Starting Point for PC to play games decently.

I advise you to read around about the new Sandy Bridge processors and motherboards. Right now, it's a tad difficult to go point you in, say, an i5 760 CPU direction when those Sandy Bridges have much more power under the hood than what is available today...

By the time you got your second extra 200 dollar at the ready, the smoke will have cleared and recommendations will be more easy... ;)

Do not be buying prebuilt systems from Dell or whatever if you're intended to return to gaming on a budget - neither of those systems will play decent games at respectable settings without pouring buckets of cash into them. (big big buckets)

Create a post in this forum with your budget and required uses of the PC and you will get some really useful help and good gaming builds suggested.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-31-322.html

My advice would be to wait till you've got close to 1k before you bother starting (as upgrading bit by bit can be alot more expensive), spend the next few weeks watching youtube clips of how to build a PC if you're new to it and flipping through that forum.

Do not be buying prebuilt systems from Dell or whatever if you're intended to return to gaming on a budget - neither of those systems will play decent games at respectable settings without pouring buckets of cash into them. (big big buckets)

Create a post in this forum with your budget and required uses of the PC and you will get some really useful help and good gaming builds suggested.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-31-322.html

My advice would be to wait till you've got close to 1k before you bother starting (as upgrading bit by bit can be alot more expensive), spend the next few weeks watching youtube clips of how to build a PC if you're new to it and flipping through that forum.

Nerdbox87

Say, Nerdbox, why are you luring the OP away from gamespot when there's people around here who are close to being experts (not counting myself, far from) about assembling the right stuff for the right budget?

If you want to hang around other boards, be my guest, just don't point folks away from a good place to get advice... That's MY advice ;)

I stand by my advice - you should use all resources available to make sure you're as educated as possible, and obviously a website dedicated to PC Hardware is a good place to start..

Buying a new PC. Where to start for average gaming? I'm sure you've seen tons of these posts, but since I've been out of the PC gaming community for almost 10 years now, I was wondering where to start when it comes to buying a new PC that can do some gaming. My budget is as follows. Initial purchase...$550. 2 weeks later, another $200. 2 weeks later, maybe another $200. So, I'd have to buy the tower first, then the monitor and any graphics card I might need. Here's an example. How far UP do I have to go above this system to be able to play games decently? I know I would probably have to buy a graphics card, but that would likely be an upgrade that would come AFTER I buy the base system. Dell Inspiron Desktop Intel Pentium Processor 4GB Memory 500GB Hard Drive Intel Pentium dual-core processor E5700 Features 2 processing cores, an 800MHz system bus, 2MB L2 cache and 3.0GHz processor speed. 4GB DDR3 SDRAM For multitasking power, expandable to 8GB. 500GB Serial ATA hard drive 7200 rpm Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD OR Intel Core i3-550 processor Features a 4MB cache and 3.2GHz processor speed. Intel Core i3 processor Features smart 4-way processing performance for HD quality computing. Intel HD graphics are built into Intel's smart new processors. 6GB DDR3 SDRAM For multitasking power, expandable to 8GB. Create custom DVDs and CDs. 750GB Serial ATA hard drive 7200 rpm For fast read/write times. Intel HD graphics Maybe not the smartest way to go, but please advise and point me in the right direction if you can. Thanks.SabbathU_basic

Okay, here goes:

PC case Rosewill Challenger 60USD

PSU Antec Earth Watts 750W 100USD

Mainboard ASUS P7P55D EVO 130USD

CPU Intel i5 760 200USD

RAM Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 90USD

That's a start, right here. i'm sure other folks will throw in some more appropriate ideas ;)

[QUOTE="Nerdbox87"]

Do not be buying prebuilt systems from Dell or whatever if you're intended to return to gaming on a budget - neither of those systems will play decent games at respectable settings without pouring buckets of cash into them. (big big buckets)

Create a post in this forum with your budget and required uses of the PC and you will get some really useful help and good gaming builds suggested.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-31-322.html

My advice would be to wait till you've got close to 1k before you bother starting (as upgrading bit by bit can be alot more expensive), spend the next few weeks watching youtube clips of how to build a PC if you're new to it and flipping through that forum.

JimmyJumpy

Say, Nerdbox, why are you luring the OP away from gamespot when there's people around here who are close to being experts (not counting myself, far from) about assembling the right stuff for the right budget?

If you want to hang around other boards, be my guest, just don't point folks away from a good place to get advice... That's MY advice ;)