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Forums - PC Discussion - Getting a gaming rig. Buy or Build?

Phrancheyez on 12 February 2010
superchunk said:
Phrancheyez said:
Don't build.. 'It's so much cheaper! You can have a better computer!!' bullshit..and it'll take you forever, and cost you a lot of time and work, and things will go wrong.

www.digitalstormonline.com

Probably one of the best sites to get it from, their prices aren't that bad at all, and they've got options out the ass. Even their lowest-end performance PC is badass. They set up, overclock, and stress test your machine for 3 straight days before sending it to you. Much less of a headache..

But building it will be a little cheaper.

I like how your 1st line and last line are contradictory. :)

 

Building is always cheaper for higher quality parts. So yes, you will save money and you will have a better computer.

I have a PC I built for ~$800 in 2002. I have spent ~$150 in those 8 years to buy more memory and a better graphics card. So, in total it was a ~$1000 computer that is still running in perfect condition and is on Windows 7 with great performance.

In 2002 it ran any game I wanted at reasonably high levels and performed all of my coding homework perfectly.

In 2008 I build another PC (spec'd in my profile). I spent ~$900 and it too can play any current game at reasonably high levels; many times maxed out. (I have spent an additional ~$150 on Win7 64bit and 2GB memory).

In both cases when I compared similar PCs to one from Dell, HP, etc., they were all a couple hundred dollars more, had questionable parts, and would come with a ton of crap-ware.

Actually, you're wrong.  My first line and last line make perfect sense.  Everyone says 'it's so much cheaper!' when in reality, its only a little cheaper.  'Little' and 'so much' are opposites, in case you didn't know.

Last, you didn't pay attention to the link I provided.  I can build a PC just as good as what you want for around the same price.  And they're going to stress test it for 3 days straight after overclocking everything they can.  I might spend $50-100 more..big whoop.  I don't have to do all the tedious work, and if I'm getting a gaming beast, I don't care about ~$100 when I don't have to worry about doing all the work involved as far as ordering parts, connecting it all, overclocking, stabilizing, tweaking and software removal.  Have fun, all that work is worth a hundred bucks to me.

And, who the hell buys HP for gaming?  Or Dell for that matter, they're always overpriced.  Someone who doesn't know shit about computers, that's who.  You people are going to spend just as much money as I would through digital storm, and get the same pc, except mine will come with everything overclocked, set up, and extra shit software stripped, and I don't have to do any of it.



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Garcian Smith on 12 February 2010
Phrancheyez said:

Actually, you're wrong.  My first line and last line make perfect sense.  Everyone says 'it's so much cheaper!' when in reality, its only a little cheaper.  'Little' and 'so much' are opposites, in case you didn't know.

Last, you didn't pay attention to the link I provided.  I can build a PC just as good as what you want for around the same price.  And they're going to stress test it for 3 days straight after overclocking everything they can.  I might spend $50-100 more..big whoop.  I don't have to do all the tedious work, and if I'm getting a gaming beast, I don't care about ~$100 when I don't have to worry about doing all the work involved as far as ordering parts, connecting it all, overclocking, stabilizing, tweaking and software removal.  Have fun, all that work is worth a hundred bucks to me.

And, who the hell buys HP for gaming?  Or Dell for that matter, they're always overpriced.  Someone who doesn't know shit about computers, that's who.  You people are going to spend just as much money as I would through digital storm, and get the same pc, except mine will come with everything overclocked, set up, and extra shit software stripped, and I don't have to do any of it.

Yeah you're so wrong. Building yourself is a lot cheaper, especially when you factor in the fact that most prebuilts will advertise a few good components (usually CPU and video card) and then fill in the other components with lowest-bidder junk.

