Oh master race please help a lowly peasant

[Voulan]

I'm going to hop to PC gaming as well, since I don't want to have to pay to go online now with the PS4. But there's no way in hell I would be able to build my own. I do already have a laptop that my parents got for me, and since its only 3 going on 4 years old, is it still current enough to be okay for gaming? I don't have access to specs right now, but when my friends look at it they say it should easily handle most games. All I remember is that it's a 7 core CPU. Its brand is a Dell XPS.

Sorry for the vague information, but should I be good to go? I don't know how often it's necessary to upgrade a PC, but surely it's okay after that long? It works perfectly well, so there seems to be no legitimate reason to replace it.

I didn't know they did odd numbered cores but that ballpark figure should be okay. What you will want to do is upgrade your ram if you haven't yet. If it's only 3 years old I'll guess you have 4 gigs and could probably double that. With more ram and not knowing anything else I'd say you could certainly play most things and they won't look or run like crap. Laptops are tough for upgrading things but ram is usually easily done, and wouldn't cost you a lot if you have someone who knows do it. If you and OP are serious about switching to or adding PC gaming you should both download steam now and take advantage of the current sale going on. Don't buy anything if it's not currently a flash sale, daily deal or community choice, patience is a virtue in steam sales. Get some games now though, even before you buy/upgrade your system.

Maybe I'm getting i7 mixed up with the actual core number. I seriously know nothing about computers.

I can remember it having more than 4 gigs of ram, I think perhaps 8. So I'm good? Fantastic. I have Steam already, I got it when there was a free weekend of Portal almost two years ago. There's nothing else on there though, so I guess I'll go bargain hunting. Does Steam do Christmas sales?

 

[Silverbeard]

While my brothers of the Master Race are all here offering the Hand of Wisdom to the Ascendants, let me get your opinion(s) on this machine:

CyberPower (not a brand I've used before)
4th gen I7 4770K 3.50 Ghz Intel processor
16 GB DDR 3 memory
2TB SATA hard drive
2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 770
Win 7

The whole thing will cost me approximately 1500 USD, not counting taxes and transport and so on. IT honestly looks rather overkill for a PC gaming rig (16 GBs RAM and 2TB hard drive in particular) but I figure it would be better to get more than I need now rather than have to worry about getting more in a half-decade. I've been an ATI boy all my life so I'm a bit hesitant on switching to Nvidia but I figured 'why not?' Seems like most everyone is switching to Nvidia these days (note that I'm thoroughly ignorant of the rage that this casual comment might invite. Do forgive me, please, my brothers and sisters).

Opinions? All I need now is a monitor and then I'll be set!

You could look at getting a solid state drive for your operating system and one or two games you play frequently. It will give you much faster boot and load times though if you're not worried about that then you can ignore it.

As far as I am aware, I7 CPUs have a very marginal improvement over I5s unless you do a lot of multitasking or video editing so you could downgrade without much change in performance.

Also remember to get a good quality power supply that's at least 80+ bronze certified and (for your setup) shouldn't need to be higher than 750W though I think PCs with 770s require about 600W (not sure, I use Radeon cards normally).

I'm not too up on solid state drives. That whole phase kind of passed me by when I was in my 'laptops are superior' phase. Can you fill me in on the details? The greater Internet is not always reliable about this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, the i7 is part of the package. It's a prebuilt rig- I'd much rather have a good warranty rather than fiddle with the bits myself- and I really wanted the 770. The price isn't that much higher and I should be good for the rest of the decade (hopefully).
And you're right; 770s require 600W base supply. That's not really an issue for me at this point.
Really, I'm just having a bit of buyer anxiety. 'Tis good to get a few positive opinions to get me over the phase. Many thanks, mates!

 

[Neonsilver]

I'm going to hop to PC gaming as well, since I don't want to have to pay to go online now with the PS4. But there's no way in hell I would be able to build my own. I do already have a laptop that my parents got for me, and since its only 3 going on 4 years old, is it still current enough to be okay for gaming? I don't have access to specs right now, but when my friends look at it they say it should easily handle most games. All I remember is that it's a 7 core CPU. Its brand is a Dell XPS.

Sorry for the vague information, but should I be good to go? I don't know how often it's necessary to upgrade a PC, but surely it's okay after that long? It works perfectly well, so there seems to be no legitimate reason to replace it.

In theory you should be able to play most games that were released in the past few years and you might still be able to play a few games that are going to be released in the next year or so. But you will have to tinker a little bit with the settings for the games to get them to run smoothly.
It's good enough to start pc gaming, get a steam account and buy some stuff now during the autumn sale and during the Christmas sale but look at the required specs for the games.

