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Wanting a new gaming computer..


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So, I've had my eye on a computer I've been wanting. It's a little pricey and I wanted to get some opinions on the system before buying it. I mostly want to know if it will make a good gaming computer and if it would allow to to run the highest graphics and whatnot. (Specifically for Skyrim and Fallout) I know little about this sort of thing. *sweat*

 

Anyway, here are the specs:

 

 

Processor: AMD Vishera FX-8320 Octa-core

Hard Drive: 2TB

System Ram: 16GB (Would prefer 32GB, but that's a bit more expensive)

 

 

FX-8320 8-core CPU & AMD R7 250 graphics

3.50GHz (up to 4.0GHz via Turbo boost), 8MB L3 Cache

16GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory

AMD Radeon R7 250 Graphics
With 2GB dedicated video memory

 

Worth it or not?


 

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Not worth it, terrible graphics card and slow cpu. The latest intel chips are being locked down because there really is no competition. Find some slightly older stuff like sandy bridge or even an old x58 off craigslist or some other place for cheap then get a new psu and video card for it. I still use my gigabyte X58A-OC board with a 970 overclocked to 4ghz. I bought a watercooler all in one thing for $50 and haven't had any problems with leaks or condensation for years now... knock on wood.

 

I get by with an amd HD7950 video card 3gb but I wouldn't recommend it for you. Get something faster like a 290x or something as close to a gtx970 as possible. All the new stuff since 2011 has just been incremental increases anyway and you are stuck at 60fps with beth games so super duper video cards are not required unless you wanna go 4k or some exotic resolution beyond 1080p. Better to just wait on a good monitor for now, those curved screens that do 4k should be more abundant later this year or next year so your only choice won't be some over priced asus monitor.

 

The benefit of getting something older for cheap is that you get win7 on it with a recovery partition. Clone that to a cheap ssd and move the old drive over as storage/program files installation area. You can get a sandisk 128gb ssd for less than $50 now and it ain't too bad. I have one of those the label is "ssd plus solid state drive" and so far so good on my other system I use it with.

 

There is nothing significant coming out this year besides deus ex and next year who knows probably some delays because the market is going down for games. Gametrailers just closed the other day, that should be a sign of the times considering all the money they had coming in from those spike tv deals and gaming tournament things and othjer stuff they did. When that marketing stuff dries up then you know big companies are moving in another direction.

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After doing some research, I realized that. As to your suggestion, adding my own graphics card and whatnot isn't something I would have the time to learn to do. And most computer places around here charge an arm and a leg to do any type of work on computer.

 

I did find that Intel is much better and I will go from there. I am hoping to now find a computer with at least 12gb ram with an processor.

Edited by FatalxSyn
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Would something like with work better? It's Windows 7, older model Dell desktop

 

4th Generation Intel Quad-Core i5-4460 Processor (3.2GHz, 6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)

12GB DDR3 RAM / 1TB 7200RPM HDD

Intel HD Graphics 4600

 

Sorry, I am such a noob at computer specs.. >_< I haven't been gaming on PCs for that long really. Mostly used gaming consoles. I am currently using a HP Laptop with AMD A8 quad core processor... Only 4gb ram though I believe, but it was cheap. Alot cheaper than that I have been looking into.

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Yeah amd will always be cheaper than intel for entry level stuff but amd has some serious financial issues and if they don't get their game together they won't be around for too much longer. Amd has been best with video cards and that is pretty much all they have left besides being the hardware makers of all the latest gen consoles. What I noticed from either amd or nvidia is that no matter which you buy it will be about $300 new minimum so if you find a good deal on a used card it might be down to $200 or $150 but like you said then you have to add it in there yourself or pay someone to do it. That system you mentioned is much better but depending on what the model is, you might have trouble with the power supply working well with a fancy video card. If that is a slim model system which dell makes a lot of then you will have some oddball power supply which doesn't have a lot of power just a few hundred watts so you are looking for something that is labeled as ATX and doesn't have any words in the description like slim or slimline or compact design that kind of stuff. The video card in that system is actually embedded in the processor so it is just onboard video but even that is faster than the old onboard stuff from years ago that was separate from the processor. You will still need a fancy video card of some kind to play games though.

