@sathingtonwaltz said:
It's a well known fact that when you buy the ultra high tier parts, you're just not getting a good deal at all. I'd say the best price point for a powerful PC is around $700 max. Hell, you'd be surprised with what you can get for $500.
If you have an older PC and you just need to purchase a mobo, ram, cpu, and video card, then $700 will get you a great gaming PC. Yet if you are starting from scratch then there is no way you can build a decent gaming PC for under $700. Parts like a case, an operating system, gaming mouse, gaming keyboard, speakers, dvd drive, these all add up.
Lets just ballpark things here:
Monitor: $200
Case $60
OS: $100
Mouse: $60
Speakers: $50
Keyboard: $60
DVD drive: Optional but $40
Surge Protector: $25
Total: $605 not including taxes, shipping, or parts like a CPU, MOBO, Power Supply, Video Card, Ram, Hard Drive, any cables you might need, or a Wireless Network Adapter (tho there are some mobos that have Wireless built in, they are still rare and only on the premium boards). This is also a conservative estimate. Most gaming keyboards are actually $100, the $60 case is usually the shittiest case you can buy and you have to sacrifice both sound dampening, space, and air-flow to reach that price.
So if your budget is $700 that leaves you with $95 to spend on the rest of your PC. That is nowhere near enough to build a decent gaming PC.
Edit: I think that right now is the absolute worst time to build a PC. The new systems are out in less than a year and it looks like all the hardware manufacturers are holding off on releasing their new products because of this. There is going to be a MASSIVE jump up in gaming system requirements in a year and I do not have confidence that a gaming PC purchased now will hold up for a year.
Just look at all the rumored console specs for next gen. They both have hex-core processors (developers have been saying that next gen is more about CPU power than GPU power), and a GPU that is equivalent to a mid-high end part. Since PC's will always need double the power that consoles use to compete in performance (due to the fact that console games can be optimized for a single hardware spec) that means that the PC's of today will not be able to power next-gen console ports at the requirements you are asking for.
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