34 replies to this topic

[Jenin]

I'm looking for a PRE-BUILT PC, decent specs, obviously geared towards gaming, and running MWO comfortably when the time comes. Budget range $1200-$1500.

First let me say I am NOT BUILDING this computer. So please don't ask why, don't argue your case for custom building, don't throw out newegg links, etc. etc. It's cool that you know how to build them, I support anyone's willingness to do so, but I am not one of those who cares to. I will pay more for the convenience of having a prebuilt system with support behind it. I can live with what my budget will afford me, but I have had some difficulty lately trying to ascertain what route to go. I can live without cutting edge stuff, but do want to consider room for upgrading later on if/when necessary.

My current rig is a Dell XPS 420. It has lasted me about 4 years now, still running strong, plays most anything I want, though the newer high end stuff needs to be scaled back. I find that the medium range settings on most newer games are satisfactory for me. I usually try to make my computers last 4-5 years with respect to gaming ability. It still works great for other work I do, but I am ready for bumping up to a new system this year.

If you know specific models or just want to name drop manufacturers you have experience with I'd greatly appreciate either as well.

Thanks!

[LordDeathStrike]

hopefully xoticpc.com will start selling their custom gameing desktops soon (they moved into bigger facilities just to accomodate desktop building). for your bang for the buck and not having to put together, test, and tune your own pc, theyre the place to go (i buy custom laptops from them every few years because they are good at it and dont rip you off).

[Barbaric Soul]

if you don't want to build it yourself, then I suggest a prebuilt custom computer. Go this this link- http://www.cyberpowe...68_Configurator and make the following changes

CPU- 2550k

cooling fan- Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Enhanced Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) (Dual Standard 120MM Fans (Push-Pull)

motherboard- Asus P8Z77-V LX

memory- 8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Vengeance)

video card- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card

power supply- 750 Watts - Corsair CMPSU-750TXV2 80 Plus Power Supply

hard drive- 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

DVD drive- 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive

Operating system- Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium

total cost- $1491

here's direct link to the build I put together. CyberpowerPC will keep that link working for the next 7 days. http://www.cyberpowe...om/saved/1E3690

Edited by Barbaric Soul, 08 April 2012 - 04:08 AM.

[JAFO]

Jenin, on 08 April 2012 - 01:50 AM, said:

I'm looking for a PRE-BUILT PC, decent specs, obviously geared towards gaming, and running MWO comfortably when the time comes. Budget range $1200-$1500.
Thanks!

I am in the same boat as you. I do not build computers like I did in my youth so I am in the position where I have to purchase a prebuilt system. I currently have a Dell XPS 700 which I have had for about 5 years now and it has been a solid machine. I got it from the Dell Outlet which is a little different from Dell's standard build your own system.

The Dell Outlet is full of Computers that have been built and either the order was cancled or it was damaged in shipping and sent back. You can get scratch and dent or even refurbished comptuers. The one I had was from a cancled order and I ended up getting it for about 30% less than what I could have custom built it for on their website. Dell's inventory constantly changes so if you chose this option you have to look every day until you find the system that fits your needs.

I know alot of hard core gamers cringe at the name of Dell, but I have had good experiences with them and if you can't build your own, this is a good option to consider that has worked for me.

http://www.dell.com/...=dfh&redirect=1

Edited by JAFO, 08 April 2012 - 06:54 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Much as what Barbericsoul said. Cyberpowerpc is going to be your best bet in all likelyhood. For a smaller budget, get a Radeon HD 7870. Another sire you might look at is www.pugetsystems.com, although they are more expensive, they have better customer service and will help you customize within a budget, or choose a prebuilt.

Alternatively, here is a newegg list of PC's that should play MWO; http://www.newegg.co...e=1423%3A245838

[VPrime]

JAFO, on 08 April 2012 - 06:51 AM, said:

I know alot of hard core gamers cringe at the name of Dell, but I have had good experiences with them and if you can't build your own, this is a good option to consider that has worked for me.

http://www.dell.com/...=dfh&redirect=1

I DO custom build my desktops, but I also do not cringe at not doing so. I always buy my laptop, mainly because its nice to have a warrenty when something goes wrong (and something always does). The link JAFO posted is a good one. I have a friend who completely outfitted his new office with machines from this site, and they are a robotics company so they needed power. Really the only thing they typically had to do was put more ram in the machines, because it was usually cheaper to do it after they bought them. That is because they needed crazy amounts of ram though. Just keep in mind that 4 gigs isn't enough, you really need 8 now. 16 is nice to say you have, but its not really being used by games yet.


