Hello everyone!

As Vinny reminds us every week, now is the best time to play video games, and I want to play some of these games on a PC. Here's the thing, I have never owned a gaming PC, I know next to nothing about PC parts and I cannot build one. It's just not an option. So I need your help to choose a prebuilt gaming PC. I'm open to any suggestions, but I have a few criteria:

• Budget: $1,000 maximum ;
• Must come with an OS ;
• I don't want a laptop ;
• Don't need any peripherals with it (as I already own a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse...)

Thanks in advance, duders!

While there are some okay prebuilt system manufacturers out there they are always quite a bit more expensive than a custom built system and while I know the odds are small maybe there is someone here who lives close to you that could give you a hand.

Anyway, the biggest thing I would tell my friends is to say away from AMD for a gaming system. Make sure the system has a 6th generation Intel i5 (Skylake) in it. (There is no need for an i7 and an i3 doesn't quite have enough juice for gaming). You want a minimum of 8GB of system memory though I prefer 16GB, my go to manufacturer is G-Skill. SSD's are great but when you're on a tight budget that money is better spent on either the CPU, motherboard or graphics card (GPU). DO NOT skimp on the power supply (PSU). You don't need anything massive, in most cases a 550w will do just fine but grabbing a 650w for a bit more wiggle room isn't the worst idea. My favorite PSU manufacturers are EVGA, Corsair and Seasonic. I tend to use either MSI or ASUS for my motherboards and greatly prefer nVidia to AMD for my video cards though nVidia does tend to be a bit more expensive but it's worth it in my opinion.

I threw this system together last month for a friend and while it's a bit over budget and she had a few specific requirements that likely don't apply to you it may be a good jumping off point to give you an idea of what you want in a new system. https://pcpartpicker.com/user/xGryfter/saved/#view=CvRsYJ .

That being said I don't know too much about other pre built PC companies but I've heard some good things about Cyberpower and I know Newegg has prebuilt systems.

I just built a PC for a cousin for around $1000 including the monitor. He got a 1060 and an i5. Also the build that xGryfter posted is not good at all.

Based on?

You're going to waste a ton of money buying prebuilt instead of putting the pieces together yourself. If you can plug things into other things you can build a computer, you don't even need to pick the parts out yourself anymore.

I bought one from Velocity Micro (http://www.velocitymicro.com) 6ish years ago that was well put together and never had any problems with it. I think I paid around 1100 for mine but not sure what they go for now. Again though, once I learned what actually goes into building a computer nowadays I wish I had just gone that route.

Its a shame you really dont want to build. But here's some good starting steps if you may be up for it.

$1200$662 These 2 builds are a good place too start out at if your looking for a decent PC build at around your price. Then use PC part picker to fill in the holes and make it more affordable for you. PC building looks hard and complicated. IMO, legos are harder to put together than a PC....

Look, if Terry Crews can build a PC.... anyone can!

IF you really can't build it yourself, for some reason. I'd go with CyberPower.

That link is again, higher than your max, but you can reduce it down some, or they have other PCs on the website that are within your price range.

Also you said you already have a monitor, but I would add that, depending on your monitor, the size, refresh rate, ect. can really make or break the experience. A good monitor would be necessary to get the full experience from a gaming PC.

Building pc's is fun! And you learn how to fix shit yourself. its not that hard anymore, gone are the days where you had to actually know anything about pc's to build one. There basically eletronic legos at this point and as long as you match the motherboard and cpu with the right ram its cake. Do some research and read some reviews and benchmarks, as others have said go with intel for gaming and dont skimp on the power supply, you will regret it.

Not gonna recommend parts as i haven't built in awhile and dont know what fits your budget off hand but if you have any questions on building it feel free to ask. Its only scary till you do one then its a blast. Also, most people dont use one but get a electrostatic discharge wristband, there like 5 bucks and are a good idea when handling any kind of electronics.

OK, so about this building part, I'll explain: I want to build a PC. That's scary, but I'm sure Gunpla is harder than this. I can't build a PC because it will be a birthday gift from my parents, who are people who don't know anything about PCs. I don't want to bother them by giving them a wishlist of ideal parts. I can't ask for the money, because that's not something we do. So that's the deal.

After a little searching, here are some builds that have caught my eye. Are they good or am I really out to lunch? I don't care about playing in 4K resolution. I just want my games to look good at 1080p and run at a good framerate.