While my brothers of the Master Race are all here offering the Hand of Wisdom to the Ascendants, let me get your opinion(s) on this machine:

CyberPower (not a brand I've used before)
4th gen I7 4770K 3.50 Ghz Intel processor
16 GB DDR 3 memory
2TB SATA hard drive
2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 770
Win 7

The whole thing will cost me approximately 1500 USD, not counting taxes and transport and so on. IT honestly looks rather overkill for a PC gaming rig (16 GBs RAM and 2TB hard drive in particular) but I figure it would be better to get more than I need now rather than have to worry about getting more in a half-decade. I've been an ATI boy all my life so I'm a bit hesitant on switching to Nvidia but I figured 'why not?' Seems like most everyone is switching to Nvidia these days (note that I'm thoroughly ignorant of the rage that this casual comment might invite. Do forgive me, please, my brothers and sisters).

Opinions? All I need now is a monitor and then I'll be set!

16gb RAM isn't wrong, but I don't think it's necessary right now. 8gb should still give you enough buffer for now and you can easily upgrade to 16gb at a later time. Also make sure to compare different RAM sticks. There is more than just how much gb they have. With the hard drive I would advice to take whatever you can afford. Games aren't getting smaller.

I think the I7 cpu is overkill, compare it with some I5 and decide if the improvements are worth the money. It's been a while since I built my pc but the I7's seemed to be quite expensive for very little improvements. The same goes for the gpu, a gtx 6XX could be enough.

 

[SecondPrize]

I'm going to hop to PC gaming as well, since I don't want to have to pay to go online now with the PS4. But there's no way in hell I would be able to build my own. I do already have a laptop that my parents got for me, and since its only 3 going on 4 years old, is it still current enough to be okay for gaming? I don't have access to specs right now, but when my friends look at it they say it should easily handle most games. All I remember is that it's a 7 core CPU. Its brand is a Dell XPS.

Sorry for the vague information, but should I be good to go? I don't know how often it's necessary to upgrade a PC, but surely it's okay after that long? It works perfectly well, so there seems to be no legitimate reason to replace it.

I didn't know they did odd numbered cores but that ballpark figure should be okay. What you will want to do is upgrade your ram if you haven't yet. If it's only 3 years old I'll guess you have 4 gigs and could probably double that. With more ram and not knowing anything else I'd say you could certainly play most things and they won't look or run like crap. Laptops are tough for upgrading things but ram is usually easily done, and wouldn't cost you a lot if you have someone who knows do it. If you and OP are serious about switching to or adding PC gaming you should both download steam now and take advantage of the current sale going on. Don't buy anything if it's not currently a flash sale, daily deal or community choice, patience is a virtue in steam sales. Get some games now though, even before you buy/upgrade your system.

Maybe I'm getting i7 mixed up with the actual core number. I seriously know nothing about computers.

I can remember it having more than 4 gigs of ram, I think perhaps 8. So I'm good? Fantastic. I have Steam already, I got it when there was a free weekend of Portal almost two years ago. There's nothing else on there though, so I guess I'll go bargain hunting. Does Steam do Christmas sales?

There's a fall sale now and they'll be one during Christmas for sure. An i7 and 8 gigs of ram will do you well with most anything. There are some websites out there which will tell you if can run specific games as well. I don't use them often but I think someone mentioned one above in this thread, otherwise do a search for "Can my computer run..." and you'll find them.

 

[Phantom Kat]

While my brothers of the Master Race are all here offering the Hand of Wisdom to the Ascendants, let me get your opinion(s) on this machine:

CyberPower (not a brand I've used before)
4th gen I7 4770K 3.50 Ghz Intel processor
16 GB DDR 3 memory
2TB SATA hard drive
2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 770
Win 7

The whole thing will cost me approximately 1500 USD, not counting taxes and transport and so on. IT honestly looks rather overkill for a PC gaming rig (16 GBs RAM and 2TB hard drive in particular) but I figure it would be better to get more than I need now rather than have to worry about getting more in a half-decade. I've been an ATI boy all my life so I'm a bit hesitant on switching to Nvidia but I figured 'why not?' Seems like most everyone is switching to Nvidia these days (note that I'm thoroughly ignorant of the rage that this casual comment might invite. Do forgive me, please, my brothers and sisters).

Opinions? All I need now is a monitor and then I'll be set!

You could look at getting a solid state drive for your operating system and one or two games you play frequently. It will give you much faster boot and load times though if you're not worried about that then you can ignore it.

