Build or buy prebuilt?

N

NIZMOZ

2[H]4U
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I sold my i7-7700k gaming system 4 months ago and got myself a 2017 MBP 15". It's a great laptop, its not what I expected. Using it as a replacement for my gaming rig (I don't play much any more though), has been okay, but the OS I feel so limited in vs Windows and High Sierra hasn't been exactly stable (reinstall twice in 3 months).

So, with the crazy high prices of video cards and memory, I am unsure of building one is still a wise choice? Or should I get another laptop and use a dock with it for my 34" ultrawide dell curved monitor like a Surface Book 2? Or have a prebuilt gaming system done? And should we go Intel or Ryzen?!

Lots of questions, just very confusing to make a decision these days. Let me know your thoughts. Budget will be around $3k.
 
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Buy. At least as of a few weeks ago. Unless mining has curbed significantly since then. It’s hard to find anything much less pay anything close to msrp.

If I were to buy today, I’d buy a laptop. that’s just me because I couldn’t afford a good laptop and desktop.

If anyone I know asks, I suggest buying a prebuilt or custom until the craziness calms or manufactures catch up.
 
SticKx911 said:
Buy. At least as of a few weeks ago. Unless mining has curbed significantly since then. It’s hard to find anything much less pay anything close to msrp.

If I were to buy today, I’d buy a laptop. that’s just me because I couldn’t afford a good laptop and desktop.

If anyone I know asks, I suggest buying a prebuilt or custom until the craziness calms or manufactures catch up.
Click to expand...

Any recommendations on what to look at and what brands? Needs to be reliable, good brand, and pretty good hardware.

Also, if laptop, would need to have a dock with external monitor compatibility.
 
I ordered the Dell XPS 8930. Fully decked out. For that 17% off it was a no brainer. For $2200 w/tax. I been building systems all weekend and they are way more than that for basically the same hardware. The power supply is a little weak, but at least its a standard size and I can swap it out. I compared building systems everywhere and they are just way more money right now. So this was just a better buy. My ThinkPad T460s will do for my laptop and my iPad Pro.


Windows 10 Placemat
Dell USB Mouse
Dell KB216 Wired Multi-Media Keyboard English Black
Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2
Integrated with WAVE MAXXAudio Pro
BDRE Drive (Reads and Writes to Blu-Ray disks)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1080 with 8GB GDDR5X Graphics Memory
512GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD + 2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
XPS 8930, Special Edition Chassis (460W)
32GB Quad Channel DDR4 at 2666MHz (4x8GB)
Windows 10 Pro (64bit) English
8th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K 6-Core Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.7 GHz)
4 year Premium Support
 
I canceled that Dell .I didn't feel good about it after reading on it. So now what to do. More research I guess. I'm not sure how to get around those insane video card prices though.
 
Ryzen loves fast ram and fast ram isn’t cheap. At least before the meltdown/spectar debacle, intel was the single thread ipc king.

If you’re going to want more threads available (for a reasonable price): amd
If you want to be able to upgrade your cpu without upgrading everything else: amd

If neither of those conditions appeal directly to you, I would suggest intel.
 
SticKx911 said:
Ryzen loves fast ram and fast ram isn’t cheap. At least before the meltdown/spectar debacle, intel was the single thread ipc king.

If you’re going to want more threads available (for a reasonable price): amd
If you want to be able to upgrade your cpu without upgrading everything else: amd

If neither of those conditions appeal directly to you, I would suggest intel.
Click to expand...

AMD allows you to upgrade the cpu without replacing the motherboard? Didn't know that!
 
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