Where to buy a Prebuilt Gaming PC

superchewie

First off, I understand building one myself would be cheaper, and assembly is like "putting together big legos," and I'd be able to pick all of the parts myself. I've done it before and I do not want to do it again.

So does anyone know a reputable/reasonable place to buy a gaming PC? I'm not looking for bleeding edge, as I don't have too much time to play games anymore, but I'd like to be able to play Guild Wars 2, Planet Side 2, and Dark Souls at 1920x1080 and have them both look and perform well.

Right now I'm leaning toward AVA Direct I guess, as I've heard not great things about ibuypower and cyberpower. Has anyone had experience with these or other companies?

The Ender

What is your budget for the machine?

Saaruto

To be honest, Craigslist could be a really good option if you're into that sort of thing

superchewie

I'd like to spend less than $1200 all told, but I'm not really into craigslist.

The Ender

I will probably always recommend Alienware if you've got the money to spend on their most powerful rig (The Aurora is about $1600~ right now). I bought my first prebuilt from Alienware a long, long time ago, and it was a total beast for it's era. I've been told all about how in recent times Alienware has 'sold out' or whatever, being bought by Dell, and their quality has declined - but my brother splurged & bought an Aurora (well, financed it - which I do not recommend doing, by the way!), and it's an absolutely brilliant machine.

What you're paying for aside from the hardware is build quality and an optimal case configuration. It runs cool, it's unlikely to blow fans and you can overclock that sucker as you please. Whether that worth the extra $$$ is up to you.

kaliyama

I don't know enough to answer your question effectively, but why did you hate the building process so much? Getting some anecdotal insight wil help us advise others who will be building on the thread better.

Wezoin

While I've never used them I believe iBUYPOWER is the usual recommendation for budget gaming machines, but make sure you get some testimonials from others because, as I said, I've never used them.

Other options: Falcon Northwest (may not have anything in your price range), WidowPC, HP also seems to have some machines that would be decent for gaming. Alternately a lot of online computer parts stores (I think NCIX, and maybe Newegg do this) allow you to add the parts you want to a shopping cart, and then add an assembly fee to build it for you.

Deebaser

kaliyama wrote: »

I don't know enough to answer your question effectively, but why did you hate the building process so much? Getting some anecdotal insight wil help us advise others who will be building on the thread better.

Im not the OP, but I used to build my own boxes and no longer do it.
At this point in my life, the savings aren't substantial enough to justify the time spent doing it.

MushroomStick

kaliyama wrote: »

I don't know enough to answer your question effectively, but why did you hate the building process so much? Getting some anecdotal insight wil help us advise others who will be building on the thread better.

Some people just don't enjoy building computers, and that's okay. When I stopped building computers, it wasn't so much the building part that I hated, but the part right after that where you have to install all the drivers and get all the hardware to play nice together - I hate that part more than I like saving money and playing games.

superchewie

kaliyama wrote: »

I don't know enough to answer your question effectively, but why did you hate the building process so much? Getting some anecdotal insight wil help us advise others who will be building on the thread better.

I don't have the time or energy to research components and make sure they're compatible with each other, have enough power, fit in the case, and that I'm not obviously bottlenecking myself somewhere. I also don't like assembling at all. It seems to me more like large very expensive legos that might not work before you even take them out of the box but you have no idea of knowing whether you did something wrong or it was already broken. If I had someone that knew what they were doing already and could show me what is supposed to be happening and how it should work then that'd be fine, but I don't.

I liked the idea that I was saving money and that all the parts were at least name-brand, but at this point I'd rather spend more upfront than deal with the having to troubleshoot hardware and RMA parts.

Wezoin wrote: »

Alternately a lot of online computer parts stores (I think NCIX, and maybe Newegg do this) allow you to add the parts you want to a shopping cart, and then add an assembly fee to build it for you.

From some brief poking around it looks like NCIX's Canada store will do this, but their US store and Newegg don't.

Sterica

Dell refurbished models were very cheap ($400 in 2007 for a rig that was decent enough to play WoW on high-ish setting), but I'm not sure if you'd find a great gaming platform there.

What I recommend is buying something bare bones but capable of easy upgrading. That way you don't have to deal with the minutia of putting together a PC, but can get good prices on the things that count such as RAM, graphics cards, and so forth.