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Getting into PC gaming

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I have primarily been a console gamer for most of my life but I keep hearing about PC games on Idle Thumbs that I'd really like to play. I have a Macbook that's nearly five years old so it's time for me to get a new computer. I've been considering buying a desktop PC that I can use for gaming.

 

It's been a long time since I've looked at PCs so I don't know much about the current processors or graphics cards. I have also never built a PC so I don't really want to go that route. I don't think I need something that is top of the line but I don't want it to be useless for new games in six months. I also don't plan on completely giving up console gaming. What sort of system specs will I probably need? What are the more reliable PC companies these days?

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If you're more comfortable with OSX, you could buy a Mac and bootcamp Windows onto it. I've used a bootcamped Mac and it worked pretty nicely. (More expensive than just buying a PC, of course.)

 

The best guide for components is this one, though: "I need a new PC!"

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This tends to be a reasonably accurate guide as to which components are on the right part of hte price/performance curve for you.

Then if you don't want to assemble it yourself (and I do recommend doing so btw, it is trivially easy these days and can save you tons of money) you can filter the pre-built offerings by whether they contain the components you want.

Laptop gaming works pretty well these days too by the way, if you have some extra budget.

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Hard to give good advice on this without knowing where in the world you are located?

 

Buying a mac for gaming is nothing short of stupid. Unless you are rich and like burning money. 

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It also depends on what kinds of games you want to play. Many of the games discussed here are of the indie variety and tend to be lighter on the graphics requirements. So you can get away with a fairly affordable low-end PC that can run many a low fidelity game. But of course, if you want to run Crysis 3, Witcher 2 or Planetside with max settings you're going to have to plonk down serious money for a high end graphics card and a pretty robust CPU.

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If you're more comfortable with OSX, you could buy a Mac and bootcamp Windows onto it. I've used a bootcamped Mac and it worked pretty nicely. (More expensive than just buying a PC, of course.)

 

I use a Windows PC at work so I am comfortable using both operating systems. I'd prefer a PC over a bootcamped Mac.

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Hard to give good advice on this without knowing where in the world you are located?

 

Buying a mac for gaming is nothing short of stupid. Unless you are rich and like burning money. 

 

I live in the United States. I have a Mac now but would like to buy a desktop PC. I wasn't planning on buying a Mac for gaming.

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It also depends on what kinds of games you want to play. Many of the games discussed here are of the indie variety and tend to be lighter on the graphics requirements. So you can get away with a fairly affordable low-end PC that can run many a low fidelity game. But of course, if you want to run Crysis 3, Witcher 2 or Planetside with max settings you're going to have to plonk down serious money for a high end graphics card and a pretty robust CPU.

 

I am interested in playing indie games like FTL, Binding of Isacc, etc. but would also like to be able to play games like Tropico 4, new Sim City, Skyrim and The Witcher 2 sometimes too.

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I've been looking at an upgrade. With being so far behind on current tech, I have found 2 links which give a rough guide to prices/power:

 

http://www.cclonline.com/product/102...C/CCL-EL-RAV2/

 

http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/sy...ekly_sales_II/

 

With the 2nd one having a better mobo (so I'm told), but the first one having a better gfx card.

 

Here is a list of things that you could get for £685 (including taxes)

 

128GB SanDisk Pulse, 2.5" SSD 7mm Slim SATA III - 6Gb/s, MLC-Flash, Read 490MB/s, Write 350MB/s, 8000 IOPS
2 x Corsair 3XS Only Vengeance LP Black 1600Mhz C9 8GB
Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H70 Core Performance CPU Cooler with 2x PWM Fans 120mm Radiator
Intel Core i5 3570K,1155, Ivy Bridge, Quad Core, 3.4GHz
MSI Z77 MPower
Zalman Z9+ Case
MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games

 

The numbers are meaningless to me at the moment, but that will change as I look into it. These could be a good starting point for you - but you can of course, spend as much as you want to. I've seen full on gaming rigs for over £6K!

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If you want a trouble-free PC gaming experience, I still think the best thing you can do is get a mid-range desktop with a real video card. I see too many people with Laptops, Macs, and/or Intel video complaining about compatibility or performance issues on support forums.

 

If you don't want to build the unit yourself, you can find something semi-decent from Dell or HP. If I were buying something today, I'd shoot for an Intel i5 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 640 or 660. Don't worry about SSD drives, 7200 RPM SATA drives are still fine. You'll spend about $800-900, but that PC will last you at least 3 years and you'll be able to play anything that comes out between now and then.

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Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Right now I am looking at possibly getting one of these Dell computers:

 

http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-8500/pd.aspx#!stoneId=undefined&overrides=fxdnpx42h:6~W8NVGA3;5985~S2240LCC;2~CPI7377|fxdnpx28h:5985~S2240LCC

 

For an extra $125 is it worth it to get an i7 processor instead of an i5? I am assuming this will probably make it so I don't need to upgrade the computer quite so soon.

