Trying to decide on a gaming computer. Hardware pros, can you help?

So, I've decided to finally take the plunge and pick up a good gaming computer, but I am really not sure what I should be looking for or what companies I should consider buying from. I know I don't want to make it myself with parts even though it would be more cost-effective, but I'd rather pay a little more and get it pre-made.

The one I am considering is from Doghouse Systems. It is the Armor TL. It is roughly $2,500. The specs are:

Fourth Generation (Haswell) Intel Core i7 4770K Unlocked Quad-Core Processor (Featuring Intel Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading Technologies) (Factory overclocked to 4.4GHz Max Turbo Frequency)
Corsair H80i closed-loop water-cooled CPU cooler
8 GB Kingston PnP DDR3 1600 Memory (2 x 4GB DIMMs)
1050W Corsair Modular Power Supply (80-PLUS Gold Certified)
One 1 TB 7,200 RPM WD Black Edition SATA Drive
Single EVGA GeForce GTX 770 video card (3GB GDDR5 SDRAM)
48 Hour burn in and stress test at factory
3 Year Parts and Labor Warranty

Is this a good setup? Is it quality and is the price ok? Or, is this a rip off and can I find better? Thanks all.

Does that come with a monitor?

If not that seems extremely expensive for what you're getting (which is good) as people have built about the same for around $1500. Unless I'm mistaken.

I don't think it does. This is why I need help. Stop me from being ripped off please.

It's a good setup, and the price is high but that's normal for a boutique builder like Doghouse. There's a couple of things that gets you. One, Doghouse will generally go all out on case layout. They'll hide cables as well as they can probably be hidden. It will be a very clean build.

Second, you'll get a three year warranty, and Doghouse's service department has gotten nothing but high praise from everything I've heard and read. There's some peace of mind there.

But... that peace of mind with the warranty and the clean build will cost you about $1,000 extra. You can get the same hardware yourself for much less if you do the build, or alternately you can go to a less reliable builder like iBuypower. I configured an almost identical system, component wise, on their site for right around $1500. That's including all their "pro wiring" options which is basically just cable routing/hiding.

The tradeoff is in the warranty and customer service. I've heard a few horror stories here and there, and have read a review or two of systems they've built where their "pro wiring job" isn't actually very good. They don't stand up very well compared to Doghouse.

There are other boutique builders like Maingear and Origin PC, but there's always going to be some balance between the hit on your wallet and the quality of the build and customer service you receive.

*Just to check out my own post, I built out another similar rig on OriginPC. $2400 with a three year warranty.

You could also save a bit by going down to an i5 processor. Almost all games are going to tax your graphics card far more than the processor.

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

Also ironsidecomputers.com is a reliable builder where you can pretty much customize anything you want. Check out their youtube channel...if you pay a little extra they makes video showing you all the individual components.

I just built a pretty good machine with similar goals for a little over half of that cost.

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/DSGamer/saved/3wqB

Chose an i5 because it was recommended as being good enough. With with a slightly cheaper closed-loop water cooler. Used existing SATA platter drives and a GeForce GTX 770 with 4GB of RAM. Took me around 6 hours to build after working a 16 hour day. That was my first build in 5 or 6 years.

Having gone through that I would absolutely build it myself again. The GWJers who haunt the "help me build a PC" thread are super nice. PC Part Picker makes finding compatible parts easy. And the machine absolutely screams compared to anything I've ever owned.

It's been a while since I've done a build but unless you have plans of adding a second video card at some point I'm pretty sure 1050W is overkill there

Gumbie wrote:

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

Also ironsidecomputers.com is a reliable builder where you can pretty much customize anything you want. Check out their youtube channel...if you pay a little extra they makes video showing you all the individual components.

I just checked and a similar build there runs about $1700. If their warranty/customer service is good, it's 3 years just like Doghouse. Even if they won't do quite as refined a job on the build (which they might, I don't know) that's still much better pricing.

