrades during their March Madness sale! Check the upgrades out on the top right of the page. They also highlight the deals down the upgrade lists. $709!
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Gamer_Xtreme_2200/

Edit: Ok, now they have Easter specials going on. Worth looking into!

 

[Spounge84]

You might want to check out Puget Systems (www.pugetsystems.com). I highly recommend them, they are a local company and they have people employed just to help you pick out what you need. They also go over everything in an order before they build it, just to make sure that everything is compatible and will run smooth. I have one of their laptops and I absolutely love it. I'm currently saving some money so I can get a true gaming desktop (my laptop is adequate, but not perfect), and I plan on getting it from them.

 

[mistaowen]

How would this handle most upcoming games at high/ultra settings?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... G180-13104

Seems to get the best reviews from this site, and appears to be quite fast for its price, but I'm not sure how that would work out for FPS on different games.

 

[RolandDeschain]

A 6750 video card is not going to handle anything at ultra for modern games. Not if you want the game to be smooth instead of choppy, anyways; or if you don't mind running a low resolution like 1280X720. Even then, you'd probably see mediocre performance at high/ultra settings.

Ultra settings for good performance at 1920X1080 require a minimum of several hundred dollars worth of GPU power. That's just how it is. You can get a 6750 for $90 on Newegg right now.

 

[mistaowen]

How compatible would better video cards be? Since it is premade, I can't seem to be able to transfer in a better card, and I am not tech savy enough to trust myself in building my own computer. At this point, it seems I'd have to buy the system and just buy another card on my own.

After more research, the only complaint I'm really seeing for it is the video card, but the price compared to others with similar speed and memory is much better. Most people who bought it rate it high for gaming on 'newish' games, 50+ FPS on max settings in games like WoW. BF3 looks epic, but I'm not going to fork out the kind of money needed into a computer to play it smoothly at high settings. As I said before, $900 is probably my cap before upgrading down the road.

If you know of other computers in this price range that have equal power and better video cards, I would love to see them

 

[RolandDeschain]

You can always put in a better video card, so no worries, there. Depending on what you get, you may have to get a larger power supply too, though; but it's definitely upgradable either way. You have a processor that will last quite a while, and 8GB of RAM will be fine for years to come.

 

[mistaowen]

that specific one apparently was so cheap because it was mother's day sale? haha so it went back up to 900. i ended up going with cyberpowerpc premade but made a few changes. i got a cheaper tower since i didnt really care about extremely bright colors, and used that to get a better video card. i think it'll be pretty good for my needs at this point, and like you said, can just upgrade later.

BLUETOOTH: None
CAS: NZXT Tempest 210 Mid-Tower Gaming Case [-15] (Blue Color [+0])
CASUPGRADE: None
CD: 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)
CD2: None
COOLANT: Standard Coolant
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-3570K 3.40 GHz 6MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1155 (All Venom OC Certified) - While Supply Last
CS_FAN: Default case fans
ENGRAVING: None
FA_HDD: None
FAN: Corsair Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan [+0] (Single Standard 120MM Fan)
FLASHMEDIA: INTERNAL 12in1 Flash Media Reader/Writer (SILVER COLOR [+0])
FREEBIE_CU: None
GLASSES: None
HDD: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)
HDD2: None
IEEE_CARD: None
IUSB: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
KEYBOARD: (Keyboard & Mouse Combo) Razer Cyclosa Gaming Keyboard & Abyssus Gaming Mouse [+0]
MB_SRT: None
MEMORY: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory [+3] (Corsair or Major Brand)
MONITOR: 24" Widescreen 1920x1080 Asus VS247H-P LCD [+157]
MONITOR2: None
MONITOR3: None
MOTHERBOARD: * [CrossFireX] Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H Intel Z77 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ IRST, Lucid Virtu MVP, Ultra Durable4 Classic, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, 2x Gen3 PCIe x16, 3x PCIe x1 & 2 PCI (Extreme OC Certified)
MOUSE: None [+0]
NETWORK: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
OS: None - FORMAT HARD DRIVE ONLY
OVERCLOCK: No Overclocking
POWERSUPPLY: 700 Watts - Standard Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready [+10]
RUSH: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 10~15 BUSINESS DAYS
SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
SPEAKERS: None
TEMP: None
TUNING: None
TVRC: None
USB: None
USBFLASH: None
USBHD: None
USBX: None
VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card [+86] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA)
VIDEO2: None
VIDEO3: None
WNC: None

 

[RolandDeschain]

Oh yeah, that's a significantly better video card. You'll be far, far happier with a 560 Ti over a 6750.

 

[Chrome_Seahawk]

Upgrade to Name Brand Power Supply, the generic Cyberpower ones are notorious for failure and being under powered.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

 

[mistaowen]

I went up to 700w power supply because I had heard that too and hoped just more would be better, but I didn't get to switch it out before I ordered it.

Just by eyeballing it, what kind of gameplay do you guys think I'll get with this system? On the main page it said ultra settings in Starcraft 2 would get 80-90 fps and MW2 would be in the 100s, but I'm not sure how accurate that is, and I know you can't base gameplay purely by that. I debated spending another $100 on a better video card, but decided to just wait it out and see what I get.

I just purchased Diablo 3 which isn't worth playing on my laptop and plan on getting Guild Wars 2 when it comes out. Debating BF3 but I haven't played a PC shooter since Return to Castle Wolfenstein 8 years ago. Can't wait for it to come in next week!

 

[RolandDeschain]

Well, MW2 and SC2 are titles that are a couple years old, and not particularly hard on the graphics cards, to boot. You'll just have to see. It'll be decent with the card you got, though.

 

[mistaowen]

Well, ordered it on the 13th and still no word on it being built or tested yet. It took 2 days for my credit card to be accepted then proceed to the warehouse and yesterday was the latest expected shipping date. The status page hasn't been updated since it was sent to the warehouse which sent me a generic email telling me that and it could take 8-12 days, still saying that yesterday was the expected ship date. Would be nice to know what the status of it is and when the new expected shipping date it.

The only negative reviews I've seen about them is very delayed shipping without any updates from the sales team, or they wont have an item in stock but they don't notify you which causes the delay. Getting pretty anxious to get it; fully preparing myself for damaged shipping and missing pieces requiring me to return it and wait another 2 weeks. :th2thumbs: