i need some help

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

ok so i dunno if this was the right forum for this its about gaming PC's so i thought i should post in the gaming discussion forums but if it should have been in Off-topic then im sorry.

So anyways im looking to buy a new PC for gaming because this one i have is a pile of shit...mostly due to not being a gaming PC >.> and i know that lots of people on the escapist are PC gamers and know quite a bit about what would be a good PC for gaming so im asking for your help *begs*. The thing is im not good at looking at whats in a PC and going "hmmmm that looks like it would be good for this game bla bla bla" i know roughly how much RAM i would need, how big a hard drive i would need and obviously a good Graphics card...other than that the rest is complete fucking gibberish.

So i play World of Warcraft and some steam games on this PC for the most part it handles them well. Although i have to play WoW at lowest settings and even then in a 25 man raid i get lag, most of my steam games it handles fine, but the ones i play are older ones don't exactly have awesome graphics, like Half-Life, KotOR and Morrowind. But i want a gaming PC that can run games like Dragon Age and Oblivion at medium to high settings with no problem at all. There are 3 PC's i have looked at so far (only started looking last night) and i shall link them in a sec...im probably going to get flamed by people like "Omg all of them suck!" so *boots up flame shield 2.0* im linking from cheapest to most expensive.

1) http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/advent-cbe1401-04153059-pdt.html

2) http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-predator-g7200-defender-ii-03753535-pdt.html

3)http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/alienware-aurora-03885226-pdt.html

so theres the 3 i have looked at so far im guessing people are going to say "get the Alienware one!" but the thing thats putting me off that is i have heard that Alienware computers are acctually quite overrated but i wouldn't know thats just what i have heard. Also i would also like some people to maybe recommend a couple of gaming PC's for me that think would suit my needs so for anyone that helps me out here Thank you!

PS: i don't really want to spend more than 1000 pound on a PC because im only in part time employment at the moment and saving up can be a *****.

 

[GreatVladmir]

Build one, for £1000 you could build a fuckin 'A PC that would blow the bollocks of those pre-builties, seriously, it is the best way to go. Though that Acer looks friggin sweet, so if you dont want to build one, get the Acer

 

[machblast]

well, you're in luck! you can easily build a fantastic computer for around 600-700 pounds.

A GeForce 9800GT, an ATX case, an Intel Core 2 Duo (any speed over 2.3ghz is fine, really), 4 gigabytes of DDR2-800 ram, an Intel motherboard, a 500+ watt power supply, a 1tb hard drive from Western Digital, in US dollars, should run you about $650 - 422 pounds!. You can upgrade from there! Honestly, for the games you play, you don't even need anything better - personally, I'd suggest staying with that.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Build one, for £1000 you could build a fuckin 'A PC that would blow the bollocks of those pre-builties, seriously, it is the best way to go. Though that Acer looks friggin sweet, so if you dont want to build one, get the Acer

well im not really going for what it looks like more its performance i couldnt care less if it was shaped like a giant dildo as long as it was good >.>

 

[Sampler]

I'm guessing form the .co.uk Curry links you're in the UK - which means you're in luck and can order from these guys:
http://www.cclonline.com/
they have a forum if you want a custom built rig with individually spec'd parts the forum users will guide you through what you need and CCL will do the build - or you can choose from there "off the shelf" gaming PC's
http://www.cclonline.com/product-categories.asp?category_id=1155
I say "off the shelf" but they're built to order and much better value than you'd find at Currys.

As for your needs do you require a new screen, keyboard and mouse plus other peripherals or is it just the PC (judging by your links just the latter)?

25 man raids in WoW will probably be more down to your internet connection lagging than your machine (though there's a bit of an assumption there not knowing your current rig).

I'd say you could put together a quad core AMD unit with a good gpu and an SSD for around £800 - is that the kind of budget you're looking at or lower/higher?

 

[machblast]

I'm guessing form the .co.uk Curry links you're in the UK - which means you're in luck and can order from these guys:
http://www.cclonline.com/
they have a forum if you want a custom built rig with individually spec'd parts the forum users will guide you through what you need - or you can choose from there "off the shelf" gaming PC's
http://www.cclonline.com/product-categories.asp?category_id=1155
I say "off the shelf" but they're built to order and much better value than you'd find at Currys.

As for your needs do you require a new screen, keyboard and mouse plus other peripherals or is it just the PC (judging by your links just the latter)?

25 man raids in WoW will probably be more down to your internet connection lagging than your machine (though there's a bit of an assumption there not knowing your current rig).

I'd say you could put together a quad core AMD unit with a good gpu and an SSD for around £800 - is that the kind of budget you're looking at or lower/higher?

I was going to comment about that, WoW is one of the least taxing games that people still play today, and it's usually not your computer making it slow down - it's your crappy internet.

 

[Mattallica]

Building is definitely the way forward. Pop over to http://www.ebuyer.com/ and you can get some good deals there. For the spec you seem to be looking for you shouldn't have to spend more than £500, especially if you don't need a monitor or other peripherals.

Just my opinion, but I'd suggest an AMD Phenom x4 processor (+ a compatible motherboard), an ATI Radeon 5770 GFX, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a Westerm Digital 1Tb hard drive, and a Creative SoundBlaster sound card of some kind.

 

[machblast]

Building is definitely the way forward. Pop over to http://www.ebuyer.com/ and you can get some good deals there. For the spec you seem to be looking for you shouldn't have to spend more than £500, especially if you don't need a monitor or other peripherals.

Just my opinion, but I'd suggest an AMD Phenom x4 processor (+ a compatible motherboard), an ATI Radeon 5770 GFX, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a Westerm Digital 1Tb hard drive, and a Creative SoundBlaster sound card of some kind.

I really doubt he'd need a sound card with a modern motherboard. Integrated sound has come a long way, so it's only really if he has a surround sound system/super good headphones/etc that he'd want one.

 

[Sampler]

I'd recommend against ebuyer - like many online stores they're great when things go right but when you hit a problem you find out how good they're, ebuyer were pretty f'ing awful in my couple of experiences with faulty gear. Likewise MicroDirect and a colleague of mine when I used to work for computacentre had worked for Scan, his job was to repack returned items as new so they could sell them as new (note not at any point was he to check that they actually worked or had all the parts returned).

So out of the stores I can recommend there's the aforementioned CCL - top knacker customer service and advice from those guys. Been please with Misco (we use them at work so possibly a little biased due to the volume of crap we order) and recently been really pleased with the service from Micro-itx, though they aren't really applicable to you here

Agreed on modern integrated sound.

 

[Mattallica]

I've never personally had a problem with eBuyer, but if the prevailing opinion is against then fair enough.

Considering the Alienware PC this guy was looking at, then he seems to have a pretty big budget at his disposal, so I merely suggested the Soundblaster as good sound is (in my opinion) a really important part of the gaming experience. Onboard sound may have come a long way, but it can't compete with the quality of a good dedicated card.

 

[machblast]

I've never personally had a problem with eBuyer, but if the prevailing opinion is against then fair enough.

Considering the Alienware PC this guy was looking at, then he seems to have a pretty big budget at his disposal, so I merely suggested the Soundblaster as good sound is (in my opinion) a really important part of the gaming experience. Onboard sound may have come a long way, but it can't compete with the quality of a good dedicated card.

Of course a dedicated sound card is good, but it's useless if your speakers/headphones are shitty or generally cheap, you won't even hear the difference. It's like buying a GTX 280 and then bottlenecking it with a Pentium 4 - there's just no point.

 

[Mattallica]

Of course a dedicated sound card is good, but it's useless if your speakers/headphones are shitty or generally cheap, you won't even hear the difference.

True dat.

Edit to previous post:- Get a Creative Fatal1ty Gaming headset as well. Very comfortable for those long gaming binges, and the sound quality is not the best but still very good.

 

[Sampler]

Same price as the alienware, would kick its arse though:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 'Black Edition' Quad Core CPU (3.4GHz) [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=38322] - £153.81
Asus M4A79XTD Evo AM3 Motherboard [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=35658] - £95.22
(2x2GB) G.Skill Ripjaws 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Kit [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=38303] - £99.88

Sapphire ATI HD5850 Toxic 1GB [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=44634] - £262.84

64GB Kingston SSDNow V-Series SATA2 2.5" [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=44953] - £117.96
1TB Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ Hard Disk Drive [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=36618] - £63.96
Samsung 22x DVDRW SATA Drive (Black) [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=38875] - £15.20
Akasa Internal Card Reader [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=15290] - £9.20

650W Silverpower By Seasonic SP-SS650 Power Supply [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=34654] - £66.11

Xigmatek Midgard ATX Case [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=43456] - £51.70 (Xigmatek site [http://www.xigmatek.com/product/chassis-midgard.php])
(x5) 120mm Xigmatek (XLF-X1254) LED Fan [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=43454] - £37.13 (£7.43)

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=36936] - £80.95
Premium Build [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=6197] - £70.50

Basket Total: £1,124.44
Shipping Cost From: £16.63
Total (including shipping): £1,141.07

Of course - that's like a top end gaming rig, you could easily scale back on the performance of the memory, CPU and GPU and have something that would still more than fill your needs for the next few years but shave a few hundred of the price tag.

Ie drop the CPU to a 955, GPU to a 5770 and lose the SSD and additional cooling fans (which tbh are a little overkill) and you can get the price down to:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Quad Core CPU (3.2GHz) [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=32786] - £137.26
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB [http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=43713] - £140.92

Basket Total: £830.89
Shipping Cost From: £15.48
Total (including shipping): £846.37

[edit]
Your talking of only 0.2GHz difference on the CPU core speeds which will be pretty impossible to tell the difference in real life (yeah benchmarks and stats blah blah blah but you personally wouldn't notice it) and the graphics don't seem to be really much of an issue for you plus the 5770 is a highly capable card so I would really advise to go for the "cheaper" option.

SSD's are personally highly recommend by me though, won't help much in games (except allow you to load and be on the level first in some online FPS's) but it makes a massive difference to general system use, it's so much an impact it qualifies the use of the term phenomenal!

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[Kouen]

Id say build your own much cheaper in the long run even though you will have to buy a copy of windows for it