As far as I am aware, I7 CPUs have a very marginal improvement over I5s unless you do a lot of multitasking or video editing so you could downgrade without much change in performance.

Also remember to get a good quality power supply that's at least 80+ bronze certified and (for your setup) shouldn't need to be higher than 750W though I think PCs with 770s require about 600W (not sure, I use Radeon cards normally).

I'm not too up on solid state drives. That whole phase kind of passed me by when I was in my 'laptops are superior' phase. Can you fill me in on the details? The greater Internet is not always reliable about this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, the i7 is part of the package. It's a prebuilt rig- I'd much rather have a good warranty rather than fiddle with the bits myself- and I really wanted the 770. The price isn't that much higher and I should be good for the rest of the decade (hopefully).
And you're right; 770s require 600W base supply. That's not really an issue for me at this point.
Really, I'm just having a bit of buyer anxiety. 'Tis good to get a few positive opinions to get me over the phase. Many thanks, mates!

A solid state drive is a relatively new kind of hard drive without moving parts. They're not necessary for a PC if you have a normal hard drive but they give a substantial reduction in start-up times and load times for the games installed to the SSD. The drawback is that large capacity SSDs are incredibly expensive and they can slow down with age. The sweet spot is around 128GB for most people and 256GB if you have money to through around. A lot of people use them by having the operating system installed to it and whatever games they play frequently and keep things like movies, music and less frequently played video games on the hard drive.

The build doesn't look bad. It's kind of at that awkward place where you could downgrade the CPU to an i5 with very little performance loss (if any) but not by enough to upgrade the GPU. I'd say if you have the money and aren't on a tight budget, it's fine, but if you want to save some money, you could downgrade the CPU to an i5-4670K and the RAM to 8GB with not much performance loss.

I checked the cyberpower website and all the power supplies they use in ~$1500 builds are at least 80+ certified so it should be OK. The RAM also seems to be mostly 1600MHz or 1866MHz which is pretty decent so no concerns there.

If you have a link to the particular build that would probably help people give you advice.

 

[loa]

You've never had a pc?
Do you not surf the internets, print something and use e-mails and all that other stuff you need one for?

If you're thinking about getting a gaming laptop, don't.
I've had one, compared to a normal desktop pc it was super silent, small, lightweight and all and it worked fine for like 2 years and then it overheated and died on me and researching what was wrong, I found out that this is a very common issue with laptops used for gaming.
At least it used to be back then.

I've never had a regular pc die on me.

 

[pilouuuu]

There is simply no reason to feel stressed, oh humble person.

Just install Steam and then you can buy your games online and with their Workshop it is easier to mod games. It is just a few clicks away and Steam even updates your games without your intervention.

If you have a job and responsibilities, that's even more reason to choose PC, because whenever you want to take a break from games, you can do so much more, like watch movies, listen to music, reading comic books, etc, etc, etc.

The only thing I must warn you is about idiotic developers which don't wish to release their stupid exclusives on the magnificent machine and that people will blame that on you being a pirate, even though other people actually pirate games on their lesser, inferior toy boxes.

Welcome to our club and be proud of experiencing the most amazing gaming ever. Get ready for better graphics, smooth performance and more creative and varied games.

 

[spartan231490]

I have been a console user my whole life. I?m just not feeling it this time and after seeing some of the mod for Skyrim well I want to join the master pc race. The only real problem is I am over whelmed. Just trying to keep up is enough to get a guy?s head spinning. I tried to google it but yeah now I?m even more confused.
The fact is this should I go pc and if I do will it be a major draw. I have a job and other responsibility. To me gaming is something I do to relax and the pc gaming just seems to add new stress. If I should go for the pc master race where do I even start?

I was a pure console gamer who went to PC not long ago. A lot of it, even modding, is actually pretty simple, the biggest headache is just going to be finding or building a PC good enough to run the games you want on the screen you want. Sadly, I'm no where near computer savvy enough to help you there, but if you have the money to spend on a gaming PC, I would highly recommend it. Steam and modding are both really intuitive thankfully(assuming you don't plan to make your own mods, which can obviously be pretty complex) but I wouldn't worry about things being too complex or stressful for you except the initial stage of getting a computer.

Hope that helps, good luck.

