Escapecraft

As many of you will know, I've been stuck on my laptop since october last year because of my computer bluescreening itself to death. As such I need a new PC but seeing as I'm as skilled with electronics as a banana is playing ping pong I don't really want to make one myself.

I've found 2 PC's I like but seeing as I've no idea what the specs actually mean, I have no idea whether I should actually get them. My parents have also agreed to pay half the money

First PC.
http://www.chillblast.com/Fusion-Yogsblast-Lite.html £583.32 ex VAT (£699.98 inc VAT) Second PC.
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/alienware-x51/ ... enware-x51 Prices from £649
Includes VAT & Shipping If anyone knows better than me (which almost everyone will) could you recommend a good gaming PC that lets me play most games without lag. I also trying to get it as cheap as possible...

I would stay away from the Alienware brand you pay a premium on thierbranding and the colourfull lights on the cases.

Heres the kind of things you should be looking at in a decent gaming PC:
Processor; With Intel either an i5 or i7 processor with speeds at about 3.5 Ghz
RAM; 8-10 Gigabytes (preferably ddr3 memory)
1Tb hard drive (or multiple smaller equivalents)
You want to do your own research on Graphics cards.

All in all I think the first PC gives far better value for money. The case should be big enough that you can upgrade it later if needs be.

vallorn wrote:I would stay away from the Alienware brand you pay a premium on thierbranding and the colourfull lights on the cases.
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Also shit power supplies heh.

I'm generally an AMD fanboy. Cheaper and gets the job done.

If you don't care about maxing out Battlefield 3 || Arma II || Max Payne 3 at 1920x1080, you can save a lot on getting a more mid-end video card in a pre-built computer.

Specs I recommend for a decent cheap gamer:

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955 - 980, or the FX-4170. <--- All decent quad cores
RAM: Any cheap ddr3 1333mhz-1600mhz. G.Skill ripjaws is cheap and works well, although a pre-built computer probably won't say what kind of ram it has. Just how much and how fast.
Video card: This varies a lot. An nVidia video card will run Minecraft a lot better because of the native OpenGL support. (AMD (Formerly ATI) vcards use DirectX).

if the PC has an nVidia card go for anything along the lines of gtx(number 4-6 here)40 and above. (IE: gtx560 or gtx 560ti)

If the PC has an AMD/Ati card go with a 5xxx to 7xxx series card when ending numbers 50 or above. (IE: Radeon HD 5850, 5870, 6850, 6770, 6870, 6950, 7750, or 7770. (I left out a lot, those are just the more common cards)

HDD/SSD: The hard drive doesn't matter a whole lot. I'd say 500gb or above if you have a good bit of games. Look for a SSD (Solid State Drive) if you want games/your OS to load a lot faster. The solid state drives are a lot more expensive though.

Also, if you want to compare parts check these links out:

CPU Chart: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... 106-5.html

Video card Chart: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... 107-7.html

Thanks for the help guys. After a lot of thought (and finding out my dads built several pcs in the past) I've decided to attempt to make my own. I've been looking online for helpful resources and found that PCGamingWiki has a pretty good help page when it comes to this sort of thing. Wish me luck.

Good look!