Hey GB Community,
Writing with a question, hopefully someone can help me out.
My wife and I have been a Mac-only household for probably 6 years now. I gave away my last Windows machine to a friend upon buying my current (aging) Macbook. I've been a 99% console gamer since.
Now, my wife is taking part in a game creation workshop/incubator thing and we're thinking of picking up a Windows machine since many of the game-building tools that it's best to learn on are Windows-only. To be clear, I'm not looking for a monster gaming PC here. I'm quite happy remaining a console-primary gaming household. But if there's something cheap and simple that I could augment us with, something that could run those building tools, and maybe play the occasional steam game (Telltale stuff well, Civ 4 or 5, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress), I would be happy.
Since we're also looking to supplement our aging Macbook and Mac Mini with a tablet (iPad) to take over couch-based web-surfing duties, I don't want to spend much on a Windows rig - let's say $500 tops. If we could hit a sub-$400 mark too, that'd be fantastic.
In 2 minutes of surfing Best Buy, I've found something like this.
Again, no monster, I know, and I'd probably add a graphics card. I do have some experience buliding machines, but mostly second-hand (I watched and learned while someone built my last 2 PCs, plus I've done whatever user-serviceable stuff you can do on a Mac - hard drive replacement, RAM, etc), so I don't exactly want to have to build from scratch.
Are there any pre-built rigs at any retailers that anyone can recommend? Can a basic one like I've linked above be improved meaningfully through video cards, etc?
Basically, what does the knowledgeable Giant Bomb community recommend?
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