Lenovo Ideacentre Y700-34ISH

• €999
• 8 GB of RAM
• Intel Core i5 6500 3.2Ghz
• Geforce GTX970 4GB

Medion Akoya P5214F - C089

• €899.99
• Intel Core i5 6400 2.7 Ghz
• Nvidia GeForce GTX970 4GB
• 8GB DDR3 1600 (1x8GB)

Vibox Gravity 7

• €959.95

• AMD FX 8350 Eight 8-Core CPU Processor (4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo))

• Nvidia Geforce GTX 970 4GB

• 16GB DDR3 1600MHz

@linkorius: I would look higher than that. Based on your details, I'm going to quote prices from Amazon France (because €) about what sort of system you can get if you just want a case full of parts.

Megaport PC Gamer:

• €999
• AMD FX-8320E 8 x 3.2GHz ( 8 x 4.0 GHz en mode Turbo)
• 16GB DDR3-DDR 1600 MHz
• Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
• Windows 10 Professionnel 64 Bit
• GeForce GTX1070 8GB
• Coolermaster Silent 600 Watt
• Zalman Z9 U3 case
• DVD & WiFi (don't know if you care for the latter - it's a nice freebie)

I would then tell you to not buy that system because the AMD CPU is not perfect for gaming. It's not the worst CPU in the world but even trying to feed a GTX770 then it lags behind a modern Intel i5.

If you're spending a decent percentage of this package on a really nice GPU (and the GTX1070 is the really nice GPU that will give several years of pushing for the best* 1080p scene you can get) then you deserve to match it with a nice i5.

Megaport High End PC Gamer:

• €1059
• Intel Core i5-6500 4 x 3.2 GHz (3.6 GHz en mode Turbo)
• 16GB DDR4-SDRAM 2133 MHz
• Asus H110M Plus
• Windows 10 Professionnel 64 Bit
• GeForce GTX1070 8GB
• Corsair 550 Watt
• Corsair Carbide 01 case
• DVD & WiFi

Now that, that is a system that'll make anyone envious. That's a top end gaming system. It's slightly over €1000 but you're getting so much more. A CPU that really feeds that GPU (here graphs are for model that's 100MHz faster but almost the same when running at stock speeds).

* If the game doesn't support decent anti-aliasing then that may be via doing DSR and resampling down a 1440p internal resolution (what I did for No Man's Sky on my GTX1070). For old games then render DSR to 4K and downsample to 1080p for amazing image quality - some games call this SSAA. You want a lovely stable image, you want something people can confuse for offline-rendered CGI. You don't want aliasing artefacts flickering the edge of every object in a scene and making thin objects vanish every other frame. A GTX1070 isn't overkill for 1080p, it's a great match for 1080p that'll ensure you can keep those settings on high/ultra for a while, even as games start being ported from the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio in the coming years. It means you can keep targeting 60fps rather than having to pick between nice visuals and dropping to 30fps or cranking down core visual settings.

I've never bought a prebuilt PC and I cannot give recommendations there but I can tell you that building your own PC is not as hard as it sounds. I knew next to nothing when I built my first PC in 2003. I just asked people on message boards and managed it. And these days it is even easier with youtube showing you how to do it and they have taken away the pins on the CPUs that could deatroy it if you did wrong. I understand if you just want to buy one ready but that means getting less for your money, getting crapware on your PC that is preinstalled, getting less than optimal products, usually last gen video cards and CPUs that are not overclockable and not the best quality motherboards or power supply units. usually they are cheap on RAM as well despite the low price on RAM these days with most of them having just 8GB. I would not get less than 16GB today, games are starting to want more than 8GB.

@linkorius: Buying a PC is a bad idea. With that out of the way, here's how to make it less of a bad idea:

1) Get something with a 6xxx i5/i7 CPU in it. Since we're trying to save money, an i5 is the way to go. Don't get an AMD CPU.

2) Get something with at least a GTX 1060 in it. Or the AMD equivalent if you prefer, but my money's on the 1060/70. 9xx parts are last generation's model, avoid them if you can.

3) Get something with at least 8GB of RAM in it.

4) Get something with a SSD in it.

5) Get something with a standard sized power supply, so if you eventually give PC building/upgrading a shot, you aren't screwed if you need to replace the PSU when you step up to more powerful parts.