The builds they show on youtube certainly look fine.

krev82 wrote:

It's been a while since I've done a build but unless you have plans of adding a third or fourth video card at some point I'm pretty sure 1050W is overkill there

ftfy

krev82 wrote:

It's been a while since I've done a build but unless you have plans of adding a second video card at some point I'm pretty sure 1050W is overkill there

It's overkill even if you're adding another videocard.

I'm on two GTX 770's, three HD's, two SSD's, etc, on a good 750 watt unit from XFX and it's never so much as hiccuped.

For most of my adult life I have been gaming off of a Mac laptop and a console. Currently I have a six year old laptop and a PS4, and I'm thinking that I might need to change my situation up soon, hence the reviving of this long dead thread. I'm considering getting a gaming PC.

I tend to play RPGs and Strategy games, so I don't necessarily need all of the power in the world, but after watching my laptop struggle mightily to play Stellaris on its lowest setting, I think I'd love to have something with some juice.

I'm debating either getting a gaming laptop (because I do play at work on my lunch breaks quite a bit) or a tower with some kick. If I go laptop, it can't be exclusively gaming as I'll need it for internet and work. As a result, I lean tower, and I was wondering if anyone had any general advice on where to look and what to get. I'm not sure what my price range is yet, or even how much stuff costs nowadays (its been awhile, as you can probably tell by the fact that my laptop was leaving its prime at the start of the second Obama term.) I'm looking for something that could comfortable play PC games on decent settings. Ideally it will be relatively affordable. Any thoughts or avenues of research would be much appreciated! Thanks all.

Harpo - I'm mostly in the same boat as you. For the past few years, my "rig" has been a 2011-era laptop with no graphics card. My new shiny desktop is in the process of being built.

Where I wanted a laptop 5 years ago, so I wouldn't be physically tethered to one place, now I want a desktop because in the age of streaming, physical tethering itself is an outdated concept.

My desktop is going to live in my basement office. The laptop will continue to live in the upstairs office (i.e. a desk in the corner of the living room), and will basically be a dumb terminal for the beast in the basement. Toss a Steam Link into the equation, and I'm basically equipped for screaming CPU bandwidth wherever I am in the house. I was also buying with VR in mind a little bit down the road, which skewed my choices towards the more expensive end of the spectrum.

Sure, it doesn't solve your issue of gaming at work, but that was my approach.

For what it's worth, my mid-high end desktop from digitalstorm.com came in at a little over $2300. Core i7, GTX 1070, 32Gb RAM, 2 TB HDD + 480 GB SSD.

Spoiler:

Cue people telling me how much money I could have saved by building it myself. Cue me telling them I would happily pay double to not have to build, then subsequently fail to get working, my own machine.

It does get old any time you ask about buying a PC when people imply you're an idiot for not building it yourself.

Harpo you may want to check in over here: https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/...

My wife recently got this laptop and it's been working great so far:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-...

There's the requisite tweaking of power settings and removing of HP software to go through, but it's been handling Civ 6, Sims 4, and SimCity (2013) like a champ.

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Thanks for the input so far! Going to check out the thread!

Jonman wrote:

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JeremyK wrote:

It does get old any time you ask about buying a PC when people imply you're an idiot for not building it yourself.

I'd be an idiot to try.

I haven't a clue how to do it.

What I suspect would happen would be I would try and follow a step-by-step set of instructions I found on the internet, with no real understanding of why each step is happening. Then the first time something doesn't go as planned, I have no idea how to troubleshoot and fix it. It's a recipe for an immense amount of frustration, and quite probably wasting a bunch of money when I break sh*t in the process of trying to build it. At worst, I've set fire to a 4-figure sum of money in exchange for a bucket of components that I can't get working.

For me, the certified non-idiot approach is to pay out of the ass for someone else to build it.

I'd be an idiot to work on my car. The toilet started acting up, we didn't hesitate to call a plumber, we know our limits.

But, PCs are built to be user serviceable. Yes there are complex rigs that I'd be hesitant to fiddle with, and I don't do water cooled. But the vast majority of PCs? I'd be unplugging the power and removing the side without any qualms.

