Octopus Overlords

I’ve always built my own boxes, but I think - in my old age - that I’m kind of over it. I use my home PC for gaming and remoting into work and that is pretty much it. Was looking at Alienware but is there that much of an advantage over a regular Dell workstation? I don’t over lock or any of that business. I’m not a big fan of the weird cases and lights - a plain black box is fine with me.


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I can't say for sure, but I suspect if you order a Dell vs Alienware it's going to come down to the components they use. While you might get a name-brand video card in both, I can't speak to the quality of the HDDs, the RAM, the MB and arguably the most important (in my experience) the power supply. Having experienced issues with generic power supplies and lower quality HDDs, I would always look to get higher quality products mainly because of the gaming element. I'm sure someone that knows more than I do can chime in and call me a savant or an idiot.

Also, one old man to another - make sure you get a solid-state drive for the OS. I really didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal, but it changed my computer use in the same way that TiVo changed how I watched TV. Believe the hype.

I would still recommend building. It is so insanely easy and modular these days. Building doesn't mean being flashy, but you can get much more bang for your buck. Case, mobo, processor, ram, vid, drive, power supply, etc.

Take a look at PC parts picker. It honestly is so easy. https://pcpartpicker.com/

Jag wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:23 am I would still recommend building. It is so insanely easy and modular these days. Building doesn't mean being flashy, but you can get much more bang for your buck. Case, mobo, processor, ram, vid, drive, power supply, etc.

It has been two years for me, but I would call it *slightly* more bang for your buck. I think the parts would have saved me a little over $100 last time I built. I'll happily pay $100-150 for someone else to do it.

The one thing giving me pause is that I have a fair selection of parts right now - great case (an aluminum Lian-Li that I've had for probably 15 years), a couple big SSDs (one is 500GB, one just under a TB, I think), 900W power supply. Basically I need a mobo, GPU, processor and memory. I'll probably end up putting one together myself because I hate just having perfectly good parts sitting around...

coopasonic wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:27 am

Jag wrote: ↑Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:23 am I would still recommend building. It is so insanely easy and modular these days. Building doesn't mean being flashy, but you can get much more bang for your buck. Case, mobo, processor, ram, vid, drive, power supply, etc.

It has been two years for me, but I would call it *slightly* more bang for your buck. I think the parts would have saved me a little over $100 last time I built. I'll happily pay $100-150 for someone else to do it.

This. Online retailers like CyberPowerPC have removed much of the savings to be had from DIY.

I'd get pre-built - only because of stand-alone GPU prices nowadays due to miners.

I repurposed my GTX 770 in the x99 rig I built a few years ago, thinking I'd upgrade the GPU a couple of years down the road, but the prices have been so insane, I haven't done it yet. for the price of a good gpu on the open market, you can almost get a full system with a good gpu nowadays - just make sure you can upgrade the other components if you like.

Here's an Extreme Tech article - which indicates maybe things will get better soon, however:

Demand for GPU miners skyrocketed to such extremes, it became effectively impossible to recommend building a PC. This wasn’t just a theoretical; I wound up steering a friend of mine towards a boutique OEM after he told me he had a $2,000 budget, $1,200 of which would’ve gone to the GPU of his choice had he built his own system. With GPU price inflation pushing cards to double their original MSRPs, or even higher, gamers have coped by sticking with hardware they already owned, buying used cards, adopting AMD APUs (or possibly Intel’s Hades Canyon), and hoping people would move over to ASICs and leave those of us who want to slaughter things at 120fps alone.

If you don't need a GPU upgrade however, Build away! (and start with a Fractal Design case!)

GPU prices are still up, but not at the crazy levels it was. Rumor is Nvidia will launch next line in June / July which may put price pressure on current gen cards. Have a GTX 970 and looking at getting a 1080, but may wait to see if new launch drops 1080Ti price enough.

Until prices on GPUs and maybe even DDR4 ram come down it can make more sense to buy a pre-built if you need a complete computer.

The one thing I'd do though is check online at the page for that make/model and read the manual for it. Look at the upgrade process, what is upgradeable if anything and what are the limitations. The reason is there may come a day when you, for example, might like to use a better case but oops, this pre-built uses an oddball sized motherboard and you're stuck with this case. It's easy to avoid those kinds of problems if you research how the computer is built ahead of time.

Heck, even a 1050 ti would be loads better than what I have now (GT 445M)

When I get my Federal Tax refund (mine got intercepted for "identity verification") I may spend half on a new PC. But I probably have to wait another month.

Ryzen 5 (1400), FX-6300, or a Core i5?

EDIT: FX-6300 is too old. Ryzen 1xxx should drop in price now that Ryzen 2xxx is out.

As for video card, it seems NVIDIA 1050 is around $200-220 and outclasses AMD R9 380's quite a bit for similar price. Bumping the price up, there's NVIDIA 1060/3GB or 6GB for about $250-280, matches up nicely with R9 580 in price, but NVIDIA seems to be much better in performance across the board. So next video will probably be NVIDIA as well.

Dell XPS 8910, with 6th gen i7, 16 GB RAM, and RX 560 is just $680 in their outlet. They don't have one with 1050 ti. To get that, I have to get the one with 8th gen i5, and that's $820.

A lot depends on the games. The 560 is a sizable step down from a 1050 Ti. However, that's assuming 1080p gaming at higher than low settings in demanding games. If you're willing to compromise a bit, whether it's playing less demanding games or playing at lower framerate, that 560 isn't so bad. If you want PUBG at 1080p high settings 60fps, then no, a 560 won't do it.

And benchmarks seems to say that the 8th gen i5 (6 cores) is faster than 6th gen i7 by about 20-30% 9-15%, which is pretty impressive.

Userbenchmark.com comparison

Similarly, GTX 1050 Ti is noticeably faster than RX560 by 5-15%

There's a 17 inch battleship laptop (i7-6700 / GTX960M / 128GB M2 SSD / 1TB HD / 16 GB RAM) locally on CL for $700, may be able to negotiate him down a little more. While 960M is not as good as a desktop 1050 ti (slower by about 25%) it'll do most games at 1080p / 60 fps

Or there's a gently used desktop (hahaha) w/ I5-6500, / GTX980 TI / 1.5 TB HD / 32 GB RAM) locally on CL for $680. 980Ti is like twice as fast as a 1050Ti. Oh well. I have to wait for my refund. *sigh*