Calling upon the PC gods for help

After five years I believe it is time to upgrade. Now my questions are,1) do I walk into best buy/future shop pick up a decent gaming desktop that will last me another 2-3 years and upgrade that a long the way?

2) Screw them and build my own PC right now?

Budget: 700-800$ (looking to get a dual monitor set up)

In case you were wondering I got a iMac five years back for school purposes and was not into PC gaming. Now everything has changed and I regret my choice back yet.

If you want a mid-range gaming PC with two mintors for $700 you'll have to build it yourself.

Best Buy has an Asus desktop with 8GB or RAM and an i5 for $600 and the monitors are going to run you $150-$200 each. Then you'll still need to get a GPU... so like, another $200?

I'd try tigerdirect and see if there are any bundles on sale.

get a custom one built for you off a site like origin. there are multiple companies out there that do this kind of work, and it'll get you a lot more bang for your buck than buying something from a big box.

Option 2. If you aren't knowledgeable about PC components, try to google something like "build my own gaming pc for 800$" and find sites that will do these articles of which components to buy. The will normally do 3 or 4 different PC specs based on various price range. You can probably find a dozen of these written in 2013, if not more.

As a PC builder I'm always going to recommend building your own rig as oppose to buying pre-made. Unless you live in a country that really screws you over the cost of parts (e.g. Australia), going the DIY route will always save you money.

If you want to get a dual monitor set up, you are going to have to cut some corners. You will probably have to go with low end monitors on top of doing a very budget-minded build. Here is a decent $500 budget build. That is priced in USD; I'm not sure whether the cost goes up and down due to current conversion and regional price differences. When it comes to monitors, you should probably go with dual 22" screens. The Asus VE228H would be good for the money.

Sorry kid, if you are trying to buy monitors and a decent pc for $700, you're going to end up with a honk of shit.

Also, why do you need 2 monitors? Personally I've got the option sitting in front of me, but the majority of the time i only use one. You simply don't need 2 unless you're doing serious video or photo editing, and with a $500 pc, you can't do that either. If its to stroke some E-Peen, do that by buying a better machine, not having 2 low res monitors (because thats all youll be able to get, and if you can afford to get a gpu that can even be effective in the rest of the $450 budget thats left, youll have about a pentium 4 processor. Not worth)

@kadash299 said:

I kind of couldn't disagree with this more. My switch to two monitors was fantastic, and I feel so constrained being stuck with one when I have to be now. Having another screen to have a browser open, or video playing, or just chat windows and whatnot while in a game (especially an MMO) is just great.

Dead right on the budget not really comfortably fitting two monitors though.