All of that should be doable under $1000 US...in the US. You Europe types are on your own for figuring out where to source this stuff, as my usual stores (Newegg, etc) may not be available in your region, and pricing may vary.

@mirado: Euro types means add ~20% local sales tax to all prices. Other than that it's usually about the same for computer parts (and so any pre-built that's not price gouging) compared to US online prices.

I agree the build should have an SSD, but I really can't see it with prebuilts due to how they focus on only a few things for the advertising sticker. It's also the easiest (and quite cheap) thing to tweak after you get the system. Throw in a 250-500GB SSD in there and rebuild the OS drive to it (if you get a Samsung then some come with a USB cable and software to do a live migration). Job's done for €80-150 (850 EVO) or slightly more budget oriented with €70-125 for 250-500GB. Also means you've got the TB+ drive that came with the system to act as a large media drive for audio/RAW image/video content so you don't need to waste expensive SSD space on stuff that doesn't need fast access times.

I'd say, for this €1000 price tag you can demand 16GB of RAM. It's getting to the point where games are saying they want 16GB for enabling the good settings and that's only going to be more common with time.

Also you can just about scrap a GTX1070 on this budget. I think that's a good move. If you're buying something with an RX 480 8GB or GTX1060 then I would expect to pay well under €900 for the system.

If you're willing to spend a grand just build your own, man.

Looking at Amazon, tower cases in 800-1000$ price range:

Best option: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IW58VU0/

+Best specs out of all listed products, pretty good for the price.

-Looks hella trashy

-Some random brand, make sure to read terms of warranty carefully.

Second best: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01B96MO20/

+Looks less trashy

+From major brand with established customer support (for troubleshooting/warranty)

-Performance-wise, it's slower. Expect ~10% lower gaming performance.

Lenovo, Dell, HP and such ruled out because many of their models use custom parts and they're basically disposable computers, cannot be upgraded.

If you are in the US I'd build you one and ship it to you but mine is a small business so I don't get the shipping discounts these big guys do and shipping can be insanely expensive as PCs aren't the lightest or smallest of things.

EDIT: Wow I somehow missed a bunch of posts. @shivoa found a good build, that Megaport high end PC gamer is pretty solid, probably the best you are going to do in your price range. if you can squeeze out that extra 60 you'd be in a great shape. You could also see if Megaport has their own website and if they do more custom builds to get the price down a bit. They also offer a 2 year warranty which isn't too shabby.

@xgryfter: That's very nice of you, but unfortunately I'm in France. Thanks for the offer though.

Ok, so let's say I was able to build my own PC. Using the same criteria than those in the OP, what parts should I look at buying? This is all hypothetical. I guess I'm asking what's the best custom build with an OS for €1,000. Show me your magic!

I'll see if I can put a list together for you with French pricing.

You can buy a Windows 10 Pro key from these sites for cheap prices:

https://www.kinguin.net/category/19429/windows-10-professional-oem-key/

https://www.dealscube.com/listing/windows-10-pro-oem-1pc/22181

I bought mine last week and it has been working fine. Download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and put Windows onto a USB drive, then install Windows with the key you buy.

I was going to try and use my laptop's OEM key but the keys from these sites are so cheap I bought a new one.

Since you live in France, you also have the option of having your PC built by certain retailers ; in general they take a 30-40€ fee on top of the individual parts.

That's a decent compromise between the built and pre-built, as you still have to pick the parts yourself.

I've purchased from two retailers which offer this service and they've both been alright. I'm not sure if it's okay to mention em here though?

@linkorius I have to be honest, the price for that mega port is looking pretty damn good about now. I put this together

http://fr.pcpartpicker.com/user/xGryfter/saved/#view=4pmGXL

and while it's the same price as the Megaport build the Megaport has a better video card and more ram. My build has a better power supply, motherboard and RAM but even if I matched the parts one to one I don't know if I could beat their price using PC part picker and I just don't have the time to search various French retailers for the best prices. If you can find better prices localy for the parts on my list to bring it down to under 1k then you'd be in good shape but if not I'm thinking you should go with the Megaport system. It's a solid build and you get a complete system warranty and it'll be an easier purchase for you.

@jasoncooke: Is there any difference between Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Home edition?

