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gaming pc

Dan3290

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 29, 2005
Messages
179
I got about 1700$ to spend on a gaming pc and i need to know what companies are reliable and good deals
 
Hi Dan-

Is that $1700 for a desktop only or do you need monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers as well?
 
Also, do you have a preference for AMD or Intel? What types of games are you looking to play?
 
i would take a look at monarch and velocity micro. monarch seems to always have great deals and you can pick the exact parts you want.
 
keyboard speakers and a mice are of no importance seeing as i already have good enough of all three
Ive never actually looked at moniters because i dont know what are good prices for good moniters
Im looking to play games such as bf2, hl2, and games in that genre
 
Dan3290 said:
keyboard speakers and a mice are of no importance seeing as i already have good enough of all three
Ive never actually looked at moniters because i dont know what are good prices for good moniters
Im looking to play games such as bf2, hl2, and games in that genre
So that's $1700 for the box and a monitor? Do you know if you want an LCD or a CRT?
 
LCD for sure even though crt is alot cheaper i dont exactly have the room on my desk for a CRT monitor
 
OK, I'd take a look at:

ABS
Velocity Micro
PC Club
Maingear

Falcon Northwest's Talon line is nice but may not leave you with enough cashola for a monitor.

You should be able to get a killer rig from any of these other guys for ~$1300 and have enough for a nice 19" LCD.
 
Dan, I did plenty of research and went with an ABS system (about $1500). Once it arrives I'll let you know how it went. I'm sure they're all pretty good from the vendors Chris listed.
 
Chris_Morley said:
OK, I'd take a look at:

ABS
Velocity Micro
PC Club
Maingear

Falcon Northwest's Talon line is nice but may not leave you with enough cashola for a monitor.

You should be able to get a killer rig from any of these other guys for ~$1300 and have enough for a nice 19" LCD.


I've dealt with the first two, ABS and Velocity Micro. They are both very good.


 
i plan on eventually going for SLI so im wondering what graphics card would be the best investment for me to get now in the pc for the games i listed above that later i can get a 2nd. I was thinking either 7800gt or 6800gs whichever i can get a better price for and also do i want a wide screen monitor for a gaming pc or do i want say a 19 inch flat panel lcd. Also whats a good refresh speed for monitor in my cost range?
 
Dan3290 said:
i plan on eventually going for SLI so im wondering what graphics card would be the best investment for me to get now in the pc for the games i listed above that later i can get a 2nd. I was thinking either 7800gt or 6800gs whichever i can get a better price for and also do i want a wide screen monitor for a gaming pc or do i want say a 19 inch flat panel lcd. Also whats a good refresh speed for monitor in my cost range?
A Dell 2005FPW is a great widescreen, as is Gateway's 21" solution. The Dell you can get under $500, the Gateway I believe is $599.

I would go with the 7800GT if you can swing it.
 
I actually customized a pc on pc club with dual 7800 gt's and it came out to be around 1500 now i just gotta find out if i can come up with another 200 for a better monitor.
Also what do u guys think of the x cube on main gear??
and what do u guys think is better for gaming amd or intel?
 
Dan3290 said:
I actually customized a pc on pc club with dual 7800 gt's and it came out to be around 1500 now i just gotta find out if i can come up with another 200 for a better monitor.
Also what do u guys think of the x cube on main gear??
and what do u guys think is better for gaming amd or intel?
AMD is going to turn in faster frame rates for gaming at the moment. I think that's a good choice.

Haven't tested a Maingear X-Cube. Tested their Prelude, which should be published soon. We liked it a lot.

As to the PC Club and dual 7800GT's...make sure to get 2GB of RAM with that so you can enjoy high quality textures in BF2, without it you'll be paging the HDD a lot and even though you have the graphics power, you'd get a lot of stuttering...
 
can someone point me in the right direction as to what monitor company and which ones i should lookat and where to buy them?
 
You could try the Displays forum, but they'll tell you essentially the same thing that I'm going to tell you - all LCD's are good, brand is really pretty irrelevant.

Newegg has some awesome deals on LCD's. If you have a display refurbisher business around you, that's also a good way to cut your cost in half. Something I would NOT do is go into Best Buy or CompUSA and get a display.
 
i would have posted that in the displays forum but i thought id keep all my questions in 1 thread
I have a pc club store about 15 minutes from my house so i have a feeling im gonna go there and see what they can do for me
 
Dan3290 said:
i would have posted that in the displays forum but i thought id keep all my questions in 1 thread
I have a pc club store about 15 minutes from my house so i have a feeling im gonna go there and see what they can do for me
That's a good idea for displays. Got to your local PC Club and take a good look at their selection. Do the same with Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, etc...see what looks good to YOU. Although sometimes these places have them on an image degrading video splitter if they aren't each hooked up directly to a PC, you can still see image quality differences. Then find your best price and you're ready to go!
 
id try looking at ibuypower.com for a good computer for you. I am planning on buying a computer soon and i might get one from them. They sell dual core processors really cheap in their configurations.
 
i actually spent lots of time looking at ibuypower and at cyberpower but they both have bad reps on this forum and there is a pc club like 20-15 min from my house
 
I ordered my pc from ibuypower.com a while ago, it is supposed to be shipped tommorow. If you want, when I get it I will let you know how they are. Also on resellerratings.com it's rating is only like 6.94 or something.
 
i do have one concern with pc club
that is that on there site they do not list what companies they use for the video cards all it says is 7800 gt or 6800 gs without a brand.
They also do not list the brands for therir harddrives and they have limited case selection
I wanted to buy from monarch but they are still more expensive then pc club or abs
also i read on the news section here that microsoft will stop updating xp home for patches is that true and should i get xp professional?
 