Other then that, Bestbuy has a bunch of solid gaming PCs that they have made by a 3rd party. Best part is you can get one and the 4 year warrenty in your budget, or Tigerdirect will put a computer together for you and warrenty it like a regular PC. You don't even need to know the names of the high end parts, just which level you want to be at. They have pre-set configs for folks who just dont have the time to research everything.

[Sym]

I also like building my own machines...however some of the prices these "Pre-built" sites offer are hard to beat. Mainly because they buy in bulk so they can offer a much cheaper price.
But like anything...you get what you pay for. I'm sure that there are alot of generic items in these machines so thats where "you" the customer should do a little research of the company to see what kind of reviews they have.

Besides, biggest is not always best. I've seen some machines that are so powerful...software hasn't been written to take advantage of it.

[Catamount]

Barbaric Soul, on 08 April 2012 - 02:59 AM, said:

if you don't want to build it yourself, then I suggest a prebuilt custom computer. Go this this link- http://www.cyberpowe...68_Configurator and make the following changes

CPU- 2550k

cooling fan- Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Enhanced Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) (Dual Standard 120MM Fans (Push-Pull)

motherboard- Asus P8Z77-V LX

memory- 8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Vengeance)

video card- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB 16X PCIe 3.0 Video Card

power supply- 750 Watts - Corsair CMPSU-750TXV2 80 Plus Power Supply

hard drive- 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

DVD drive- 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive

Operating system- Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium

total cost- $1491

here's direct link to the build I put together. CyberpowerPC will keep that link working for the next 7 days. http://www.cyberpowe...om/saved/1E3690

Oh wow, definitely not a $1500 computer (or anywhere close) but Barbaric has done a good job of coming as close as possible (giving a ~1300 computer for what's probably $1550 after shipping isn't bad!).

OP, you'd probably get superior support and warranties component by component going directly with the manufacturers, especially since you could hand-pick parts from guys with 3-7 year warranties, and Cyberpower is not a bastion of great service (they're not bad, but no better than what I'd get from AMD/Corsair/XFX/etc), but if you're so rich that it's worth saving an hour's time to not build a PC for $250 less... hey more power to you. I wish I had a six digit income so that saving $250/hour and getting better warranties (and better construction) wasn't considered a good use of time too...


The above build's really probably as good as you're going to get, and Cyberpower seems to undercut other sites like AVA Direct on it (AVA Direct was $1548), so I'd go ahead and just do it. I can't meaningfully improve on the value, and I doubt anyone else can either.

For a machine of that price, you should get an SSD as well, but since you're already at budget, just keep it in mind for a future upgrade.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Barbaric has put together the best system your likely to get pre built, my only change to it would be to drop the 680 and go with a 7870 and the get a SSD drive from their selection in there.

[Sug]

Barbaric Soul, on 08 April 2012 - 02:59 AM, said:

if you don't want to build it yourself, then I suggest a prebuilt custom computer.

<3

[Victor Morson]

If you don't mind a few unoptimized parts and a lack of customization, you can save a lot of money on a higher end CyberPower rig that's pre-built by buying it at Newegg.

http://www.newegg.co...CED&PageSize=20

My friend and his wife upgraded their computers this way to run Crysis, and they've been great - so I can vouch for them there. You'll easily find something in your budget range that's about the absolute most bang for the buck you can get.

For example: $1,489

CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme 1320LQ Desktop PC Intel Core i7 2600K(3.40GHz) 8GB DDR3 2TB HDD Capacity NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1.2GB Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Or for $1,259 if you don't mind AMD..

CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2103 Desktop PC AMD FX-Series FX-8150(3.6GHz) 16GB DDR3 2TB HDD Capacity Nvidia Geforce GTX 570 1.2GB Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bi

Edited by Victor Morson, 08 April 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[Catamount]

IMO, sacrificing GPU power for an SSD is not a good idea. Having an SSD is great, don't get me wrong, but if the primary purpose of the machine is gaming, then storage is dead last on the list of priorities, while the GPU is unquestionably first.

