[SoupWizard]

If you live in the US. ask a local comp store "if they assemble a pc?"
if so for reasonable price then.
go to newegg/amazon/ebay and buy all the parts you need.
once you have all your part together, take it to the shop and leave with a A+ PC for half the price.
 
But there a lot of benefits of building your own pc.
 
I always suggest people to go with a i5 xxxxk  processor, for overclocking later on.

 

[genclaymore]

yea you do get your money worth if you built one your self. Also the local comp store might charge a lot to put that computer today. But if you do it your self Read the manuals and take your time. If you get  upset, take a break and go back and work on it.

 

[cheuh]

+1 to building your own. You can easily build a beastly PC with 3k or less.

 

[mirari]

razer laptop is nice but very expensive for what you are getting

 

[MegaMushroom]

If you do build... I'd recommend an AMD build.  Intel has gotten a bit silly with their pricing on mid-upper range products. 

 

[Parall3l]

Quote:

If you do build... I'd recommend an AMD build.  Intel has gotten a bit silly with their pricing on mid-upper range products. 

I'm going to have to disagree here. 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=288

 

[NamelessPFG]

I don't really think an LGA1155 Core i5 setup is all that out-of-line with pricing, given that a Core 2 Quad with a decent motherboard cost at least $50 more overall five years ago.
 
That said, prices could be more competitive if AMD could regain their Athlon/Athlon XP/Athlon 64 glory days again. They really stuck it to Intel back then as they were fumbling around with the NetBurst/Pentium 4 architecture, and I recall prices in the $800-1,000 range for the Athlon 64 FX CPUs because they knew they had Intel soundly beat.
 
But ever since their attempt at countering Core 2 with Phenom, they just can't catch up. Phenom II was a decent effort, but Intel still had a lead, and now AMD's latest can't even consistently outperform the older Phenom IIs. It's like Pentium 4 Northwood vs. Prescott all over again!

 

[MegaMushroom]

Quote:

I'm going to have to disagree here. 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=288

 
If power is what you are looking for I won't argue the Intel chips, but since the era of my i7-860.... They appear to have gotten much more expensive.  For 3 grand I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Intel, but for a sub 1000 build.  I would recommend taking a serious look at AMD.  To be honest I wish I'd waited a bit before building my rig.  I really didn't expect the 1156 socket to die out so fast. 

 

[genclaymore]

IF the person who's building the comp lives in the USA and lives near a micro center. Then it be easy to do, since micro center has combo deals for allot of intel cpus, as well AMD cpus.

 

[BaudlyDamage]

Man, just build it. It's pretty easy and you'll learn a lot. 

 

[ryangork]

[size=11pt]I'm hoping you guys can help me out cause I'm a newbie to pc gaming and I have no idea what to purchase but I need to get a monitor. I've been looking around everywhere and I finally found this website that has reviews http://www.pcitup.com/ [/size][size=11pt]and I'm considering the asus monitor that I found on that site but I was hoping some of you might be able to tell me how asus products work with pc gaming and if it's a good way to go, if not I would appreciate some suggestions of trusted brands for pc gaming?[/size]

 

[chewy4]

Yeah, Asus is a good brand. The Asus monitor on that page looks like it would be great for gaming, but I'm personally willing to sacrifice a few ms of latency for IPS(Asus has one for like $180).

 

[Audioscope]

I have a pretty beastly laptop with quad core i7 that I bought. The only problem is that the graphics card is no good.

Although I am not a hardcore gamer, I still would like to play some newer games on good graphic settings. Games like Bioshock Infinite come to mind.

What's the sweet spot in terms of specs and price these days? What spec do you guys recommend? And, how long can I reasonably use a PC for games these days before needing to upgrade?

 

[Magnum26]

Build your own for 3k you could have everything you need.
 
i7-3770k
8GB DDR3 1866Mhz
Motherboard doesn't matter which one any 1155 is fine
GTX Titan / GTX680 if you want to save money
2 x 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD for boot
2TB Baracudda HDD for games programs etc
Case up to you (Define R4 is my favourite)
Any PLS or IPS monitor most are around the £300-500
 
Change spare to give to me. 

 

[Niteblooded]

1. i5 2500k - $200 ($20 till the 28th, then back to $220)
2. GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-D3H - $125 (after rebate)
3. EVGA GTX 670 - $370 (after rebate)
4. CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) - $65
5. Noctua NH-D14 - $90 (if you want to overclock ...otherwise $25-30 for a cheaper cooler)
6. SAMSUNG 840 Pro - $140 (boot drive for windows and most used applications and games)
7. Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB - $100 (too lazy to see what additional savings code does - Storage drive)

 
$1090
 
Better quality parts than you will get from Alienware and will kick the snot out of it in performance.  I could probably do better but its lunch time so only had 10min to look up parts.  You could save money easily by buying an HD7950.  It is the best bang for your buck graphics card at the moment.  I just prefer the GTX 670, especially since it takes care of PhysX and I like their drivers better.  No savings on memory at the moment, usually I wait for savings on mem.  Also, there are better deals on SSDs all the time, but that is a solid SSD.  And definitely can knock down the price if you don't plan on overclocking - go to a non-K 2500 and pick Hyper 212+ cooler instead.
 
I hang out at a PC forum in addition to this one and help people pick parts their upcoming builds.