My friend is looking into buying a new gaming computer so he can run games like WoW and SCII on high settings. He has about $800 to spend.
He’s been looking at sites like:
iBUYPOWER: High Performance Custom Gaming Computers and Laptops
CyberPower PC. - Custom Built Gaming PC and Gaming Laptops
Are there any better deals out there? He wants to buy pre-built, and not build it himself. If you guys could recommend a specific rig, what I should be looking for, etc, would be great. Thanks.
No, convince him to build it. He can get a WAY better deal if he builds it. I have decent tech know-how, but I built my friend his computer a few months ago, and it worked perfectly first try. It’s as easy as putting together lego. It’s so simple. You just take the motherboard, and if it fits in a slot, put it in that slot. Don’t fry your motherboard with static electricity so discharge before handling, and other than that, it’s extremely simple. Almost everything, I just looked at the part I needed to put in the motherboard (like the video card), and looked at the ports, and found one that fit. That’s how simple it was. Anything you don’t know exactly (the case LED’s), can be found in manuals that come with the parts.
I think if you buy prebuilt, you’re just throwing away money, building computers nowadays is so easy, and you save a ton of cash, and you get exactly the parts you want.
There was an article on Kotaku today that might help you or your friend to find something:
He wants to buy it pre-built. I guess if you like throwing money away.
antec 300 case
4gb of ram
sli motherboard. (to be able to add another 460 gtx somewhere down the line.)
nvidia 460 gtx
intel core i5, or phenom 2 triple core or quad core (all these procs can over clock on air to around 3.6 and are stable.)
650-700 watt power supply
prebuilts are pretty good these days if you can find a good deal.
Slickdeals.net: The best coupons, deals and bargains to save you money!
this is a good site to find deals.
Pre-built = LOL. Seriously, where in an age where information can easily be gotten (i.e. how to build a PC, best places to buy parts, etc). Not to mention the amount of stores and their websites that sell individual parts have grown tremendously.
But yeah, convince him to actually build it himself. Building a PC is as simple as playing around with Legos, for the most part (not entirely, but I hope you get the idea).
As for config suggestions, meh, that’s where he can look up websites such as slickdeals and such. KrazyKoreanFrank already gave a decently spec’d PC that can run any of those games at the highest settings (I haven’t played WoW ever since I got my S4 Gladiator title, but I can tell you that my PC, which is definitely weaker than the one that KKF suggested, played WoW at the highest settings with a constant 60 FPS, with some dips here and there on raid bosses).
It’s better to built your own computer. Prebuilt often give some unnecessary part you don’t need & not properly built for gaming use.
Before doing any kind of overclock it’s better to get aftermarket heatsink & rams with heat spreader to avoid early death of the hardware.
Your friend is not going to get a good gaming computer for less then 1000 dollars, so like everyone else said, just have him build it.
Here’s the build I made your friend. This is (as you can see), under 800 dollars, and will run any game out right now at max settings. Anyone can agree with me that these are top of the line parts, and you’re getting a great deal building it yourself.
Edit: The pictures are hard to read when posted here, so just right click, and open to see the raw image so you can read it.
man you can build one for $700 or less with top notch parts. never pay any more then 1g for a pc.
build you one
I’m about to actually buy the parts and build the computer. Do these parts still apply or are they outdated?
What parts? I can’t see any list of parts you’ve posted, other than the original links to pre-builts.
Since you’ve first posted this thread the Radeon 6850 came out and at $180 it’s a steal, since it runs almost identically to the $240 GTX460 1G.
Assuming you’ll be gaming at 1900x1200, and already have an OS, here’s what I’d recommend as a good start. It’s got some very minor corner cutting to hit the price range, mostly sticking with an HIS GPU and a budget level case, but both would work fine. This config is about as good as you can get without hitting the diminishing returns curve. These are all newegg prices as of today, but you could probably get better deals by buying some of it from Amazon and using their free shipping over $25 (especially on the computer case).
LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS-324-98
$21.99
COOLER MASTER Centurion 541 RC-541-SKN1 Black Aluminum bezel, SECC chassis MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case
$54.99
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
$74.99
HIS H685F1GD Radeon HD 6850 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity
$179.99
CORSAIR Builder Series CMPSU-500CX 500W ATX12V v2.3 Active PFC Power Supply
$59.99
GeIL Value PLUS 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10660) Desktop Memory Model GVP34GB1333C9DC
$59.99
ASUS P7H55-M PRO LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
$94.99
Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80605I5760
$208.99
Subtotal: $755.92
Building your own is always going to be the cheap route. But if this is for someone who’s basically just a user, I normally recommend them to by pre-built just for the support. Unless it’s ok for you to be their forever tech support guy and help him/her on all problems then yeah build them one. Since the friend wants pre-built, it’s safe to assume that they’re the kind that would pay to have RAM upgraded.
If you go to newegg, I’m sure they have some combo deals (mobo+cpu+ram) with the OS included. Just gotta do the research! 
I was looking at the build SaikyoDan made, but I’ll scope yours out too crackbone. Thanks.
I’ve looked at the parts and modified it a bit. Are there any changes that need/should be made to this list?
Newegg.com - Rosewill Stallion Series RD500-2DB 500W ATX12V Power Supply
Newegg.com - ASUS P7H55-M PRO LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Stay away from Cyberpower. A long time ago when I took advantage on a sale they shipped me a non functioning computer and swapped out the parts because the sale price was too good to be true. They cheaped out and gave me a cheaper version of the motherboard I ordered missing firewire and less usb ports and a different no name power supply. Also they neglected to give me a customer service # required to even talk to support, so they refused to even talk to me at length, said they would transfer me and hung up on me.
For $600 last year, I was able to build a really good PC for gaming at 1920x1080.
Specs:
AMD Phenom x4 924 2.8ghz overclocked to 3.2ghz
6GB DDR3 ram
ATI 5770 Sapphire Juniper Extension
1TB HDD
550watt power supply
Acer 22" 1080p screen
Everything from the case, to the screen cost me under $600 from newegg last black friday. Might be possible to build something even better now that a year’s passed by and there’s better/cheaper technology.
I wouldnt buy from any of those companies listed, had bad experiences with them in the past. You can read horror stories online too. Usually they’re ok, but from many people I know who have bought from Ibuypower, they’ve had parts missing, or cables not even plugged in. Small modifications to get the PC running, but if you’re paying someone to build it, you want them to build it right.
I don’t see much of a reason to get a GTX460 1G when even after rebate you can get a Radeon 6850 for $10 less, but eh, whatever.
What I would say is don’t fucking cheap out on your Power Supply. It’s the only part of your system that can destroy all your other components. Rosewill does not make very good PSUs, and it’s not worth saving $40 to get a lesser unit. Corsair, Seasonic, PC Power and Cooling, and Antec Earthwatt brands are all very reliable, and they typically use known, consistent OEM parts in their units.