 

It is actually not that hard to install a video card only just the main problem is most people don't know anything about their power supply. Most power supplies come with at least one set of special cables for use with high end video cards. Once you know about those cables and if you have them or not you will be all set. Get the card in there plugged up correctly and then plug your monitor to the new card outside the computer then turn it on and install the video drivers thats it done.

 

Best to watch some youtube videos about installing video cards and look through power supplies on major sites like newegg or amazon to see what features they offer. A good brand to look at is EVGA they have some good stuff or cougar brand sometimes has some good units. Don't buy corsair even if their prices are really cheap they don't last long I know this from experience the hard way. I had a unit die on me because a driver hit a power pole near my place and took out the power for the entire area for the whole day and night. That outage actually caused a surge when it happened which killed my corsair power supply but thankfully it was made well enough not to damage anything connected to it.

 

The quality of the different brands moves around from one year to the next they never stay completely the same. I noticed recently that an old brand which left the market OCZ was picked up by firepower or something like that. What they really did was just rebrand another brand called pc power and cooling as OCZ and now firepower or firepro can't remember atm but that is still just pc power and cooling rebranded. That company has been very steady for many years and they usually sell for $50 sometimes $40 and still provide good units for that price up to 500 watts.

 

To run a good video card though and a recent system you will need at least 750 watts maybe 800 it just depends on what you do with it. If you overclock that intel to 4ghz then you want a 850 watt psu now so you can do it later. Otherwise you can't even attempt an overclock at 750 watts not for long term stability unless you really know what you are doing.

 

So watch some youtube for installing stuff before you decide anything. When you install something you only have to do it once but if you do it wrong it will be bad. Sometimes you can find a shop that will put in a video card for cheap just have to look for them. Worst buy is not the place to go maybe if there is a frys or micro center in your area if you live in the states.

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Would something like with work better? It's Windows 7, older model Dell desktop

 

4th Generation Intel Quad-Core i5-4460 Processor (3.2GHz, 6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)

12GB DDR3 RAM / 1TB 7200RPM HDD

Intel HD Graphics 4600

 

Sorry, I am such a noob at computer specs.. >_< I haven't been gaming on PCs for that long really. Mostly used gaming consoles. I am currently using a HP Laptop with AMD A8 quad core processor... Only 4gb ram though I believe, but it was cheap. a lot cheaper than that I have been looking into.

 

That CPU isn't a problem, but that system is using the IGP (modern Intel CPUs have built-in graphics; they're not bad if you aren't gaming (some of the higher end ones (i.e. not HD 4600) can do respectably when it comes to gaming, but still not "awesome")). Wherever you're getting these spec builds from, can you just have them add a graphics card? Something like GeForce GTX 660/760/960 or Radeon R7/9 260/270/360/370 (or of course better than any of those) would go a *long* way with that CPU. None of this would require anything approaching an 800W PSU though.

 

If you don't have a very significant budget, I'd say its probably in your best interest to learn how to assemble your own machine, as you'll be able to save a good bit of money versus paying Alienware/Puget/Falcon NW/whoever to build you a quality gaming system. On the other hand, if you have some money, I'd go that route if you want something turnkey.

 

I'd probably pass on any of those "refurb desktops" you'll find littering ebay/Amazon/Craigslist/etc offering a Windows 7 machine for $49 or $149 or whatever, as they're generally SFF/uSFF machines that have no expandability, wimpy PSUs, bad cooling designs, etc. Going with used hardware as was suggested above wouldn't be a bad idea either, but you'll have to do more homework on what works with what, potentially more troubleshooting, and so forth - you can save a decent bit of money though, especially if you're fine going with a bit older hardware; anything from the Intel Core 2 or AMD K10 era on-up will be perfectly competent when it comes to Skyrim and Fallout 3/NV (I haven't played Fallout 4 yet, but based on reviews and such it should also work as long as the graphics card is compatible, which isn't hard to accomplish).

 

 

 

 

I noticed recently that an old brand which left the market OCZ was picked up by firepower or something like that. What they really did was just rebrand another brand called pc power and cooling as OCZ and now firepower or firepro can't remember atm but that is still just pc power and cooling rebranded. That company has been very steady for many years and they usually sell for $50 sometimes $40 and still provide good units for that price up to 500 watts.