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I have build a new gaming PC just a few weeks ago with basically the same goals you have so here's my take:

 

CPU: Intel i5-3470 (if you want to save a bit in power consumption and price the i5-3350 would also be great. i5-3570 is for overclocking which I assume you don't want to do)

Mainboard: ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP (the two most commonly used mainboard chipsets are H77 and Z77. the main difference is that Z77 can overclock and multi GPU, hence H77 is more than enough for your need)

GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 (Nvidia seems to have less driver issues, but if you want a bit more power, AMD Radeon 7870 would also be great)

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600 (not much to say here really. If you see yourself doing some video editing you could upgrade to 16, but for gaming it makes no difference)

HDD: Any 7200rpm SATA drive (SSD is still pretty unreliable and simply not needed for anything gaming related)

PSU: 500 Watt, 80+ certified (power supply is pretty crucial so spending a few dollars more on a reliable one makes sense)

Rest: Any ATX case you like, Win7 Home Premium 64-Bit, that's it. You could add a cooler for your CPU, but again, if you don't overclock the stock intel cooler that comes with you i5 is really good enough unless you live somewhere very hot.

 

Even including the OS it cost me under 700 Euro. Given the usual weird conversion I guess it's about 700 dollars for you. Oh, and you should just put it together yourself. There is basically nothing you can do wrong, you save money, it's fun to do and if you get stuck there are hundreds of guides and youtube videos to help you out.

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What I would do is keep an eye on Woot.com for one of their prebuilt desktop deals. They often run Core i7, 8GB RAM, 2TB HDD machines from Dell or HP for around $500 and all you'd need to do to make it a gaming machine is swap in a mid-range video card like the GTX 650 or Radeon 7770 (both run around $100 - $120). If you want higher performance than that would grant you (which would be medium/high settings in most games at 1080p), then you might want to look at machines specifically built for gaming in mind as they'd have much more significant power supplies that could better support higher end cards like the GTX 670 or Radeon 7870.

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Re the Dell thing:

 

- i7 is burned money for gaming

- GPU is really important for gaming, and the one included is not something you want to have

- Optical drive is probably unnecessary

- I don't see a mainboard so I assume they are ashamed of it

- Not much info on the PSU so it's probably not good

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Re the Dell thing:

 

- i7 is burned money for gaming

- GPU is really important for gaming, and the one included is not something you want to have

- Optical drive is probably unnecessary

- I don't see a mainboard so I assume they are ashamed of it

- Not much info on the PSU so it's probably not good

 

They also offer an upgrade to the GeForce 640 GPU. I was thinking going with that upgrade and sticking with the i5 processor. Is that GPU okay for gaming?

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He said he doesn't want to build a PC. Seems silly to continually recommend it knowing that.

 

The 640 won't do you much good. It could certainly run some games, but it doesn't come close to "ensuring you can play new games in 6 months".

 

I'd also be inclined to recommend something like this from Cyberpower - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229361

 

AMD CPUs aren't nearly as popular as Intel, but they almost always give you much better bang for your buck in the mid-range (think Core i3 or Core i5 equivalents). Also, Cyberpower and companies like them tend to use off-the-shelf parts, meaning you won't have to worry about crappy white label motherboards and PSUs.

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Nope, it's also a very low-end budget card. Generally, GPU gives you most bang-for-buck for gaming, so that should not be the part where you save money.

With a 700 dollar budget, your split should probably be something like this:

CPU: 150

Mainboard: 75

GPU: 200

RAM: 50

HDD: 50

PSU: 50

Case: 50

OS: 75

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He said he doesn't want to build a PC. Seems silly to continually recommend it knowing that.

 

He can still pick the parts himself. Around here you pay about 20 Euro if you then want to have it build for you.

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He can still pick the parts himself. Around here you pay about 20 Euro if you then want to have it build for you.

 

We don't have many chain businesses that'll do that for you here in the US. The only ones I can think of are TigerDirect in the SE or Microcenter.

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I didn't realize that Dell computer I linked to had a GeForce GT GPU rather than GTX GPU. It sounds like the GTX GPUs are the ones made for gaming? So a GeForce GTX 660 would be suitable GPU?

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Usually you call the dedicated graphics unit a GPU. That's what these GeForce cards are. And yes, the GTX 660 would be perfect.

 

Edit: I see you edited you post.:)

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Usually you call the dedicated graphics unit a GPU. That's what these GeForce cards are. And yes, the GTX 660 would be perfect.

 

Edit: I see you edited you post. :)

 

I noticed right after I posted that I used the wrong term for the graphics card :) . I think I may have found something in my price range with an i5 and a GTX 600. For someone who hasn't really played any PC games/bought a new desktop PC in about a decade this can all be a little confusing. I really appreciate all the help.

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Yes, it sometimes seems as if the manufacturers want to confuse people with their weird numbering schemes and all that. Oh, and when you write GTX 600, you mean GTX 660 right?

Wanna share the link to the offer you found?

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Yes, it sometimes seems as if the manufacturers want to confuse people with their weird numbering schemes and all that. Oh, and when you write GTX 600, you mean GTX 660 right?

Wanna share the link to the offer you found?

Right, I meant GTX 660. http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51/pd.aspx

 

The i5 version of this computer can be customized to include a GTX 660. It looks like the version I would probably get has an i5-3330, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 1 TB 7200 RPM HD and GTX 660 GPU. It think it comes out to about $950. I'll probably look around on Newegg just to make sure I can't get something pretty similar for a significantly better price (pre-built).

 

I have an Amazon gift card that should cover a large portion of the cost of a monitor so I don't have to budget for that too much.

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Well, that one will certainly work. But they again neither list mainboard, nor power supply and even if they are on par with the rest it's very much too expensive. I'm not familiar with US prices, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't get it  at least 150 dollars cheaper.

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