Get the 680, and just get the SSD later (again, at least in my opinion).

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Catamount, on 08 April 2012 - 08:28 PM, said:

IMO, sacrificing GPU power for an SSD is not a good idea. Having an SSD is great, don't get me wrong, but if the primary purpose of the machine is gaming, then storage is dead last on the list of priorities, while the GPU is unquestionably first.

Get the 680, and just get the SSD later (again, at least in my opinion).

Here i disagree, the 7870 will eaisly run any current game on the market whilst the 680 is a better card no question its currently overkill. A solid State drive will increase the performance of the PC all round including game load times. And far into the future (we're talking years) xfire the 7870.

[Jenin]

Thanks for all this input. I'm sorting through it all. I have some time on this, not burning a hole in my pocket at the moment, but would like to make this purchase between now and end of May.

Id just like to say, I have gone through the process of building a PC before, not by myself though, I had a coworker help, and it wasn't the best experience. I constantly had glitches, incompatibility issues, blue screens, software installation problems, and well, as knowledgeable as he was, he was no 24 hour hotline tech support, so often times I couldn't solve the problems myself and would have to wait days before I could get help. This was over a decade ago though, home built PCs were still a fairly new and growing trend, so I'm sure things have improved since then. After that computer though I have owned two Dell computers because a good friend of mine worked for Dell and he got me some good deals and helped me through the selection process on customizing them. They have been reliable and did what I needed them to do without disappointment. This time around I felt that I could still get an even better pre-built system for about the same cost as a Dell or other more recognizable brand.

[Catamount]

DV^McKenna, on 09 April 2012 - 05:14 AM, said:

Here i disagree, the 7870 will eaisly run any current game on the market whilst the 680 is a better card no question its currently overkill. A solid State drive will increase the performance of the PC all round including game load times. And far into the future (we're talking years) xfire the 7870.

That's true of GPUs a lot less powerful than the 7870, but what about a year from now? What about two years from now?

There's a clear choice here between having a GPU that continues to be okay, and storage that continues to be okay, but buying a $100 SSD a year down the road is a much smaller investment than a $300 GPU.


SSDs really are great to have, but when we're talking about computer qua gaming computers, you never, ever skimp on the GPU. It's the single most important thing you can ever put in. "Good enough" should be a phrase that never even enters consideration, because games constantly increase in GPU demand, if unevenly, something that's going to trend forward a lot once new consoles come out and the present generation is no longer holding graphics back in games.

Storage may start up the machine a bit faster, or launch your browser a couple tenths of a second faster, and it'll even load levels faster, but once one is in-game, where 98% of gaming time is spent storage sits there and twiddles its thumbs. So more a capable GPU setup is simply vastly more important.

Two years ago when I built my computer, I could have settled for one Radeon HD 5770, and it would have run every game on the market more than adequately at the resolution I played at (1680x1050). My 4870 still did. Few games ran below high. Now, two years later, there are games that are starting to stretch my dual 5770s. That makes me pretty darned glad I bought them, because one 5770 just wouldn't cut it at 1080P in many games I play. I guarantee that long before the useful life of this new gaming machine ends, that'll be the 7870 (which sits EXACTLY in the same place in the SI lineup that the 5770 did in the Evergreen lineup)


Edit: I stand by the above statement in theory, however, having re-reviewed the performance difference between the 7870 and 680, I conclude that McKenna may be right here.

The 680 is faster, but look at Guru3Ds review, restricting it only to games, only DX10/11 games, and throwing out Farcry 2 (it's an extreme unrepresentative outlier in 100% of reviews and should not be used), the difference in performance is 40%, and in most games, closer to 30%.

30%/40% is VERY borderline as to whether it'll ever mean the difference between being smooth and not smooth. A couple of games gave bigger differences, but the odds that two years down the road you'll hit a game that the 7870 isn't fast enough for, and it'll just happen to be in that 10% of games that a bigger boost from the 680 are pretty slim.


Normally I'd say get the 680 still, but since it'll cost having an SSD, I'm very tepidly also suggesting getting a 7870 instead and getting an SSD with the extra money (make sure it's at least 120GB)

Edited by Catamount, 09 April 2012 - 08:56 AM.