Yes, PCs are a bit complicated. But they are designed to be plug in and power up, in most cases. Actually, in pretty much all cases a new PC builder would have to handle. The worst part would be figuring out what parts to buy in the first place, and there is a ton of guides and forums out there to help with just that. And its even easier than when I started working with them...man, really? Over 30 years ago... woah. Ya, Youtube videos can show you exactly what to do, what to expect to see, and if you don't see it, then you can just put down the parts and go hit the GWJ tech forums.

Me, I use my PC waaaaay too much, the significant other can fall back to her laptop if her desktop dies, but that's not really an option for me. The thought of having to wait for a tech to schedule an appointment, diagnose the issues, order the parts, actually get the right parts, get them installed tested and running and get my baby back to me... Ick. Makes my skin crawl.

I find messing with the hardware and software fun, I enjoy knowing I can fix or at least diagnose the bulk of the problems my home network has. But if it is not fun to you, and you have a quick, dependable and accessible tech on speed dial, eh, why not. Whatever works for you.

Annnd the thread is a bit of a necro, I have to wonder how the rig and vendor worked out for the original poster, clb1013.

JeremyK wrote:

It does get old any time you ask about buying a PC when people imply you're an idiot for not building it yourself.

Has someone done that in this thread?

Closest I see is Lt's post directly above but he's not really saying that, he's just offering a perspective.

I thought this thread was rather good about pre-built advice but maybe I'm missing something.

A bit of a cross-post, but I snagged a new PC yesterday myself after being in a similar dilemma when my PC died a couple of weeks ago. My gaming is relegated to Steam backlog and Blizzard titles these days, but I'm really interested in both VR and Star Citizen which this purchase positions me well for.

I don't have the time or willingness to build these days myself and until yesterday had not purchased a gaming rig last since 2008. Dell's running a decent sale on Alienware rigs, which I sprung for as I additional Dell bucks saved up from a prior transaction.

$1199 isn't bad for the specs on a pre-built (i7-6700, 16GB Ram, 1TB SATA HDD, 1070 GTX) if you don't mind the uber gamer aesthetic, and especially if you already have a decent monitor/keyboard/mouse setup. I'll throw in a 256GB SSD from my old rig for the OS. They have better models at higher price points, but only the Alienware Auroras are 25% off.

Good luck!

Thin_J wrote:
JeremyK wrote:

It does get old any time you ask about buying a PC when people imply you're an idiot for not building it yourself.

Has someone done that in this thread?

Closest I see is Lt's post directly above but he's not really saying that, he's just offering a perspective.

I thought this thread was rather good about pre-built advice but maybe I'm missing something.

It's a general theme, everywhere, and not just on GWJ. I understand why it's a thing and around here, at least, people generally stop after the first time you tell them "not an option for me". That I've seen, anyway.

Prices are better and better for high quality rigs these days compared to what you would by yourself but it still remains true that the Power Supply is usually what they scrimp on with pre-builds. Also, I know next to nothing, so trust someone else like Malor or GameGuru when it comes to that stuff.

LtWarHound wrote:

Yes, PCs are a bit complicated. But they are designed to be plug in and power up, in most cases. Actually, in pretty much all cases a new PC builder would have to handle. The worst part would be figuring out what parts to buy in the first place, and there is a ton of guides and forums out there to help with just that.

Yeah, figuring out what to buy is a pain. I will post a caveat though, if anyone is building a new rig for the first time in a while like I was 6 years ago: the plastic pins on my CPU cooler were a bit ill-fitting and didn't sit in the motherboard well and I damn near cracked the motherboard slotting them in. Scary as hell but it needed that extra force to lock in. Every other part of it was as plug and play as you can imagine.

And to answer Harpo's original necro question:

Slick Deals

Amazon

Newegg

All these links are to towers, laptops are probably just a click away. Unfortunately any shopping you do will depend on the same parts knowledge that hampers building a PC yourself. Tom's Hardware and HWBench will help give you an idea if you want to compare part to part but unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to avoid having to look at it part by part.

I'm a big fan of custom builders. I got a gaming laptop years ago from Pro-Star and just this past Sunday I bought a new desktop from IBuyPower.com. They're great for letting you pick the parts but doing all the annoying work for you.

