Advice Needed

Hi ladies and jellybeans

So my poor laptop is on the blink, it has served me well but I am now having to look at another machine.

I want to go for a desktop this time, only because it's easier to upgrade where necessary. I want ideally a dedicated gaming desktop.

Does anybody here use a gaming desktop? If so, what would you recommend within a £500 to £1000 budget?

Just trying to get a picture of the best performance vs value for money.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/builds/#X=0,99914

There should be a site with a bunch of builds within your budget. Since I don't know all the details, whether you want a pre-build or build one yourself, at least you can get some ideas of what you can and cannot get within your money limits.

It largely depends on how much you are able to customise. The more you do the cheaper it relies on your level of computer knowledge. Buying the components and assembling it yourself is the cheapest option followed by selecting components for a PC and having someone else build it for you etc. I bought a dedicated gaming PC once from pcspecialist who have a good reputation (selected the parts and they built it). It's a good idea to think a bit about what games you want to run and how well you want it to run them as a starting point.

Speaking personally, I'd build the entire thing myself. It's an extremely easy thing to do and then you can be sure of the quality of both the parts and the workmanship. I built 3 of them early last year and they're all still going strong.

What can you get for £500-£1000? I guess that depends on whether you'll be requiring new peripherals too. I'd rather have a slightly less awesome base unit and a better keyboard, mouse and monitor - especially if gaming will be it's primary purpose.

The best bang for your buck as far as graphics cards are concerned is the Nvidia Geforce GTX 970. If you get one of those and any of the reasonably high end i5 or i7s (along with a motherboard with the appropriate socket) and you'll be set for a while. The memory, storage and PSU are lesser concerns, but I'd make sure you get a fully modular PSU, because it helps with cable management and makes removing and adding new parts far less frustrating!

If you're set on buying the machine pre-built, then go and check out www.chillblast.com - I've had dealings with them in the past and they've always been great. They also have a very high level of customer service.

If you're in the UK, check out Amazon as they have some remarkably good value gaming computers woth a look.

Example: 4 stars + customer reviews

One of my younger sisters is a gamer and got a rig from Amazon, the extremely well specc'd RX-9 and it cost way less than a grand. Quite a beast from what she said.

YAY! I'm not the only one that would rather have a desktop to game on. lol

I have no suggestions, though.

The problem with laptop is they tend to overheat when you play games with nice graphics. In a desktop it's less cramped and you can more easily customize with new graphic cards.

If the OP would ever look at a laptop again, there are gaming laptops. I don't know in detail about them because I've never had one, but I've seen some really great ones. The only hitch up I have about them is the fact that they cost way too much. For one decent gaming laptop, you could probably build two decent desktops, or have a really awesome desktop rig that would blow the laptop out of the water.

VanillaCreme said:

If the OP would ever look at a laptop again, there are gaming laptops. I don't know in detail about them because I've never had one, but I've seen some really great ones. The only hitch up I have about them is the fact that they cost way too much. For one decent gaming laptop, you could probably build two decent desktops, or have a really awesome desktop rig that would blow the laptop out of the water.

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Gaming laptops always seem pretty nifty in theory, but the reality is that they're never quite as powerful as their desktop equivalents, cost at least twice as much and they often die within a couple of years due to the immense heat they produce.

Even when they do last longer than that, you've got very limited upgrade potential, so you're going to have to replace it constantly if you want to remain on the bleeding edge.

Unless you have to travel around as part of your job, then you're always better off purchasing/building a desktop.

Yeah, the one gaming laptop I looked at was about 1700 bucks. My computer, that I've replaced nearly all of it now out of necessity, cost a fraction of that. Maybe it's because I'm cheap or just like customizing and shopping around for the best deal, but even if I had money like that, I don't think I'd bother. I'd much rather beast up my rig.

VanillaCreme said:

Yeah, the one gaming laptop I looked at was about 1700 bucks. My computer, that I've replaced nearly all of it now out of necessity, cost a fraction of that. Maybe it's because I'm cheap or just like customizing and shopping around for the best deal, but even if I had money like that, I don't think I'd bother. I'd much rather beast up my rig.

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It's always best to buy what you can afford and then upgrade later; laptops just don't give you that versatility. For some reason, computer parts and gaming laptops are always WAY cheaper in the US, so when I built my current desktop in January last year it cost me £1400/$2100.

I could have built it for much less, but I just insisted on buying a 780ti and an i7-4770k. In retrospect, I'd have been better off waiting for the 970 to be released and then getting roughly the same performance for less than half the price, but then I'd probably rue that decision later on. If I get 2 years usage out of the 780ti before I decide to upgrade then I'll be happy that I got my money's worth. I doubt I'll buy the most powerful single GPU card again though - paying a £200/$300 premium for roughly 10% extra performance just isn't sensible.

I'm blathering again. It's what I'm best at and I do so like boring the pants off people with inane tech drivel