PC gaming THE COST

[Araksardet]

I spent 5 years gaming on a store-bought POS Toshiba Satellite that cost me about 800$, yet I still managed to play Skyrim and Mass Effect and what have you without issues. Funnily enough, only Trine really made it chug.

Now I've got a Lenovo Y580, on sale for around 900$ just before Windows 8 hit. With luck, it'll last me another 4 years, though maybe less if console releases truly make PC games so much more resource intensive. Still, there are sooooo many indie, mid-range and Kickstarter games coming out that I won't have time to play and that won't hog my system; I'm not worried.

 

[goodman528]

I built a gaming computer 6 years ago for 1100 GBP, and it can still run most of the latest games today:
2.6GHz quad core
2GB RAM with 32bit operating system
8800GTX GPU
22" 1600x1050 2ms monitor

I bought a gaming laptop last year for 580 GBP, and it can run anything I've put on it so far, call of duty, medal of honor, wargame:EE, diablo 3, etc:
second gen i-3 processor 2.4GHz quad core
4GB RAM with 32 bit os
nVidia GT560M GPU
17" 1900x1200 2ms monitor

My advice would be:
Spend a lot of money on the non-electrical parts and don't bother getting good GPU or CPU or RAM, because in 6 years time, the case and heatsink and cooling and stuffs will be worth more money than you bought it for, but the electricals will be worthless and obsolete.

 

[thunderbug]

My PC is around £1400, 3770k, 7970, 16Gb ram, 2SSd raid 0, 1050 xfx modular PSU, 4TB storage, Asus Sabretooth Z77 board, Raven RV01 Case.

But tbh i didnt need all this to enjoy Pc gaming, i build my cousin a PC for £400 and it dosnt struggle with anything.

Pc gaming isnt as expensive as people make out plus u still have all the functionality of a PC whereas the consoles u dont.

 

[DrOswald]

Your gaming PC actually costs $300, not $800. And in the end, pc gaming is far cheaper than console gaming. You pay a greater upfront cost for the machine, but if you are a serious gamer you will save a huge amount of money in the long run on steam sales alone.

Actually Mr.American my computer cost me £325. I don't know or care how much that is in dollars as I live in Wales, not the U.S of A, I just put the numbers into google translate.

Ok, I am not sure why you are so hostile about me using dollar amounts. The point I was making is so simple that you don't need to understand the relative value of currency. This is 5 year old level reasoning. 8 is a number larger than 3. You think your cost is 8, but it is actually 3. This is because you were going to spend 5 no matter what, so 8 - 5 = 3.

The point is that the actual cost of PC gaming is much lower than most people realize.

I consider myself a serious gamer and will be taking advantage of steam sales, but I will continue to spend most of my gaming time on a console, because it is less stressful to use. If you mean superior by way of graphics I do not consider that superiority. Being able to make out more pockmarks on a characters face does not make me enjoy the game more. I will be using the console for exclusives and stuff that I feel would work better on a computer like the Witcher 2 because it was originally a PC game, and Skyrim which I will be modding extensively.

You will notice that I never said that PC's are better because they have better graphics. PCs are just objectively better gaming machines than consoles when used properly. I will now list some of the reasons why:

The most extensive and varied library of games on any possible gaming machine
Far cheaper games
A vast selection of free, professional quality games
A much more varied selection of genres available
Far more cheap and interesting indie games are available
Much more reliable backwards compatibility
The choice between keyboard/mouse, controller, or any other style of input (so long as you own the input hardware)
Faster load times
Modding
The ability to quickly and easily switch between gaming and other tasks or to another game

I could go on but I think you get the idea. PC's are better at every single thing to do with gaming except convenience. The only thing that consoles have on PC's is that they require less technical knowledge to use and are therefore sometimes easier to use.

I was not making a "PC gaming master race comment". I like consoles. I own a PS3, and X360 and a Wii. I plan on owning at least the Wii U and one of the other big two. I love console gaming, but my own experience has shown me that PC's are simply better gaming machines.

 

[Aesir23]

I don't really have a "rig" to speak of unless you wish to apply that term to a five year old computer that's scarcely been upgraded in that time.

I actually only recently switched to PC gaming as well after noticing the downward spiral that console gaming seemed to be heading towards. I spent my tax return on a brand new Corsair 650W power supply and a Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 1GB card just so I could actually run games that have been released in the past three years without my computer imploding upon itself.

Although even with those upgrades I still have my eye on the high powered gaming PC my friend designed for me (which somehow managed to drop in price from $2300 to $1900 in four months). Mostly because it's still a trial to run certain games (primarily Skyrim which is inherently buggy to begin with) due to the fact that my CPU is still quite old, I only have 3 GB of RAM and I only have a 32 bit OS which as far as I'm aware will make buying additional RAM pretty much useless since it's limited to how much RAM it can use.

Needless to say, I can hardly wait to graduate college and actually be employed.

 

[itsmeyouidiot]

Cost is the main reason why I think PC gaming is overrated.

Don't get me wrong, it has its obvious benefits, but the cheapest gaming computer you'll see will be roughly $500, whereas the Wii U currently costs $350 and the Xbox 360 and PS3 cost $250.

Most AAA titles are also just as expensive for the PC as they are for consoles. Bioshock Infinite on Steam is $60, just as it is as physical copy on a console.

Until we start seeing gaming computers cost $350 or less, I don't think they'll replace consoles anytime soon.

 

[MrTub]

Cost is the main reason why I think PC gaming is overrated.

Don't get me wrong, it has its obvious benefits, but the cheapest gaming computer you'll see will be roughly $500, whereas the Wii U currently costs $350 and the Xbox 360 and PS3 cost $250.

Most AAA titles are also just as expensive for the PC as they are for consoles. Bioshock Infinite on Steam is $60, just as it is as physical copy on a console.

Until we start seeing gaming computers cost $350 or less, I don't think they'll replace consoles anytime soon.

At least in Sweden all pc games are at least 100kr cheaper (15$) then console games if you buy them in retail. For an example Bioshock Infinite costs 379kr (57$) on pc and on xbox it costs 549kr (84$). Steam is generally quite expensive since we are forced to buy in euro, thats why I tend to buy from greenmangaming and such sites when I pay in dollar.

(Btw bioshock infinite costs 50Euro on steam atm)

 

[Angelowl]

Bought my current computer three months ago. Paid roughly 800 euros on a holiday sale. For a gaming laptop with pretty much everything I needed for the next decade crammed in.

Intel Core I7 2.4GHz Quadcore
8GB Ram
Invidia Geforce GTX 660M 2GB
750GB HDD

So I can run Crysis, Total War, Civ 5, Skyrim and pretty much everything else at max. Will do just fine 6 years from now. But let's stop measuring internet boobs and instead be constructive.

A few points.

1. Pretty good backwards compability = HUGE library and disgustingly cheap masterpieces.
2. Mods = new life in those old games. S.T.A.L.K.E.R on Cryengine3 anyone?
2.5 Fan Patches. Suddenly I can actually play C&C The First Decade.
3. Steam. Bought Mass Effect, got KOTOR almost for free.
4. Emulators. The WII does this too, but "hi, no-longer-in-production-consoles and never-released-in-europe-games".
5. Elitism

Once you have the computer and know where to look your gaming library will increase tremendously. Now I'm off to tell my highly competetive MMO- & MOBA-playing best friend he's causal because he is too mainstream.