Jolly Bill wrote:

And to answer Harpo's original necro question:

Slick Deals

Amazon

Newegg

All these links are to towers, laptops are probably just a click away. Unfortunately any shopping you do will depend on the same parts knowledge that hampers building a PC yourself. Tom's Hardware and HWBench will help give you an idea if you want to compare part to part but unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to avoid having to look at it part by part.

That last link there goes to an under $600 rig. That seems remarkably affordable - is it missing anything (I imagine monitor being sold seperately) or inferior spec-wise? What's the down side there?

I confess I know pretty much next to nothing when it comes to hardware, so I appreciate all of you fine people in the know sharing answers to my probably painfully obvious questions!

Thin_J wrote:
JeremyK wrote:

It does get old any time you ask about buying a PC when people imply you're an idiot for not building it yourself.

Has someone done that in this thread?

Closest I see is Lt's post directly above but he's not really saying that, he's just offering a perspective.

I thought this thread was rather good about pre-built advice but maybe I'm missing something.

No, it was just a general response to Jonman's comment behind spoiler tags. It's annoying and happens a lot. I wasn't expecting it to happen in here though(and it didn't).

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:
Jolly Bill wrote:

And to answer Harpo's original necro question:

Slick Deals

Amazon

Newegg

All these links are to towers, laptops are probably just a click away. Unfortunately any shopping you do will depend on the same parts knowledge that hampers building a PC yourself. Tom's Hardware and HWBench will help give you an idea if you want to compare part to part but unfortunately there's not a lot you can do to avoid having to look at it part by part.

That last link there goes to an under $600 rig. That seems remarkably affordable - is it missing anything (I imagine monitor being sold seperately) or inferior spec-wise? What's the down side there?

I confess I know pretty much next to nothing when it comes to hardware, so I appreciate all of you fine people in the know sharing answers to my probably painfully obvious questions! :)

It appears to have integrated (motherboard based) graphics chips. Which are generally much less powerful than separate video cards.

Look here, it's worth at least a look. Ibuypower.com

The desktop in the last link is missing a graphics card (it has intel built in graphics, yuck).

However, if I was going to go with pre-built that is exactly how I would do it. Find the most other guts (i7, 8-16GB RAM [RAM is cheap now], 500+ psu, and hopefully more than 1TB hdd) for a reasonable price and then purchase a separate GPU.
The key with the separate gpu is make sure the pre-built has a decent psu. Dell likes to cut corners there and stick a 230-350w crappo psu. Also make sure the case will fit a gpu. If it is a slim case, or has a crazy vertical expansion slot(s) then you can run into trouble or at least it will significantly limit your options.

I have seen a handful of i7 systems in the $699 range that seem to have good guts but lack a gpu.

JeremyK wrote:

No, it was just a general response to Jonman's comment behind spoiler tags. It's annoying and happens a lot. I wasn't expecting it to happen in here though(and it didn't).

Cool. Buying pre-built is sort of anathema to me personally, but for a variety of reasons that don't apply to many or even most. I try to remember that now whenever it comes up.

I think for most people that just want what they really need and nothing else they can be fine especially if you shop around and see who gives the best balance of price and warranty coverage and all that for the hardware you want.

And it's good to focus on builders that tell you what parts they're actually putting in. I've seen a few $4000 plus rigs with absolute trash $50 power supplies in them that will pop at the slightest electrical fluctuation and fry the whole rig when they go. As someone mentioned above... be wary on the power supply. It's a common gotcha piece.

The only time pre-built rigs get truly kind of offensive though is when you start looking at higher end configurations with more drives, extra videocards, etc. Last time I priced my current PC out on a few pre-built sites out of curiosity it ran just over $5000 on most of them. I went through my receipts and found that to be a slightly over $3000 premium over my actual hardware costs. If you're just loaded with disposable income and actively don't want to learn anything about computers, sure, have at it. I wish I had that brand of freedom myself.

But if you're comfortable doing your own basic tech support and don't absolutely need that multi year warranty to feel OK... I gotta make at least one attempt at trying to save someone a few thousand dollars, you know?