Posted: 11/25/2005 11:10:18 AM EDT
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Anyone have any recs they can make for a decent PC Gaming rig, under $1800, including a flat screen monitor? Would like good Tech support, decent graphics. Mostly used for MMORPG games, some first person shooters (Battlefield 2, America's Army). Currently have a Dell which is OK, but is loud and a bit "busy" sometimes trying to run latest software, and it is only 1 year old. |
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I get mine here, but they are local. I'm sure they will ship anywhere though. Got my gaming system from them back in August. Very pleased with it. Check'em out. www.intrex.com |
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Invest in a fast video card and CPU. Get a small hard drive as most of those games aren't that big compared with today's drives. Get as little RAM as possible as you can add more later when more money comes available. Get a fast (16 ms or better) refresh 19" LCD monitor. Bus speed matters too and you'll want 800 MHz. You'll add more RAM when money comes available and up grade the video card every few years. My nearly 3 year old Dell 3.0 GHz HT machine clocks great gaming scored because I've up graded with it with new video cards every 18 months and have 1.5 GB of RAM (most games use less than 0.9 GB even with a bunch of other programs running in the background). When a new video card comes out I buy the last champion. When the nVida 7800 cards came out I bought the 6800 GT for less than half the price of it the year before. |
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I have a cyberpowerinc.com with a 3.2 ghz cpu, 1 gig of ram and a Ati Radeon mobility 9600 that I bought a year and a half ago for 1,750.00. It still holds it's own. As long as you stay away from Dell and Gateway, you can get a lot for your money. ETA- forgot to mention, it's a laptop. ETA- since you are in FL. Might want to look at Tigerdirect. |
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I'll give you some advice: Don't scrimp on the RAM. I'd go 2GB. You don't have to buy name brand on quality. Buy SATA drives not IDE. SATA is noticeably faster and will decrease load times for games. Buy the best graphics card you can afford for your budget. You can build it yourself. All of the parts are modular. RAM only goes in one way, drives only hook up one way, graphics cards can only fit in an AGP or PCI Express slot, etc. Don't be intimidated. I'd recommend buying a shuttle system if you are concerned about sound and space. You can pick up a case with motherboard and power supply for relatively cheap. Just add RAM, a HDD drive or two, DVD burner, graphics card and go. Check out www.newegg.com or sys.us.shuttle.com/Scgsupport/index.aspx. If you can change a spark plug on a car you can put a computer together. The only complication is installing your version of Windows, etc. You could build one and save enough to buy a good rifle. |
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Athlon64 wipes the floor with Intel. You can buy a $200 AMD CPU that will outperform a $600 Intel CPU. CPU Roundup 
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On that budget you'll be fine... These parts will make the most difference. Whether you build it, or whether a company does, look for specs similar to these: * Video Card - 7800GT $300 (the GTX jumps up to over $415) - 256MB of video memory is fine. * Motherboard 939-chipset with SLI so you can simply add another 7800GT video card later on - $120-200. If you're looking at a 6800 or above video card on a new system, I double-dog-dirty-recommend SLI as an easy future upgrade. * Athlon 64-bit CPU...gaming bang for the buck, this is the chip * System Memory - 2GB ($200) for today's games, I currently have 1GB and I'm shopping to take it to 2GB * Hard drive - a 10,000 rpm drive like the 74GB Raptor ($160) as your main drive. If you need storage, add an additional 250GB (or bigger) drive, but your main drive is for speed. Two main drives in RAID 0 is even faster. Reliability things, the power supply, the airflow (case and fans) are key parts. Dell has jumped into the gaming market with their XPS. It's fast and they've got a number of go-fast goodies. The Pentium 4 gets by ok on gaming even though the Athlon 64 surpasses it for less money. The video card has more impact. Dell often offers Windows Media Center Edition, A couple of gaming reviews have said it's 1-2% slower than XP Pro on gaming results. As mentioned above, sometimes some parts such as memory are much less expensive if you don't purchase them with the PC. |
| this is probably one of the best LCD moniters for gaming you'll find for your money, I have it, play Half Life 2, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Far Cry, and other games with Zero problems. |
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funny you post this as I am putting a list together of components for myself. I compiled this list today from newegg.com ASUS A8N-SLI Premium $163 Athlon 64 X2 3800+ $322 Coolermaster Centurian Case $44.99 2 GB (2x1GB DDR 400) $185 ATI X800GT PCI-E video card $185 This is about $1k, that leaves you $800 for a kick ass monitor, mouse, keyboard PC building has come a long way from a few years ago. As someone mentioned earlier, the parts are modular and only fit into the correct position. Good Luck |
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Or you could do what I did - buy a closeout special and and save the cash. I was trying, until today, to put together a box with a "free" corporate edition of XP under 500 bucks. I was walking through Fred Meyer and bought an XP box with an 80 gig HD, 256 megs, and a 2.8 Mhz Celery chip for 149 bucks. |