@Kolh: Send me a PM with the names/locations of these retailers and I'll see if it's an option ;)

Do you guys think the Megaport build is upgradable?

The differences are related to power users and those setting up networks, I would get the Home if it's significantly cheaper

I thought windows 10 was free?

It was a free upgrade but that ended now. I read online you can install the trial version forever and use that with minimal differences.

@poveren: The upgrade from Windows 7/8.1 to 10 was free. You have to buy a new license for a new PC.

hmm, I'm still using Win7 and love it. Is there even a reason to upgrade? (sorry for highjacking the thread for a second)

@poveren: They're very similar. I think Windows 10 boots slightly faster than 7 but that could just be me. The interface is a bit more streamlined, you get Cortana (wich I don't use), and you can customize your start menu. Other than that, it's basically 7.

@poveren: DX12 is exclusive to Windows 10, which is the big difference from a PC gaming standpoint. While most games utilizing Direct X will still support for previous versions, eventually some might not. It's probably not a big deal, but you also potentially lose some graphical bells and whistles from that nice new GPU if you can't run the newest APIs.

@poveren:
-Windows 10 is a far more efficient and a better optimized OS than 7.
-DirectX 12.
-More features geared towards gamers (if you care about that sort of thing).
-better parity with Xbox if you're an Xbox owner.
-Xbox Play Anywhere is great if you don't own an Xbox and are interested in playing upcoming Microsoft exclusives.

Given that all the parts they use are off the shelf components I would say yes, upgrading should be the same as if you built it yourself. Thankfully that machine should last you quite a few years.

Avoid AMD hardware, especially CPU's. I had an Fx-8350 for a couple years and when I upgraded motherboard to z97 and CPU to i7-4790k I noticed a MASSIVE increase in frame rate with the same GPU's. Seriously, Dying Light with 2x GTX 770's in SLI with the FX processor got 35-55 FPS (at 1080p). With the 4790k, that number jumped to 60-90 FPS. Intel is just superior.

For higher end 1080p gaming look for machines that have a core i5 and a minimum of a GTX 1060. There is absolutely no reason to waste money on the Nvidia 900 series. A GTX 970 is slower than a GTX 1060, cost the same, and only has 3.5GB of high bandwidth video memory. Also, AMD gear requires more power for less performance, although the only show in town for 1080/60 is the RX480, I wouldn't even consider other models. As for 1440p, you should go GTX 1070/1080.

Ok guys, I finally found a French equivalent to PCpartspicker and I made a custom list of components for ~€1280 but I have no idea what I'm doing! Can you guys look at this list and tell me if I'm doing something horribly wrong? Am I overspending? So many questions!

• Case: Zalman Z3 Plus white
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H
• CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 (3.2 GHz) (does it come with a fan? Is it good?)
• GPU: Inno3D iChill GeForce GTX 1070 X3
• RAM: HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2x 8GB) 2133 MHz CL14
• SSD: SanDisk SSD PLUS TLC 240 GB
• HDD: WD Blue Desktop 1 TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB
• PSU: FSP RAIDER S550 550W 80PLUS Silver
• Optical Drive: LG GH24NSD1
• Windows 10 Home 64Bits

Is this rig going to work? Also, do I really need a 1070 for 1080p gaming? Isn't a GTX 1060 OC (6GB) enough? That'd be nice, since it'd cut ~€100 bucks off the total price. ANd finally, stupid question, but do I need to buy SATA cables for my drives or do they come with the SSDs/HDDs?

Thanks in advance!

It does, and it should suffice. It's probably not the best, but I can't imagine it's going to hurt your CPU if Intel is bundling it in and expecting you to use it. The i5 6600K doesn't come with a fan, fwiw.

I don't see why it wouldn't. Maybe check clearance in the case for that video card? It's a pretty big card.

The first thing I'd throw more money at is the PSU, you want something 80+ Gold rated and well-reviewed if you can afford it. I might also think about spending more on the motherboard, you've picked out a H110 board which is probably fine but might lack in connectivity options? I don't know, I advise trying to make a list of all the things you might want to connect to your rig and checking to make sure the board can support it all simultaneously. It can be a little technical checking all this, but it's worth understanding and you can ask here if you can't figure it out yourself.

The 1070 comes with Gears 4 whereas the 1060 doesn't, if that influences your decision-making.

