Please Help Me Spend $1500.00

Maximum

This is another one of those annoying plea's for help from someone who loves to play pc games, but does'nt know jack-all about buying a decent rig. For the last two years I've been using my Alienware laptop that I guess used to be hot shit, but now it's just shit. The damn thing overheats like crazy and now it just plain won't work at all. With what it's gonna cost me to get it repaired I may as well just blow my wad on something shiny and new.

I'd lke to get a fairly decent desktop pc that I can play games like LoTR Online, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, or Age of Conan (when it finally comes out). I'd like to be able to purchase it at a retail outlet, because with my work schedule accepting deliveries from Fed-Ex or what not will be impossible. I'd like to get something that won't fall apart on me, and would hopefully put me ahead of the curve for a little while, and be easy to upgrade should the time come. As the title of my post implies I have about $1500 samolians to spend, maybe a little more if it's absolutley necessary.

Please understand that I'm sort of an idiot when it comes to technical stuff, so if anyone out there in the intraweb can hold my hand, point me in the direction of where to go and what I need I'd be grateful.

Lucky Cynic

If you can, try and get to a Fry's Electronics Store, as in an actual building. Buying from anywhere else will have you facing some really jacked up prices. Also, I have been running games like oblivion pretty damn well on a computer that cost me only $1,000 but due to price drops, it's probably $150 cheaper now. I would say get an 8800GTS graphics card with an E6400 Intel C2D processor. Getting a good two gigs of ram should also help and be sure to find a decent sized harddrive. Thing is, OEM HD's are so much cheaper than retail versions so if you want a bitching monitor, I would try and save about $50-$100 from skimping on the harddrive. Unless of course you manage to fill up 100gigs in no time at all.

Deusfaux

there are tons and tons of these threads around already, use the one in HA and dig up all the ones already in G&T

bloodyroarxx

Your best bet seems like is going to a local owned and getting one that way, because you're at least going to be able to have much more control over what you get in it.

mspencer

You do know you can have something shipped via FedEx or UPS and then pick the package up at your convenience at one of their offices, right? All this depends on what prices you can find online and in person, but it seems you might save a lot of money that way.

Daedalus

Retail outlets will really rip you off. Look into having Fedex/UPS ship stuff and then picking it up from a Fedex/UPS center or something.

Anyway. The most cost-effective way is to build it yourself, but that might be a little out of your league.

Raslin

The Warlock wrote: »

Retail outlets will really rip you off. Look into having Fedex/UPS ship stuff and then picking it up from a Fedex/UPS center or something.

Anyway. The most cost-effective way is to build it yourself, but that might be a little out of your league.

Ehh. Its really, really not hard. The motherboard manual basically walks you through the process. Put the parts together like it says, after you've put the motherboard in the case, obviously. Then pop in a windows install disk, install it. Install the drivers, and you're good to go.

I just did it for the first time, and while I know a good amount about computers, I knew little about hardware before I tried. It was frustrating, but not hard.

bobmyknob

Try some of the smaller computer sites, like IBuyPower.com or others. They tend to be pretty good about having a variety of parts, and the premium isn't too huge. Just check out the shipping to make sure it doesn't jack the price up too high. Retail stores are usually pretty bad when it comes to getting a computer with all quality parts.

Zek

There's nothing hard about building a computer. Anyone can do it. The hardest part is actually picking out the components. The upside is that you'll save a good deal of money, the downside is that your tech support options are limited. I can understand if you don't want to do that though, it's really just an option for performance enthusiasts and/or people that are cheap.