 

 

Not quite. PC Power & Cooling, which had been around since the 1980s (founded in 1985) and was for a long time considered the benchmark for PC PSUs (especially their TurboCool line, which holds a lot of "firsts" for PC PSUs) was bought-out by OCZ back when OCZ was growing very rapidly. Fast-forward a few years, and OCZ went bankrupt and was split up at auction - the memory division is now part of Toshiba, and the power supply business (including OCZ's own power supply business, which was always second-rate) re-formed as FirePower Technology, and sells a mish-mash of products that existed under the OCZ marquee as well as the OCZ-era PC Power & Cooling marquee. It's worth noting that after OCZ bought PC Power, the quality began to decline more to OCZ's level (which was always second-rate at best; everything was moved to OEMs that OCZ used, which were more value-oriented than PC Power's relationships with Win-Tact and Seasonic, which are solely performance oriented). You can always tell a "real" PC Power PSU by a few traits: it will always have an 80mm Delta fan, it will never be modular, and it will always have a single 12V rail. Everything that came out with bottom-mount 120-140mm fans, multiple OCP'd rails, modular connectors, etc is OCZ's doing. PC Power & Cooling (when it was independent) was ardently and vocally against those advances in PSU design/construction in their later years, which earned them ire from a number of reviewers and other publications.

 

A few of the OCZ-based models are still decent performers (e.g. the Fatal1ty 1000W) but the prices are high; the era of Silencer and TurboCool is very much over. As much as I adore my PC Power & Cooling PSUs, I'd suggest looking elsewhere these days - EVGA, XFX, Corsair, and Rosewill have been doing absolutely excellent in recent reviews, and their prices are much more reasonable (e.g. Rosewill's Quark 1000W offers similar measured performance, warranty terms, etc to the Fatal1ty 1000W, but runs around $100 cheaper; eVGA's SuperNOVA and Corsair's AX series get you into the Fatal1ty's price range, but offer better measured performance, and in the case of eVGA, a better warranty).

 

 

When it comes to PSUs, I'd generally suggest looking at jonnyGuru reviews, as they're pretty comprehensive.

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Yeah jonnyGuru was recommending my evga psu when I got it. I bought that for a combo internet rig/altcoin miner and still manage to run two R9270 cards in a corsair 350D case for altcoin mining while doing other stuff with the pc. I think PC Power was arguing against the modular stuff for the same reason many people would because of issues with electrical continuity and resistance since the more connectors you have between the inside and outside the worse those things get.

 

But so far the market is doing ok with modular psu designs and most cases now have support for cable management.

 

The reason why I say look at craigslist is that sometimes and office goes bust or off lease or a company goes under and they just clear stuff out to get whatever they can to help pay the debts. So sometimes there will be some hp brand desktops with corei7 x58 mobo and stuff floating around for cheap as if they don't even care what they are selling just want to get rid of it fast. I have not been able to get me a herman miller chair this way yet unfortunately:-(

 

If you build a totally new system it will cost and the OP was talking about not spending a lot of money. These days it seems there is an abundance of used computers just oozing out of the net and some local places. For a long time I noticed dell stuff always showing up somewhere but that was probably people from texas going to other states trying to convince people to buy their dell surplus.

 

 

I remember gaming on a e8400 cpu it was slow and not fun but the video cards then were slow too. Skyrim gets down to the 40s just about anywhere in riften and if you are like me and jack the shadows up to 8k to get rid of that jagged shadows edge it just sucks to have a slow computer and run the game that way. I think some people only do that to take screenshots and then drop back down to 4096 for game play but man it looks like minecraft at that setting.

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Yeah jonnyGuru was recommending my evga psu when I got it. I bought that for a combo internet rig/altcoin miner and still manage to run two R9270 cards in a corsair 350D case for altcoin mining while doing other stuff with the pc. I think PC Power was arguing against the modular stuff for the same reason many people would because of issues with electrical continuity and resistance since the more connectors you have between the inside and outside the worse those things get.

 

EVGA hasn't floated any duds as far as I'm aware. As far as PC Power, I'm not sure what their reasoning was for sticking to "tradition" - it was largely decried as FUD, but I think they could get away with it because at the time they still had better PSUs than anyone on the market. So it'd be like if EVGA said the SuperNOVA 1600W needs to be painted bright pink to work or otherwise it won't work, sure its nonsense and we all know its nonsense, but they'll still sell them because nothing is better so you put up with the quirkiness. Owning a few of the PSUs that came out of that era (from PC Power), I can't say there's anything wrong with them, but I've also had no problems with PSUs that they declared shouldn't work or shouldn't work well due to their design (e.g. bottom fan, modular, multi-rail, etc).