And who cares if they overclock it for you? Overclocking is easy. For the GPU, just fire up Rivatuner and FurMark and bump up the clockspeed of your GPU and VRAM until you start to see artifacts or your card heats up too much. After you do, just drop it down to the last setting. For the CPU, grab an aftermarket cooler like the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro, run a utility like ATI Overdrive, and bump the bus speed up in 2-4 MHz increments, running something like SuperPi with each bump to make sure it's stable. Then, after you reach your limit, reset it back to its last stable setting, bump up your Vcore a notch, and repeat until you're not getting much benefit from each bump or the temperature reaches unstable levels. (All of these utilities, by the way, are free to download.) Then boot up a graphically intensive game like Crysis for a couple of hours to make sure your system is stable. It really is that easy, and the worst thing that'll happen if you don't do something stupid is you'll have to manually reset your BIOS, which is simple and requires about 10 minutes at most. There's nothing complex about OCing that requires you to pay someone else to do it for you - unless they're doing some crazy hardware mods to your GPU or something, in which case you might as well just purchase the next step up in hardware yourself.

Seriously - name any PC built by this stupid prebuilt company and I'll throw together something on Newegg that'll be both significantly cheaper and more reliable.



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Epoch on 12 February 2010
Garcian Smith said:
Phrancheyez said:

Actually, you're wrong.  My first line and last line make perfect sense.  Everyone says 'it's so much cheaper!' when in reality, its only a little cheaper.  'Little' and 'so much' are opposites, in case you didn't know.

Last, you didn't pay attention to the link I provided.  I can build a PC just as good as what you want for around the same price.  And they're going to stress test it for 3 days straight after overclocking everything they can.  I might spend $50-100 more..big whoop.  I don't have to do all the tedious work, and if I'm getting a gaming beast, I don't care about ~$100 when I don't have to worry about doing all the work involved as far as ordering parts, connecting it all, overclocking, stabilizing, tweaking and software removal.  Have fun, all that work is worth a hundred bucks to me.

And, who the hell buys HP for gaming?  Or Dell for that matter, they're always overpriced.  Someone who doesn't know shit about computers, that's who.  You people are going to spend just as much money as I would through digital storm, and get the same pc, except mine will come with everything overclocked, set up, and extra shit software stripped, and I don't have to do any of it.

Yeah you're so wrong. Building yourself is a lot cheaper, especially when you factor in the fact that most prebuilts will advertise a few good components (usually CPU and video card) and then fill in the other components with lowest-bidder junk.

And who cares if they overclock it for you? Overclocking is easy. For the GPU, just fire up Rivatuner and FurMark and bump up the clockspeed of your GPU and VRAM until you start to see artifacts or your card heats up too much. After you do, just drop it down to the last setting. For the CPU, grab an aftermarket cooler like the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro, run a utility like ATI Overdrive, and bump the bus speed up in 2-4 MHz increments, running something like SuperPi with each bump to make sure it's stable. Then, after you reach your limit, reset it back to its last stable setting, bump up your Vcore a notch, and repeat until you're not getting much benefit from each bump or the temperature reaches unstable levels. (All of these utilities, by the way, are free to download.) Then boot up a graphically intensive game like Crysis for a couple of hours to make sure your system is stable. It really is that easy, and the worst thing that'll happen if you don't do something stupid is you'll have to manually reset your BIOS, which is simple and requires about 10 minutes at most. There's nothing complex about OCing that requires you to pay someone else to do it for you - unless they're doing some crazy hardware mods to your GPU or something, in which case you might as well just purchase the next step up in hardware yourself.

Seriously - name any PC built by this stupid prebuilt company and I'll throw together something on Newegg that'll be both significantly cheaper and more reliable.

Did you look at the site?  Not cheaper at all, but they will overclock your stuff. To build my PC they wanted $2000 before taxes, and I'm not sure if thats US dollars or not.  Seems like a bit more than $100 difference to me. 

They probably build good stuff though, and they will overclock your system, but I'm not worried about that right now.



Garcian Smith on 13 February 2010
Epoch said:

Did you look at the site?  Not cheaper at all, but they will overclock your stuff. To build my PC they wanted $2000 before taxes, and I'm not sure if thats US dollars or not.  Seems like a bit more than $100 difference to me. 

They probably build good stuff though, and they will overclock your system, but I'm not worried about that right now.

You must've misread my post, as I wasn't defending that stupid overpriced prebuilt site. :P



"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."

 -Sean Malstrom

 

 

Epoch on 13 February 2010

So I got my parts today and have begun putting the stuff together. So far its pretty easy, some of the stuff seems like I had to push harder than I would have expected to get it into place. 

