New Gaming Comp: Build or Buy?

[Jorge10]

I bought mine semi assembled from ebay. It had the motherboard/power supply/processor and thats about it. I put in the rest. It worked out all right as its been almost 3 years and I still use it, but I wouldnt recommend it. My original power supply fried and I had to replace it. I also was unable to ask questions while assembling it, which is something I had never done before. Overall it was way cheaper of course, but still not that great. My friend bought a computer at the exact same time as me from ebay and it fried already so that sucked. He doesnt know what is wrong with it because it just stopped working. He assembled it sure, but how can he know what part is fried? I was able to find out that my power supply was fried because I took it to best buy and one of the geek squad guys was nice enough to let me try one of the power supplies they had there.

If you build and something goes wrong its pretty much over. Also the ebay stuff is just soo damn sketchy. When I got my comp everything about it seemed odd. The power supply was garbage and the motherboard and processor were decent because I bought the comp that had the better ones, but they still screwed me somehow.

Cliff Notes: Ebay sucks for comps.

[yasher]

Build it!

Building a computer is simple, fun, and you can get so much more bang for your buck. Seems e6600s are all the rage right now [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Keep in mind, you do need to be willing to troubleshoot it yourself, if you go this route, and patience is gonna be a virtue... but it's really a lot of fun, especially if you decide you care to overclock it.

There's a whole lot of information out there on building machines. Anandtech has guides and forums that have great info. Xtremesystems does too. This guide is a step-by-step, photo-guided tutorial about how to build a computer from the bottom up.

I haven't bought a computer in years and years. Building them is where its at.

Also, Supreme Commander is awesome.

[OneTwoThreeROBOT]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I've decided to build, partly for the savings, partly for the experience, and partly because I can pay a friend to help me do the stuff I'm uncomfortable with (installing the CPU, installing the cooling system, configuring BIOS).

For those of you who build, what kind of cooling system do you have, and how important is it?

[gusmahler]

If you don't overclock, the standard cooler (the one that comes with the retail processor) should work fine because the newer Intels run a lot cooler than the older ones did.

[Khaos4k]

The CPU, really? All you have to do is drop it in the socket. Not even push, literally drop. If it doesn't fit, you're doing it wrong. Hardware is easy. It's a round hole/round peg, square hole/square peg mechanism. Software is the tricky part.

[OneTwoThreeROBOT]

mwave.com

I just found a new website for buying parts. I like it bc it's slightly cheaper than newegg, and I can pick up the parts locally instead of paying for shipping.

Has anyone had experience with mwave.com? Any good or bad reviews?

[SBR]

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Definitely build your own if you can. Have you checked out the special PC makers like Alienware and Vodoo? They might be a little more expensive but they much better then Dell.

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Never heard of Vodoo, but Alienware has been owned by Dell for quite a while.

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And Vodoo was recently bought by HP however they are still separate entities and still make (relatively) high quality computers.

Falcon Northwest is probably the best independent high end PC manufacturer now. That being said all 3 of these companies are over priced and not worth the money. Build your own or get a dell if you don't know how.

[drexah]

build. 100% build. newegg.com

[astroglide]

buy a dell and upgrade discrete components like video at newegg. here is an example of dell beating a newegg build on price.

that deal is 6+ months old. more recently you could pick up a dual core athlon 3800+/1GB/160GB w/vista for $420 including shipping.