 

 

 

 

The reason why I say look at craigslist is that sometimes and office goes bust or off lease or a company goes under and they just clear stuff out to get whatever they can to help pay the debts. So sometimes there will be some hp brand desktops with corei7 x58 mobo and stuff floating around for cheap as if they don't even care what they are selling just want to get rid of it fast. I have not been able to get me a herman miller chair this way yet unfortunately:-(

 

Yeah that's a good idea. ebay can also have that stuff sometimes.

 

 

 

If you build a totally new system it will cost and the OP was talking about not spending a lot of money. These days it seems there is an abundance of used computers just oozing out of the net and some local places. For a long time I noticed dell stuff always showing up somewhere but that was probably people from texas going to other states trying to convince people to buy their dell surplus.

 

There's tons of old machines out there as organizations constantly recycle systems for "newer and better" without caring that we're in the era of total stagnation (e.g. ten years ago we wouldn't be telling someone to go buy a Pentium II to play Oblivion, but that's exactly what we do today and it works perfectly well because everything is so stagnant).

 

 

 

I remember gaming on a e8400 cpu it was slow and not fun but the video cards then were slow too. Skyrim gets down to the 40s just about anywhere in riften and if you are like me and jack the shadows up to 8k to get rid of that jagged shadows edge it just sucks to have a slow computer and run the game that way. I think some people only do that to take screenshots and then drop back down to 4096 for game play but man it looks like minecraft at that setting.

 

I ran Skyrim without any fuss on a Q9550 with various graphics cards (HD 4870X2, HD 4890, and GTX 660 - the 660 did the best in terms of power/performance, the 4870X2 was fastest overall but man was it loud) - and by "without any fuss" I mean on Ultra settings with AA. I don't play with 384k textures and all that; after a point it just becomes a total blackhole for money. "Modern" CPUs aren't a massive, significant upgrade in terms of overall performance (at least for gaming), GPUs have improved (especially in terms of power efficiency), but we're still generally looking at a stagnated market. And remember: this is a game that runs on Xbox 360, you don't need dual 18-core Haswell-EP with Titan X QuadSLI and 128GB of RAM on a PCIe SSD to play it, and while there's probably some mods that can make the performance requirements seem that high, it seems relevant to stop and ask: is a free mod for a $50 game worth $25,000+?

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Thats the thing right there is mods. I was thinking a while back about getting some new video card with larger memory but then the whole nvidia 4gb not really 4gb memory thing hit and it just killed that idea for me. I don't even want to think what the creator of enb was going through at that time lol.

 

The most noticeable things in skyrim with textures are the blocky compression from normal maps so some of my mods I left them uncompressed and that does terrible things to the game if a lot of those objects with uncompressed normals start spawning into the game.

 

So any mods that add textures and change graphics will just slow down the computer which is somewhat fixed by enb boost mod but eventually you just can't play the game if too many things are in there. With a good power supply not only can you overclock the cpu but the gpu just a little as well if it is not overclocked already by the factory. Don't forget if you add another internal drive later and other stuff that adds up to more power requirements. The only problem with getting a good 750 or 850 watt psu is the price they are never under $100 for stuff like that.

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Thanks for the replies.

 

So, there are different opinions like I figured there would be, but you guys have helped out a lot. I shall do my research and continue my search for something that will hopefully fit my budget. Thanks for all the tips and if there is anything else you can think of, I'd love to hear it. XD

 

 

Edit: I do not need a massively decked out computer system or anything. I just want something that can run Skyrim or Fallout on Ultra settings without any problem and also run mods (texture mods, ect. And I don't necessarily need the best of the best with the texture mods.. I just want my game to look good.) And I also don't really need an enb. That would be a plus, I suppose, but I play fine without one now and it's fine.

 

As stated somewhere above, I am currently using a "gaming" laptop. I can run Skyrim on high settings without much lag, but as soon as I get too many fancy mods, I start getting lots of fps drops and revert to medium settings. I do not want to have to do that and I don't use that many mods. Not nearly as many as some people.

 

If it makes it any easier I could simply list the types of mods I like and want to be able to use that I am currently cannot use and see what type of system I would need.

 

Like I said, I really do not need an over the top, badass computer system.

Edited by FatalxSyn
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