My question is, how do I attach the motherboard to the case? I only have metal standoffs, is that ok for my motherboard? Some sites say motherboards may use non-conducting standoffs, but I don't have any.  There are no instructions in the Mobo manual, so I'm kinda wary of shorting the thing out.

Any advice?



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Killergran on 13 February 2010
Epoch said:

So I got my parts today and have begun putting the stuff together. So far its pretty easy, some of the stuff seems like I had to push harder than I would have expected to get it into place. 

My question is, how do I attach the motherboard to the case? I only have metal standoffs, is that ok for my motherboard? Some sites say motherboards may use non-conducting standoffs, but I don't have any.  There are no instructions in the Mobo manual, so I'm kinda wary of shorting the thing out.

Any advice?

I really don't think it is necessary. Of course you could screw up with the screws, but the likelyhood of that is pretty low, in my own (not considerable) experience.



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thetonestarr on 13 February 2010

I built my PC for approximately $600-$700 after all was said and done, buying mostly off of Newegg. It offers superior power in some ways to those PCs, and slightly inferior in others (weaker video card, DDR2 RAM instead of DDR3 although I have twice as much RAM in mine). And mine totally looks more badass than either of those.

No way should you buy anything  - much less those - prebuilt.

 

note: I can't give a precise price-point because (1) I didn't buy it all off Newegg - I got SOME stuff at the local Microcenter, and (2) I've upgraded it a couple times since I initially built it (extra high-airflow fans (this sucker runs at below 100ºF/38ºC average even when under a load - you won't find a factory-built system with remotely comparable performance that can do that), another HDD (I have 2TB total =D), and upgraded from 2.6GHz dual-core Athlon II to 3.0GHz quad-core Phenom II).



 SW-5120-1900-6153

Killergran on 14 February 2010

How did it go? Is your computeer working?



This is invisible text!

Squilliam on 14 February 2010
Epoch said:

So I got my parts today and have begun putting the stuff together. So far its pretty easy, some of the stuff seems like I had to push harder than I would have expected to get it into place. 

My question is, how do I attach the motherboard to the case? I only have metal standoffs, is that ok for my motherboard? Some sites say motherboards may use non-conducting standoffs, but I don't have any.  There are no instructions in the Mobo manual, so I'm kinda wary of shorting the thing out.

Any advice?

The ones that you are given are fine. Enthusiasts tend to take things to the extreme and often without care to what you actually need. The motherboards are engineered to expect the screws that they give you with the motherboard. I wouldn't use anything but the same. I suspect that if they are insulating then it may allow static to build up on the motherboard.

I hope you're installing the motherboard first before you put any components on the board. Its just easier that way.



Tease.

Epoch on 14 February 2010
Squilliam said:
Epoch said:

So I got my parts today and have begun putting the stuff together. So far its pretty easy, some of the stuff seems like I had to push harder than I would have expected to get it into place. 

My question is, how do I attach the motherboard to the case? I only have metal standoffs, is that ok for my motherboard? Some sites say motherboards may use non-conducting standoffs, but I don't have any.  There are no instructions in the Mobo manual, so I'm kinda wary of shorting the thing out.

Any advice?

The ones that you are given are fine. Enthusiasts tend to take things to the extreme and often without care to what you actually need. The motherboards are engineered to expect the screws that they give you with the motherboard. I wouldn't use anything but the same. I suspect that if they are insulating then it may allow static to build up on the motherboard.

I hope you're installing the motherboard first before you put any components on the board. Its just easier that way.

Damn you.... I put the ram and CPU in before installing the mobo to the case. It wasn't too bad though.

The first time I tried to turn it on, not much happened. Turns out I hadn't connected the power to the CPU.  Now it turns on and asks me to insert a boot disc, which I don't have yet =(.  Still waiting on my school to give me an access code for Windows 7 pro.  Probably took me 3 hours to put together, I had an issue getting the graphics card to attach to the case because it was just slightly out of line with the screw holes in the chassis.  Other than that it went pretty well.

For those interested:  This is what $1500 gets you in Canada

Motherboard partly assembled.

In the case

Almost there

Tower assembled!

Thanks again for all your help guys. Went much better than I expected and I would definitely do it again. It would probably take me half the time to put another one together.