HELP ME! First time PC buyer.

[The_R3d_Fury]

Hi Guys! I usually game on my mac - CoD, Borderlands and Starcraft mostly - but I'm sick of waiting for mac ports and I'm sick of not being able to play Visual Novels.

I was thinking of picking up an alienware laptop, but then realised that for less money I could get myself a nice, powerful desktop. I like a portable gaming machine, but honestly I'm thinking of getting a desktop. I'm sick of the low upgradeability of laptops.

I'm torn between computers. I've considered getting an alienware desktop, but have heard people saying that you pay for the brand, that the rigs themselves aren't actually that great.

I hear that fatal1ty uses Orion PCs, so that sort of influenced me.

Hear's the thing: I need a good gaming rig for $2000, but preferably less. Around $1800 maybe. I also live in Australia, so if I need to order it online it has to be an Aussie site.

I don't care what brand it is, as long as it can run games without all the lag.

I also need to know how to connect it to the internet - my laptop is wireless and I live in a wireless household. I've never had a desktop before - how does it connect?

 

[SlaveNumber23]

First of all, don't bother with Alienware, you are just paying a whole lot more for the brand name and a rather cool looking case. http://www.msy.com.au/ are great and have very cheap prices, they can put together a rig for you without you even having to build it yourself for a good price.

MSY do this 'Gamer pack' thing shown here http://www.msy.com.au/SYSTEMS/INTELAMD-GAMERENTERTAINMENT1.pdf where you basically pick what CPU you want, you get a bunch of good standard gear and you can pick optional extras if you want to put some more money into it. The best part is they put it together for you, you don't have to bother with the hassle of building it yourself. They have a few other of these pack type things but that one seems to be the best for your price range.

I honestly have never used wireless on my desktop before but I believe you can buy a USB wireless receiver to plug into your desktop that will just connect to your router wirelessly.

The $1750 Intel Core i7 3930K 3.20/3.80Ghz seems like a good choice for how much money you wanted to spend, you will be able to play games on high settings just fine with the hardware that comes with it. I also noticed that it comes with a wireless network card so I assume your desktop will be able to connect wirelessly to your internet the same way a laptop is able to.

 

[The_R3d_Fury]

snip

Thanks so much, man! You have no idea how much this has helped me.

 

[The_R3d_Fury]

I just checked the site out. How does it work? It is not user friendly

How do I use it?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The $1750 Intel Core i7 3930K 3.20/3.80Ghz seems like a good choice for how much money you wanted to spend, you will be able to play games on high settings just fine with the hardware that comes with it.

I'd recommend the $1290 i5 3570K. Not losing anything in gaming performance and saving near $500 that could be put towards upgrading to a much better GPU card and a larger monitor.

 

[Evil Smurf]

As a Mac user myself I can tell you that you can install windows along side OSX using bootcamp or Virtual Box

 

[SlaveNumber23]

The $1750 Intel Core i7 3930K 3.20/3.80Ghz seems like a good choice for how much money you wanted to spend, you will be able to play games on high settings just fine with the hardware that comes with it.

I'd recommend the $1290 i5 3570K. Not losing anything in gaming performance and saving near $500 that could be put towards upgrading to a much better GPU card and a larger monitor.

I can't argue with this, its a great option too.

I just checked the site out. How does it work? It is not user friendly

How do I use it?

Haha yeah they really have one of the worst websites I've ever encountered. Click on the 'system price list' button and it will bring up a list of all those packages that they put together for you. Just print off the pdf of the one you want and take it into one of their stores and be like "yeah I want this package with this cpu and these upgrades" etc. Their homepage lists all their stores at the bottom of the page. I don't think you can order one of the packages online, you have to go into one of the stores as depending what upgrades you get they might have to change something, for example when I ordered mine they needed to install a better power supply to accommodate the upgrades I chose. Hope this clears things up!

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Of course, if you don't mind having to buy peripherals seperately, pccasegear.com.au have some decent systems available. Their website wasn't made by a spack-handed monkey, either.

 

[Azorian]

I also need to know how to connect it to the internet - my laptop is wireless and I live in a wireless household. I've never had a desktop before - how does it connect?

Go to your favorite hardware component site, find the networking section, then browse wireless adapter PCI cards (you can get PCI or PCIe wireless cards depending on which expansion slots you have available). Pop it into a PCI slot and you're good to go, connect the same way you would on a laptop. You could also get little USB adapter dongles, but I don't really trust those. Better performance and better range on the internal expansion slot ones, IMO.

 

[Hazy992]

You know for that price you could build yourself a really good desktop and still have money left over to buy a laptop with some half decent graphics performance.

 

[perkl]

A couple notes:

Intel i5 3570 is the best gaming processor for the money (there may be a couple edge cases, chess being one of them). Get that. Don't get the boxed fan: upgrade to some sort of aftermarket cooling. I would recommend Coolermaster products. You don't need to spend a lot of money, but you want a 120mm fan to make the damn thing quiet.

For the time being I'd get Geforce GPU, if for nothing else than their better drivers.

Budget for 2 monitors right off the bat. While 1 is enough for gaming, 2 is luxurious and once you've used it for a month you'll have a hard time getting back to just one screen. Besides, it's cheap since the secondary monitor can be just about anything.

Get a good keyboard and mouse. You only get one pair of wrists.