 

[Silverbeard]

While my brothers of the Master Race are all here offering the Hand of Wisdom to the Ascendants, let me get your opinion(s) on this machine:

CyberPower (not a brand I've used before)
4th gen I7 4770K 3.50 Ghz Intel processor
16 GB DDR 3 memory
2TB SATA hard drive
2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 770
Win 7

The whole thing will cost me approximately 1500 USD, not counting taxes and transport and so on. IT honestly looks rather overkill for a PC gaming rig (16 GBs RAM and 2TB hard drive in particular) but I figure it would be better to get more than I need now rather than have to worry about getting more in a half-decade. I've been an ATI boy all my life so I'm a bit hesitant on switching to Nvidia but I figured 'why not?' Seems like most everyone is switching to Nvidia these days (note that I'm thoroughly ignorant of the rage that this casual comment might invite. Do forgive me, please, my brothers and sisters).

Opinions? All I need now is a monitor and then I'll be set!

You could look at getting a solid state drive for your operating system and one or two games you play frequently. It will give you much faster boot and load times though if you're not worried about that then you can ignore it.

As far as I am aware, I7 CPUs have a very marginal improvement over I5s unless you do a lot of multitasking or video editing so you could downgrade without much change in performance.

Also remember to get a good quality power supply that's at least 80+ bronze certified and (for your setup) shouldn't need to be higher than 750W though I think PCs with 770s require about 600W (not sure, I use Radeon cards normally).

I'm not too up on solid state drives. That whole phase kind of passed me by when I was in my 'laptops are superior' phase. Can you fill me in on the details? The greater Internet is not always reliable about this sort of thing.
Unfortunately, the i7 is part of the package. It's a prebuilt rig- I'd much rather have a good warranty rather than fiddle with the bits myself- and I really wanted the 770. The price isn't that much higher and I should be good for the rest of the decade (hopefully).
And you're right; 770s require 600W base supply. That's not really an issue for me at this point.
Really, I'm just having a bit of buyer anxiety. 'Tis good to get a few positive opinions to get me over the phase. Many thanks, mates!

A solid state drive is a relatively new kind of hard drive without moving parts. They're not necessary for a PC if you have a normal hard drive but they give a substantial reduction in start-up times and load times for the games installed to the SSD. The drawback is that large capacity SSDs are incredibly expensive and they can slow down with age. The sweet spot is around 128GB for most people and 256GB if you have money to through around. A lot of people use them by having the operating system installed to it and whatever games they play frequently and keep things like movies, music and less frequently played video games on the hard drive.

The build doesn't look bad. It's kind of at that awkward place where you could downgrade the CPU to an i5 with very little performance loss (if any) but not by enough to upgrade the GPU. I'd say if you have the money and aren't on a tight budget, it's fine, but if you want to save some money, you could downgrade the CPU to an i5-4670K and the RAM to 8GB with not much performance loss.

I checked the cyberpower website and all the power supplies they use in ~$1500 builds are at least 80+ certified so it should be OK. The RAM also seems to be mostly 1600MHz or 1866MHz which is pretty decent so no concerns there.

If you have a link to the particular build that would probably help people give you advice.

That's fancy. I need to look into these solid states a bit later. How did I not notice this?
Anyway, loading times won't be that much of a deal for me. I generally prefer to start something up before going to the loo or something so that it's ready to go when I get back. And if SSDS really do get weaker with age then I'd rather not go for one. I need a lorry of a rig; something reliable enough to last out the next 5 years, if not the rest of the decade.

And here's the link:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8210354&CatId=114

I just can't find anything that has an i5 and still carries the 770 (which I really want). There's always the 'build my own' option but I'm at that phase where finances are less tight than time. I'd rather just get a premade rig, like that fine thing back there. It certainly looks a bit bland and dull, but that's much further down the list compared to what it can do. I might need to get a Blu-ray player eventually but for the moment it doesn't look like game media is switching over to Blu-ray so a DVD-RW should be good for the long haul.

 

[Phantom Kat]

In that case you can skip the SSD, it's not that important and more of a preference thing. They don't slow down noticeably until they get a fair amount of use (couple of years if not more) but if you're content to do things while stuff loads then there's not much point getting one.

The i7 will be fine since cost doesn't seem to be too big of an issue for you.

Don't think there's much else to say. Hope you enjoy it.

 

[IceStar100]

Ok know it's been some time since I respond but like I said little free time. I have been looking over I buy power and Orgin and I now have an idea what I want.

Thank you guys for everything

 

[Skeleon]

As long as you don't plan to build your own computer or want to use custom/rare OS, you'll be perfectly fine with a PC. There are numerous producers for tower, desktop and notebook PCs. I'd recommend a notebook if you don't plan on modding or upgrading your computer in the future: It's light and doesn't take up as much space. With the proper cable you can connect it to a bigger monitor (and use both in tandem if you want) or even your TV.