Inexpensive Gaming PC - like $500

[Julian]

My wife is tired of kicking my daughter off her PC and wants me to get her an inexpensive gaming PC....ideally in the $500 ish range.

I've looked at:

Never heard of this machine:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypow...blue/4575222.p?id=1219770997272&skuId=4575222

The Alienware is more expensive, but higher specs too...
http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-alpha/pd?oc=dkcwa06hw10&model_id=alienware-alpha

It has been a long time since I was into gaming....built my own machine etc....I just don't have time for that....and she doesn't need a high end machine!

Someone on here must just have gone through this themselves....???

 

[veedubtek]

I always build em. I've just lingered away from researching and piecing together. Newegg (and other sites I'm sure) sell complete packages, you just assemble em. Just put together a new work PC a few weeks back, $400 with 16gb ram and a good SSD (and large HDD).

 

[Bruce]

What games does she play? Emma is enjoying learning to code and playing Minecraft on a $100 Kano.

 

[Julian]

She is playing SIMS4 right now and got spoiled using our monster Dell XPS 8700. I waxed our old desktop and tried to get it to run Win7 (which is the min OS for SIMS4) and it wasn't compatible, and it was dog slow anyway.....

I don't mind buying a reasonable machine...just wondered if anyone had researched this to save me some time!

 

[Bruce]

Perhaps take a look at http://techbargains.com I have found some great deals there in the past. I only buy Macs and quad core or larger servers now so my recent experience is limited.

 

[waterboy]

@Julian my girls have played SIMS for a while now. Be careful with budget machines as that program is a hog. Especially key, I have found, is to have a good video driver in the system. If you can find a budget system with a separate video driver you may be OK. My experience that the "built in" video stuff is too slow for SIMS. Check out the specs. I wish you luck...

My disclaimer though is that it has been a few years since I looked at it and I claim to be IT support at home only.

 

[billyb]

Alienware used to be the gold standard...until they were purchased by dell.

I purchase a new pc from here and could not have be happier: http://www.cyberpowerpc.com

Everything is ala carte...so it's a bit more expensive, but you also get everything you want.

 

[Speedling]

I game 10x more than I post or browse this forum. That's a lot.
I run one of the first dual core processors from AMD and the best graphics card that my 450 watt power supply let me.
It's like a 6 year old setup, seriously, and I still play most of the latest games, just not in as high res as I would like. (actually looked it up, my processor is now 7-8 years old...)
I build my setups myself and KNOW that cyberpower and the like are DECENT, but overpriced most the time if you shop stuff yourself. Then again, they test and tune it and it comes with a small warranty so you have some peace of mind. I've put systems together that had a bad part and had to chase it down and figure it out which is a royal PITA.

BTW, Speedling is a unit from a RTS game called Starcraft that I play. Played in High school actually, and now they have Starcraft 2 which is also super awesome.

Your first link from best buy which is actually from ibuypower (another cyberpowerpc type) is ok, but I believe that video is integrated, even though they say 2gb dedicated. Sometimes they mean that 2 of your 8 gb is dedicated to the memory card only. This means instead of the card running the memory, and having video specific memory, you have the processor running things back and forth for the video card. It's just not ideal if that is the case. They call it dedicated, which can be ambiguous.

The AMD FX series processors in it, however, are better than the i3 from intel. One could make a good argument that the i5's are better for gaming or vice versa, but I think the i3 loses this battle. I personally like AMD because they aren't the big Intel corp. Back in the day, and even now, they give a great processor for great price point. They won't be the best or fastest, but they are always close behind and have awesome pricing on their stuff.

I agree with the SSD option. My age old computer loads games sOOOOO much faster than my friends with disk drives. Even my little brother, who upgrades his computer like every 6 months but keeps the old stupid disk drive. I laugh when my AMD Athlon x2 7500 Black (OC'd to 2.9 ghz, released in 2008 FYI) 2 gb ddr2 ram, Intel SSD, and an ATI Radeon 5750 loads up faster than 90% of the people I play against on many games.

Get SSD
Get good Video
Done

 

[Julian]

The ibuypower has the following dedicated graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 with 2 GB of RAM, which is why I thought it looked like a good deal. Moving up to SSD costs more and the primary benefit is boot up time and game save/load times. I don't mind her waiting a little for that! LOL I'm also fine with adding that later if she wants to make some money and pay for it!

 

[msavold]

@Julian - I know you said you don't want to slap something together but I always enjoy seeing what this guy throws together and for how much $.
http://www.hardware-revolution.com/...ing-pc-international-shipping-september-2015/

He also looks at/sources complete boxes... FWIW, take a look at #4 on his list:
http://www.hardware-revolution.com/...phones-tablets-printers-january-19th/#Desktop
Specs not as good as the ibuypower and on-board graphics (vs a $68 video card from Newegg mind you...) but certainly good enough to run the Sims and you're about $200 ahead. Buys monitor and SSD.

 

[Big Shasta]

Why not just buy your wife a cheap laptop. If her computer power needs are less and the current desktop meets the gaming needs, this would be the cheaper way to go. You can get a dell laptop for under 500 that will email/web/word process just fine.

you can easily spend over 500.00 just for the video board in a good gaming computer.

 

[mark_m]

Why not just buy your wife a cheap laptop. If her computer power needs are less and the current desktop meets the gaming needs, this would be the cheaper way to go. You can get a dell laptop for under 500 that will email/web/word process just fine.

you can easily spend over 500.00 just for the video board in a good gaming computer.

Or snag a chrome book on the cheap!