Dan3290 said:
i do have one concern with pc club
that is that on there site they do not list what companies they use for the video cards all it says is 7800 gt or 6800 gs without a brand.
They also do not list the brands for therir harddrives and they have limited case selection
I wanted to buy from monarch but they are still more expensive then pc club or abs
also i read on the news section here that microsoft will stop updating xp home for patches is that true and should i get xp professional?
They are a Gigabyte company, for sure. Each PC we've evaluated used Gigabyte, and we were happy with the component selections. I can't remember what brand HDD they used but I would have remembered if it was something other than WD, Hitachi, or Maxtor...
 
I saw some positive review of ABS so thought I would post my negative one:

In August I ordered a system from ABS. A really nice system that cost ~2500. It is delivered a couple of weeks later. Looks good, has everything I ordered. Documentation was excellent, although inaccurate in 1 or 2 spots. Cabling pretty bad for a premium price PC with a hot CPU and SLI cards. But I can live with it.

Ok, the problems begin when I get a BSOD on the 2nd boot. I continue to get BSOD on about 50% of boots. Communications with outsourced tech support very time consuming and do not help at all. I do the usual: check memory, format and reinstall windows etc. to no avail. After about a week of messing around with it and continued conversations with tech support I call them up and ask to get a rebuild. They give me the RMA and I FedEx PC to Cali.

So, the get my PC 4 days later then 8 days after they receive my PC they credit me for a full refund. [Oh, I forgot to mention that Once I got the PC I took my other 2 PCs up to work cause we hired some new employees and needed them up there. So my home PC is now a P3 laptop with 96MB of RAM. LOL] So, I can't get anyone to call me back re the refund/rebuild issue but do get an email response 4 days later saying it was a mistake and they are overnighting me the rebuild that night.

I get 2nd PC and it won't even boot to windows. I find the problem: a busted SATA cable to one of the drives which has the system on it. An easily fixed problem, but now my confidence in ABS quality control, customer service, tech support and shipping methods is totally blown. I call em up and they give me an RMA for refund and waive their usual & customary restocking fee.

You might think that the saga is now over, but it isn't. About this time I get my credit card bill and pay it. So I have paid for the PC but I FedEx it back to Cali for a refund. They get my PC 4 days later according to FedEx tracking. After a week more and no email from ABS confirming receipt of my PC I call em up to see what the deal is. Guy says he will find out and call me back. 2 days go by. I send an email to customer service & I get the priceless reply: " Mr. XXXXX I have forwarded your message to the appropriate party and he may look into it and respond." He MAY look into it? That is xxxxing amazing.

I give the 'appropriate party' 2 days to contact me. He doesn't. So, I am not that confident this matter is going to be looked into so I call customer service again. Get a very empathetic guy on the phone who tells me that he will make sure his manager looks at it right after lunch and give me a call. I give him 2 days but I guess he died at that lunch and never calls me.

So, I pull some tricks and get a few email addresses of some higher ups at ABS and I send them an email that is similar to this post and one of them decides he will not stop until I get my money refunded. They find my RMA'd PC a day later and credit my card around a week after that after they figured out how to do that.

So, it was not the best consumer experience. My biggest complaint is customer service and communication. Maybe nothing will ever go wrong with your PC and you won't need to talk to customer service or tech support. If you do I hope you don't have what i experienced and get ABS (Always Better Service), although they are running loose with Always...
 
thx, but i think i may either get an abs or more likely a maingear thx to the amazing review of the prelude
 
vega123 said:
I saw some positive review of ABS so thought I would post my negative one:

Thanks for sharing. It's pretty surprising in light of how well Newegg does with customer service, and that we had a fairly positive experience in our evaluation. This was before we started doing RMA's as part of our evaluations, so we can't really comment on our experience there with the Mayhem.
 
I saw that CyberPower has a not so great rep on this forum. I just wanted to share my experience with them.

I bought a desktop through them on or around summer '02. Everything arrived in a reasonable amount of time. Everything was great except for the monitor. Now Im not sure, but it seemed as though the monitor was shipped directly from ViewSonic. Either that or cyberpower didn't open the box while they had it. Either way, I dont think it was CyberPowers fault. The monitor when it was turned on, shot sparks out the back. Faulty transistor or something. Anyways, I had a spare monitor and hooked up the case, everything was great. Not the best cabling job I've ever seen, but they were tie wrapped at least. I contacted them and told them about the monitor. They told me they would be shipping another one immediately and when I got the new one, a UPS shipping lable would be attached with it to ship the DOA one. Sure enough about 3-4 days later a new monitor shows up with the UPS label. Pretty good service for something that wasn't even thier fault IMO. All throughout the time I had the machine it worked beautifully. Hardware was very stable, even when I OC'd the proc. Granted I didn't OC it much, but still.

Since then I have bought (and am still using) a cyberpower laptop. I work over here in Kuwait and needed something mobile. I'm a pretty big fan of Dell laptops after seeing as many as I have over here, but thier performace machines are a little on the pricey side. So I decided to look at cyberpower again. Now I wasn't looking for a top of the line performance laptop, just a mid to high range. For the money, Cyberpower was pretty much the best choice. To this day, I haven't had 1 problem with this laptop. *knock on wood*


Just thought I would share my 2 cents.
 
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