It seems like the 1070 runs just about everything at 1440p60 at max settings, which is probably overkill for you but games are only going to get more decadent with their system resource utilization in the next few years, some games ship poorly optimized and a beefier card can allow you to fight that (I think you'll find that cards with 8GB of memory get around the performance issues with Arkham Knight for example?), and you might want an ultra HD monitor or three-monitor gaming setup or something silly like that in the future, so the 1070 gives you some headroom I guess. Headroom + Gears 4 is basically why I got a 1070, apparently the main game I play (KI) will run on a toaster.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a 1060 would also be good. I don't know, hopefully someone else can give an opinion.

Not a stupid question at all. I think you'll find that the motherboard will come with two SATA3 cables, but I don't know for sure.

OK. The GPU fits in this case. I've switched the motherboard to a MSI Z170-A PRO and the PSU to a 80+ Gold. Turns out, it didn't make anything cheaper.

Another question: when in a case description, they say something like

That means that I don't need to buy 3.5" sledges, right? They're already included in the case? Is a bay just a space where you put sledges or is it another word for sledge?

@linkorius: Not sure what a sledge is... but the case will come with those cages and hardware to screw the hard drives into those slots.

But, it sounds like that case has 1 3.5" bay on the case. In the past, a disk drive would go in there. Now, you could put a card reader in there or something.

The five hidden 3.5" bays are inside the case. That's where your hard drives are going to go. Sounds like the case is including a bracket that lets you mount two 2.5" drives in a 3.5" bay. (Since it's just a cage with rails in it for the smaller drive to sit.)

I'd suggest going with an aftermarket heatsink. The coolermaster 212 is cheap. I only bring this up because I find the stock intel heatsinks are a pain in the ass to install. They're held in by little plastic push pins and they always would pop up on me. Maybe they fixed it from earlier models, but yeah. They used to suck.

The 1060 might be good for today, at 1080p, but down the road, you'll need to start turning down bells and whistles sooner than you would a 1070. By the time a mid-tier card starts to feel outdated, the next step up is going to start to feel outdated too. Also, not all 1070's come with Gears. I believe Amazon was removed from the Gears promotion. :( (Like, a day before I got my 1070...)

@zelyre: By sledge I mean brackets/cages that go into the bay. I saw that word used on a website when doing some research.

Is the stock i5 6500 heatsink that bad? I've read contradicting reports on that.

In that case i would upgrade to the 6600k instead, only thing is you will absolutely need a cooler for it the K versions don't come with it BUT a simple overclock to 4.2ghz should be easy and give you good boost to performance. Need to sacrifice something for extra cash? I think 8gb of ram is still viable (what i use) or get a slightly smaller ssd for your OS install. Either way you can always upgrade later for a lot cheaper than a cpu upgrade if you need one down the line.

I don't really plan on overclocking for now, it's my first PC, I'm doing this one step at a time: first I build it, then I'll give overclocking a thought.

So here's the build as it stands right now. It'll cost at most €1220, but that's only if I buy everything through Amazon (and let me tell you that GPUs are about $100 cheaper in the US than in France, you're damn lucky), but I have found other retailers for some parts so I can shave a good €50-70 off the total price.

http://fr.pcpartpicker.com/user/Linkorius/saved/LDvnQ7

I don't think it's a bad heatsink for its purpose. You don't need some crazy metal monster if you can't overclock. (You can't change the multiplier on the non-K series Intel CPUS and you need to change it to do any real overclocking.)

I think it's bad because it uses plastic push pins to keep it in place. There's a fair bit of pressure there and the one time I tried to use a stock cooler on my girlfriend's PC, I got frustrated after a half hour of the pins just popping out that I drove to Microcenter and bought the 212.

You can get a 1070 on your budget, but only if you intend to play games at 1440p resolution. A 1070 is overkill for 1080p, unless you need a stable 144 frame rate and high detail. A 1060 is plenty good for 1080p at 60 fps, and you can get playable performance at 1440p as well, if you compromise on quality.

You will of course get GoW4 for free with the 1070, so if you intend on getting that game anyway, you'll "save" €60 on the 1070.

Since you're building it yourself, you could see if you get some good deals. I just got a really good deal on a 1080, and there should be a lot of discounts thrown around in November and December, not to mention clearance sales in January.