Going to Best Buy today, please help.

MeleeMageWow

Commendable
Feb 21, 2016
1
0
1,510
We bought an iMac five years ago from BB. Now we can only play World of Warcraft on completely lowest settings. We are headed back to Best Buy today and Im afraid they will not point us to the beat gaming pc...just the most expensive. All we want it for is Wow!
 
Solution
Understand the need to get something right away, but seriously, you should consider building your own. If you have a good computer shop in town, like a Micro Center, you can have a better, quality system for about the same price, and it will only take you a few hours more.

That said, if you're dead set on a Best Buy system, you'll want to look for the following:

CPU: Ideally, you're going to want an Intel Core I5 series processor. The next step down would be a Core I3 or an AMD FX 6xxx series processor. Both of which are still fine for gaming. An Intel Core I7 or an AMD FX 8xxx/9xxx series processor really doesn't give you anything in the way of games, so do not pay extra for them. If you can get them at the same price, there's no...

AuthorFilms Studios

Commendable
Feb 15, 2016
24
0
1,540
As superninja12 said, It will be much more efficient and have a better outcome for less money if you build it yourself. Dont go to Best Buy and get some overpriced [strike]rubbish[/strike] PC that is not worth the money. for £500 ($700) you can get a 10 times better computer that will be able to play [strike]every[/strike] most, if not all, game at a good FPS with decent settings!
 

Wolfshadw

Titan
Moderator
Understand the need to get something right away, but seriously, you should consider building your own. If you have a good computer shop in town, like a Micro Center, you can have a better, quality system for about the same price, and it will only take you a few hours more.

That said, if you're dead set on a Best Buy system, you'll want to look for the following:

CPU: Ideally, you're going to want an Intel Core I5 series processor. The next step down would be a Core I3 or an AMD FX 6xxx series processor. Both of which are still fine for gaming. An Intel Core I7 or an AMD FX 8xxx/9xxx series processor really doesn't give you anything in the way of games, so do not pay extra for them. If you can get them at the same price, there's no reason not to, but don't let them tell you it's better for gaming.

RAM: Your system should come with 8GB or 16GB of DDR3 1333 or DDR3-1600 RAM, unless the processor you're getting is the latest Skylake (Intel Core I5-6xxx series) processor. Then you should be getting DDR4-1600 or higher (1866, to 2400) RAM.

Graphics: For a gaming system, the graphics card model number should have no lower than a "6" as the second numeral in the model number. For example, GTX 960, GTX 970, R7-370, R9-380 would all be acceptable. Anything that comes with something like a GT 730 that's listed as a "gaming" system is flat out marketing. While it *will* game, it should in no way be considered a "gaming" system.

Computer Case: A lot of "gaming" systems will come in stylized cases which also use a lot of custom components. These components are often very difficult to upgrade/swap out should you need to (small form factor power supplies/low profile graphic cards) and they should be avoided. The more plain looking a computer case, the more likely you will be able to swap out low quality components for better ones.

Now any system you purchase that has the above components (or better) installed by default *should* be able to handle anything you can throw at it. If it doesn't, there are several other issues with pre-builds that may slow down performance (another reason to build your own), but we can probably work around those.

If you're dead set on heading to BB later today, then go fore-armed. If you do purchase and still run into problems, by all means, come back to us and we'll get you straightened away as best we can.

-Wolf sends
 
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