Buying a Gaming PC

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robbobdacornman

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I'm new to PC gaming and need help purchasing a computer or building a computer. I do not know much about gaming PC's and I'm wondering if this PC is worth the buy or should I build my own. I'm trying to stay in the ballpark of $500-$700. I plan to make upgrades later don the road.

The computer on ebay:

AMD Athlon X4 750K Trinity 4.0GHz Quad Core
8GB Memory
GeForce 2GB GT 740 GDDR5
1TB Hard Drive
$691

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271531523519?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_sacat%3D0%26_from%3DR40%26_nkw%3D271531523519%26_rdc%3D1

If building my own would be cheaper, what do I need in my PC and how do I build one? haha

Games I want to play: Higher Settings if possible
Fallout 3 and New Vegas with mods
Pay Day 2
Day Z
Skyrim
Borderlands 2
Minecraft
Left 4 Dead 1 and 2
possibly newer shooters like BF4..medium to high settings would be fine.
 
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Obnoxious
I would build your own system rather than purchase the one on eBay. The one you've found on eBay isn't exactly best bang for it's buck. Since you're planning to upgrade in the future an Intel 9 series motherboard would be extremely ideal in your case.

I've put together the following system below and it is within your price range. It should be noted that the motherboard I've selected below cannot overclock the CPU; if you want to overclock you'll have to spend a little more on a Z97 motherboard or compromise on the CPU, GPU or another part to stay within budget.

The motherboard below will allow you to upgrade to Intel's 5th generation processor, titled Broadwell when they release towards the end of this year, or at the beginning of...
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marshal11

marshal11

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Ironically, Tom's 2 most recent posts are the best gaming PC for exactly your price range, and the one before that was a brand new guide on how to build a PC. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/budget-gaming-pc,3854.html here are the specs at the bottom of the page. I recommend changing the GPU to a r9 270 over the r7 265 and picking a different case if you want a better looking case. Keep in mind that there are always ways around purchasing the OS, such as pirating. I do not promote or encourage doing so, but it's just something to keep in mind as it can benefit your performance largely by putting that money into a better GPU should you be willing to break the law to do so. Here's the guide: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/how-to-build-a-gaming-pc,2601.html

I highly recommend learning how to build your own PC. It's very useful knowing exactly what's in your PC and learning how it all goes together. Also, it's A LOT of fun (and frustrating :lol: ) but a all around good experience. Plus, you'll love your PC way more if you built it.

EDIT: If you chose to spend a bit more, there is a much better motherboard, CPU and RAM that you can get for a tiny bit extra and it's all on sale for a combo deal right now. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131872 just under the product picture, there is a 3 item combo deal with the FX 6300 and 8GB of RAM and it will cost you 50$ more than the components listed on the link I originally sent you. I also recommend investing in a aftermarket CPU cooler such as a hyper 212 evo which is only 30$ and looking into overclocking your CPU later on down the road as you learn more. Oh yeah, and with these new specs, you can play BF4 and all the really fancy smancy games on high settings no problem.
 
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Obnoxious

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I would build your own system rather than purchase the one on eBay. The one you've found on eBay isn't exactly best bang for it's buck. Since you're planning to upgrade in the future an Intel 9 series motherboard would be extremely ideal in your case.

I've put together the following system below and it is within your price range. It should be noted that the motherboard I've selected below cannot overclock the CPU; if you want to overclock you'll have to spend a little more on a Z97 motherboard or compromise on the CPU, GPU or another part to stay within budget.

The motherboard below will allow you to upgrade to Intel's 5th generation processor, titled Broadwell when they release towards the end of this year, or at the beginning of 2015. So the motherboard below is great if you plan on upgrading in the future. With the build below you should be able to play all your games at maximum graphical quality, and maybe mid-to-high (closer to high) in BF4 as a result of HT utilisation.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M PRO4 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($84.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.92 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair SPEC-01 RED ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.73 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $697.55
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Feel free to change anything in the above list if you're not satisfied, you'll get the "bang for your buck" with the build above. When you do plan to upgrade the build in the future, I'd only upgrade the CPU, GPU and RAM; as you shouldn't need to replace anything else. If you're looking to upgrade as soon as possible, I'd wait for Broadwell (5th generation) to release first around the end of this year or at the beginning of 2015, as mentioned earlier. When they do release, feel free to hop onto a 5th gen i5 or i7 if you can afford at that time.

You can also upgrade your RAM to 16GB or 32GB, but to be honest 8GB is more than satisfactory. Your GPU can always be upgraded, but I'd stick to the one above for a while.

Building a computer isn't difficult at all. You should find various guides online, not to mention a ton of videos on YouTube too. I'd look at a few of those and get comfortable with the internals of a computer.

All the best. :)
 
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Vynavill

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If you're going to buy a gaming pc, first and foremost, it doesnt matter what your target may be, but for the love of god and all that's good on this increasingly broken planet, NEVER EVER buy a pre-made pc.

With this said, I'd do something like this.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/qsxvqs
(sorry, I'm on mobile right now, and bbcode markup generation doesn't work...)

It will allow you to play anything 1080p at medium-high details, with low AA settings on some more heavyweight games. Ive added a 600w PSU for a lot of headroom, in case you're going to update gpu in the future, but if you want to save 10 bucks, the 500w should be fine too.
 
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Icaraeus

Icaraeus

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That rig actually would run everything at max or high settings with AA.
 
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Vynavill

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In which world, exactly? As I'd like to live there, in all honesty XD
That ultimately depends on the resolution he's running at. If he's running at something lower than 1920x1080, he might be able to do so. Or you can go tell a colleague of mine who continuously whined about his Gigabyte 760 with a better rig than the one I posted, or another friend with a slightly weaker CPU and a Zotac 760. Both couldn't run some games like they wanted to at 1080p, the former eventually sold it back and bought a 280x, while the latter did the same with a 770. No whines heard from both of them anymore :p
 
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marshal11

marshal11

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Yeah, a 270 isn't THAT powerful. BF4 won't be maxed out on a r7 270. However, high settings with no AA or maybe 2xMSAA at 1080P should be okay after overclocking which the 7870/r7 270 does extremely well. Also, keep in mind the r7 270 is just a underclocked 7870/270x, so there's no point in buying a 270x ever as it's the exact same card.
 
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Icaraeus

Icaraeus

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I run every game either maxed or with AA disabled (BF4 at 1080p 50+ with 4xMSAA, BF3 60+ fps at everything max except 2xMSAA, Tomb Raider everything max except SSAA, Metro: LL maxed). The GTX 760 is around the same so it should perform just as well. Those games are some of the most demanding atm.
 
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