PC gaming?

Afternoon all.

Okay, i usually game on xbox usually stuff like 1st and 3rd person shooters (CoD, Battlefield, Sniper etc) but I've started to grow out of it a bit now and stared to get into things like Skyrim, Oblivion, LOTR but hard to enjoy on xbox.
Started playing LOTR online on my laptop and its so much better!

Thinking about converting to PC gaming now that i have found sense.
Which is easier/cheaper? Building my own up which will take time or buying one myself and just buying a good graphics card and RAM etc...

Advice?

[hindle8907]

build your own, initail investment will be anywhere from £600-1000 depending on how much you have to spend then just change your core components every 2-3 years as they become out of date.

I'm just about to upgrade my 3 year old Motherboard , CPU and RAM and that alone is going to cost me £570.00

I got a new card at xmass costing just under £200

Off the top of my head if you want to play decent games at hi-ish Res with a solid 60FPS you will need to shell out at least £650 on components for a half decent gaming rig.

Welcome to PC gaming you wont look back unless you run out of money far superior to console gaming.

You would probably need to spend a little bit more than £650 for to play things with a solid 60fps.... I paid £1300 about 8/9 months ago and going back and playing older and modern games such as Skyrim, Splinter Cell conviction, fallout etc I cant play them on max with a solid 60fps, it will always jump around between 20-50 (may also be due to the system issues I'm currently having) on a 21" monitor at 1680x1050.

As said though you can buy pretty much everything for around £600 (not including a decent monitor). My rig above included things like a SSD for my Os and what not which you probably wouldnt be looking at for a entry level machine.

My parts were

Nvidia GTX 570 Phantom 1280mb gfx Card
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=GX-143-GW

8 Gig ram, I7 3.4ghz Sandybridge clocked to 4.2 and Mobo bundle (no longer on sale)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...d=2053&subcat= (Similar bundle to the one I got)

OCZ Vertex 3 120gb SSD (PAIN IN THE ASS as was old firmware so caused me no end of issues)
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=HD-071-OC

1000w PSU
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=CA-053-OC

Nice case
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=CA-196-CM

A blu-ray drive and some thermal compound and cleaner.

(just added all the costs up and I could have saved myself about £200 buying it all now the SSD alone was about £180 when I got it now its around £80)


In terms of easier and cheaper how much experience building and troubleshooting PC's do you have? While it is not that difficult to resolve these issues it can be incredibly frustrating... especially when you can buy pre-built gaming machines these days. There are pro's and con's to both. For instance if you buy a pre-built PC and anything is wrong on arrival its down to the company you bought it from to fix it, where as if you buy parts its down to you to prove you DIDN'T break them during the building of the machine (I have just spent 3 months testing some parts on my pc to prove it wasn't me and there genuinely is an issue). In terms of pre-builts you can get something like

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=FS-210-OK

or

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...40&subcat=1444

With the GTX570 card will easily run the games you want (comes in at a total of £739 AMD and £689 Intel) But I would advise steering clear of the AMD Bulldozer CPU's (I know I just linked one but still) as they are not as powerful and use more power than the Intel equivalent.

In all honesty it all depends on your budget....

[hindle8907]

woogie you on dayZ ?

[keith_d]

I'm not sure that building your own will save any money up front. Decent parts aren't particularly cheap. But, a lot of the off the shelf machines (particularly Dell) use non-standard parts which make repairing and upgrading a nightmare.

So my recommendation would be to build your own.

Keith.

I've always built my own and have had some belting machines.

But with companies like overclockers offering prebuilt system you can just buy a package rather than mess about. Last time I look there gaming range started at £500~ with the good'uns starting at £700
Good builds and will do all you want and more.
For good fps get 2 decent cards rather than 1 amazing one works miles better.

Originally Posted by hindle8907

woogie you on dayZ ?

Yeah... We have out own DayZ server but not sure what is going on with it atm.....

[L3nny]

Used to work for a games company and it put me right off PC gaming. You have to spend so much to get a decent rig to play the latest games and one day a game just won't work and no matter what you try it never will. Stick to the x-box and spend your money on other things. PS look in the manual for LOTRO. My name in the credits

PC Gaming

What you imagine you look like


The reality

[SoulKiss]

As well as Overclockers, check out www,yoyotech.co.uk