OMG, none of my Overwatch streamers were on late yesterday so I spent the last half of the day watching more PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds than I usually do. Wikipedia says they don’t expect the Xbox timed exclusive to begin until late 2017 which means the game wont be coming to PS4 until, at best, mid-2018 or at worst early 2019.
I have no place for a dedicated desktop computer and monitor set-up in the house but I do have room for something like the Alienware so I could continue to couch game. I spent a bit of time yesterday looking through them and am not sure which one to get. I like the form factor of the Steam Machine or the Alpha for the console look. I would primarily use the system for gaming in the living room but might be able to stretch the budget for an actual PC that the kids could use for homework and whatnot but I wouldn’t mind being able to just easily move it into the teenagers room if I could because he will be a pain in the ass about doing his HW in the living room.
So… does anyone have any advice on the Alienware machines for what I want to do? Ideally I would still be gaming with either the Steam Controller or if I can hook a PS4 controller up stick with that scheme. I’d probably get a wireless keyboard and mouse just so I could begin learning how to use them to game though I’d stick with the controller more I’d wager.
AAlpha R2 is only recommended if you plug in an external gpu. Everything about that line is outdated garbage now. Plugging in a mediocre 960m gpu at this stage is a laugh.
Your better bet would be building your own pc or maybe snagging an okay laptop…like this Best Buy Dell HERE. Has an IPS screen, an okay amount of storage/ram (both expandable via the bottom access panel).
1050 Ti is not the best, and I’d still recommend a 1060 for anything 1080p related. But for your needs a 1050 Ti hits 60 fps at epic settings in Overwatch, and hits 60-ish fps in Battlegrounds at medium.
For bigger AAA stuff like witcher, deus ex, prey the 1050 ti isn’t that great - not Uber settings - so just know that up front.
If you’re still set on a set top box Asus has a $1250-1300 ROG Core desktop with a Nvidia 1070 inside. Zotac makes a line of liquid cooled solid state orientated Magnus line of set top boxes with Nvidia 980/1060/1070/1080 boxes but you have to supply your own ram and ssd’s (prices increase with gpu power).
My laptop died and instead of paying $200 to fix it I may just bite the bullet on a desktop and make room in the house.
A friend bought a comp from this guy on Ebay. Are any of these worth a damn or are they old parts that are too cheap to mess with? I saw some reviews from 2015 that says he is using crap motherboards and bad power supply choices but I have no idea what any of the alphabet soup in the listings mean.
They put good nvidia cards in laptops now, could probably get a solid one for 1300.
Prebuilt towers in the mail kinda scares me. If something gets rattled out of place, you’ll end up popping everything out and putting it back in. At that rate, you might as well learn to put one together yourself. It’s fairly simple for anyone with basic tech awareness if you are aware of electrical and static issues.
A[quote name=“Dalyn” url=“/community/t/159448/laptop-died-repair-or-go-full-gaming-desktop#post_4427496”]Will buying a full blown gaming desktop convince you to start Destiny 2 over again and join our clan? If so I vote gaming desktop.[/quote]
Oh, I will probably go ahead and play it on the computer just so I can be part of this raid that may never happen.
AFrom MMO-Champion.com’s “Build of the Month” page: Here are four lists of components for gaming rigs for four different budgets. With builds like these, you can be assured that the parts are all compatible. The motherboard won’t refuse to talk to the CPU chip because the number of pins isn’t the same. If need be, you can even bookmark the list and get the components one at a time for your budget’s sake, assembling them when you have them all. That’s what I did, when I wanted to get a new PC in order to switch from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Alienware’s going to have the same shit, with their brand logo and a significant markup. You can have a baller gaming rig without getting robbed, if you’re willing to insert tab A into slot B yourself.
AThis was in 2008, but it stuck with me. A buddy of mine had an Alienware laptop he had just bought. The power supply dies, but they had just decided to discontinue that type of PSU, so they wouldn’t replace it. I think he was stuck with a dead laptop until he found an expensive PSU from a 3rd party.
Cyberpower also has pretty good pre-built and endlessly customizable units, with prices starting around $600 for a decent gaming rig up to however deep your pockets go. They build it your way, to your specs, and make sure everything works before they ship it to you.
Or use that great list Reasor linked to and hit up New Egg and the other good online joints and put it together yourself.
Damn good options here. My own rig is pretty similar to the ‘Dolphin’ one and I can run mostly anything with no problems whatsoever.
Alternatively, you can try the build a pc subreddit they often got some good choices there.
Getting a new desktop would probably be best cause I’m guessing you don’t know what killed the laptop. And in my experience as soon as one part of a laptop goes, the rest are not far behind.
ADiagnostics on laptop came back motherboard. Local PC shop has it and that’s where I got the $200 quote. $150 for the specific board and $50 labor.
Some conversation with the guy said they have a basic build that is about $1200. They said they could build a PC the guy would “build for his mom” for around $850. Data transfer from my laptop would be included if they build for me and I think he said all builds come with a year of support and various look-ins if I needed any optimization. I think… I might be wrong about that but I think that’s what he said.
Do you have the specs for that basic build? That can help us see if they’re taking you for a ride (not saying they are but it always helps to be safe).
Yeah, if it was the motherboard I think getting a new one might be in your best interest. And the best thing about a Desktop is how easy it is to replace parts that go. Whereas a laptop you basically have to disassemble the entire thing to replace pretty much anything.
So I believe I may have found a desktop. Codename and Dalyn think it seems to be a good deal for everything involved. A review on 10/20/17 said this is what they gleaned to be actually in the case
And the pros and cons for them personally:
I don’t think I will be overclocking CPU or RAM at any time soon and while he says there is no room to add a 2nd GPU for SLI, another review says
Which I found out yesterday is another “name” for SLI? The Newegg page for that motherboard says the following:
BUT, I don’t feel like for what I want to do and my lack of PC gaming skills, I will be adding a 2nd video card for performance anytime soon? So the CONS listed above don’t seem to apply to me.
That’s very close to the 1070 desktop I had built last year for about £1300 ($1800 at today’s rates), except your processor above is faster than mine (i5-7600k).
Can’t help you with the SLI question, but I would say that the GeForce software generally recommends (and I play at, regardless) the ultra/whatever highest settings are called on all the games I own, including Witcher 3 (including Hairworks!), the latest AC and Batman games, Skyrim Remastered and Elite. I don’t know whether I have the most graphically intensive or processor intensive games in my library, I doubt it, but I still get the impression I have a lot of headroom before I need to worry about toning down settings unreasonably.
So, for what my tuppence ha’penny is worth, that looks like a decent deal for a very handy PC. Have you tried going on partpicker or something and seeing how much the PC is being marked up compared to building it yourself? I paid about £150 for the PC builder I ordered it from to build it and for their 3 year warranty over the cost of buying the parts and building it myself.
As someone who runs SLi because he has mental issues not because it’s required, I say go with the best singular GPU you can afford. SLi is not really supported much. DirectX 12 actually makes games worse on SLI so DirectX 11 is the end of it, even if it is supported (until Microsoft fixes DX12). Crossfire is AMD’s version of SLi, no one does that shit.
I run air cooling on my PC but I have a full size case and fans galore, so I don’t have any airflow problems, but neither do I overclock. I used to mess with that back in the day but nowadays I just want stuff to run cool. So that’s not a deal breaker.
To me it looks the goods.
I always say price up the parts or similar parts on PC parts picker and see how much they all come to. Sometimes you can save a dollar or 2 or upgrade the CPU/GPU for a less or a dollar or 2 more.