[Catamount]

Jenin, on 09 April 2012 - 07:37 AM, said:

I'd just like to say, I have gone through the process of building a PC before, not by myself though, I had a coworker help, and it wasn't the best experience.

I can't speak to what went on a decade ago, but I built my first PC from scratch in 2005 (before then it was all just changing out parts on existing machines), and I have never had issues like you describe, except from a faulty component, which is not only just as likely to occur with a pre-built machine, but more likely to occur overall, since most pre-builts come with terribad PSUs, one of the bigger causes these days of computer problems according to a guy I know in the computer repair business.

It's still your choice, but barring a serious PEBKAC, home-built machines don't just spontaneously fail. If anything they're less prone than prebuilt machines. I've seen all those companies like Cyberpower flub up building in ways you never would taking care to do it yourself.

Edited by Catamount, 09 April 2012 - 09:01 AM.

[JackDeth]

I can vouch for Catamount's experience.
Once got 15 computers in from a well known company....14 out of 15 did not fire up on first try.
Of the bad 14....several power supply plugs were not plugged into the Mb.
Some of them had no data cables to the drives.
One of them had no power to the Hard Drive.
None of them had been test run (or they would not have gone out the door).
Complained to the company...they told us to send them all back....yeah right...just to plug in cables.
We fixed the problems...had to find one data cable....and all passed the 48 hour burn in OK.
The hardware was good....but the QC was S**t.
You take your cahnces either way...but I prefer to see the insides....if the box arrives dead...you have to open it anyway.
If you do....reseat all boards and memory....clean edge connectors ....unplug and replug all power cables....only then try to power it up again.
Jack

Edited by JackDeth, 09 April 2012 - 03:16 PM.

[Catamount]

I've seen a lot of prebuilts where they'll plug something in, but do it so shoddily that it's not plugged in all the way. It takes remarkable incompetence to have a computer cable be loose, but I've seen it a lot, and it sucks. The cable can come out, or worse still, just say loose and cause arcing or otherwise unreliable power (I've seen Cyberpower be especially guilty of that one, though they're no worse overall).

The single worst issue is that companies skimp on PSUs massively, but at least that's not an issue if one is hand-picking parts. The problem is that most companies don't let one pick a reasonable PSU. Your choices are either A.) Crap or B.) Completely overpriced overkill (you DO NOT need a 750W high end Corsair PSU to run 99.9% of gaming machines)

Edited by Catamount, 09 April 2012 - 05:11 PM.

[Barbaric Soul]

Catamount, on 09 April 2012 - 05:10 PM, said:

The single worst issue is that companies skimp on PSUs massively, but at least that's not an issue if one is hand-picking parts. The problem is that most companies don't let one pick a reasonable PSU. Your choices are either A.) Crap or B.) Completely overpriced overkill (you DO NOT need a 750W high end Corsair PSU to run 99.9% of gaming machines)

I'm actually 50 watts under what cyberpowerPC recommended for my build. I agree, 750 watts for a single GPU system is overkill. I'm running the XFX Pro750w *** Edition silver plus PSU in my 5870 crossferX set-up. But that does allow him to upgrade to a dual-card solution in the future without having to worry about upgrading his/her PSU. Down grading to the 650TX v2 would have only saved $20.

[Catamount]

Yeah, Cyberpower recommendations are hillarious, as are most PSU recommendations. "250W worth of parts? Yeah, you totally need like a 700W for that system [because 98% of 700W PSUs are really 350W PSUs that'll melt if you draw more than 300W from them! Including our own brand of junk!]"

AMD, Nvidia, and most review sites do it too, because they realize when they say something needs to run at X wattage, that needs to factor in that most PSUs are junk, most people don't realize it, and so they hyperinflate the number so that even the crappiest PSU at that wattage can still at least technically power the hardware.


The downside is that it perpetuates the myth of needing a high wattage PSU, rather than a PSU that's of decent quality, so people continue paying more attention to nominal wattages than actual quality, which allows unscrupulous companies to flood the market with low wattage junk PSUs that they charge too much for because they stick wattage stickers on them with numbers 2-3 times higher than those PSUs can actually safely deliver; so the cycle continues. Consumer ignorance fuels company behavior that fuels consumer ignorance

Edited by Catamount, 10 April 2012 - 07:09 AM.