Name Brand Gaming PC

So I have a unique opportunity to get 20% off of a PC with an I7 processor. That is a huge bargain and I'm looking to get an i7 processor. The game I want to play requires a good processor (Arma 3...apparently the processor makes or breaks this game due to the way it is made).

Anyway. Anyone able to direct me on this? Good idea? Bad idea? Pros? Cons? I'm not really a "computer guy." I know a little more than normal people, but less than the true fans lol.

Any help would be great.

Can you give me more details on the PC's being offered? As in memory, video card, etc.

stonewall50 said:

So I have a unique opportunity to get 20% off of a PC with an I7 processor. That is a huge bargain and I'm looking to get an i7 processor. The game I want to play requires a good processor (Arma 3...apparently the processor makes or breaks this game due to the way it is made).

Anyway. Anyone able to direct me on this? Good idea? Bad idea? Pros? Cons? I'm not really a "computer guy." I know a little more than normal people, but less than the true fans lol.

Any help would be great.

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Honestly, ASUS is the best company out there.

Alienware and many of those other brands are overpriced and hilariously overhyped.

If you are unwilling or unable to build your own PC (which is the best bang for buck), then ASUS. The G20 has gotten pretty good reviews. But nothing beats the rewarding feeling of building your own PC and then being able to modify and replace parts as technology matures.

OrphanSlug said:

Can you give me more details on the PC's being offered? As in memory, video card, etc.

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These are gen 2 i7s processors. The other computers I gotta look for, but they are the gen 3s

StillBallin75 said:

If you are unwilling or unable to build your own PC (which is the best bang for buck), then ASUS. The G20 has gotten pretty good reviews. But nothing beats the rewarding feeling of building your own PC and then being able to modify and replace parts as technology matures.

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Well that is the rub. I'm willing, but I get a 20% discount from some places for computers. I have no computer now and it will be a while before I can buy one.

stonewall50 said:

So I have a unique opportunity to get 20% off of a PC with an I7 processor. That is a huge bargain and I'm looking to get an i7 processor. The game I want to play requires a good processor (Arma 3...apparently the processor makes or breaks this game due to the way it is made).

Anyway. Anyone able to direct me on this? Good idea? Bad idea? Pros? Cons? I'm not really a "computer guy." I know a little more than normal people, but less than the true fans lol.

Any help would be great.

Click to expand...

Well if we look past the 20% rebate you can get then there are a few issues.

i7 processors are okay if you can afford them, but in reality you get more "bang for your buck" by getting an i5 and overclocking it.

Ram.. minimum 8 GB 1600mhz or more. Careful they might try to save money here by giving you slow ram.

A graphics card with minimum 2 GB ram imo. Does not really have to be the newest of the newest tbh (they cost insane amounts of money).

SSD for the OS and programs. Some games can benefit from an SSD.. but far from all. No reason what so ever to have a fast processor and ram, if the bottleneck is your harddrive being slow as a snail.

Brands..Normally I would build myself or get someone to do it.. then you know what you get. However brands.

Asus = Good rep, good quality.
Acer = Good rep, good quality but mostly on laptops. They do have a gaming machine or two.
Lenovo = ATM tarnished rep due to a malware scandal... over blown if you ask me, but else good to great quality on their products.
HP = Okay rep.. they are much better than they use to be. Quality has always been okay.
Dell = Good rep, but not really a "gaming" PC maker... they have Alienware for that.
Alienware = Good rep, great quality, overblown prices and lots of hype.

stonewall50 said:

These are gen 2 i7s processors. The other computers I gotta look for, but they are the gen 3s

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Err do NOT buy. Gen 2 processor is ancient. They are moving to Gen 5 now, and Gen 4 has been standard for almost a year. You should get 40% off for a Gen 2.. seriously not a great buy. No SSD either, and you will invalidate warranty by putting one in yourself.

PeteEU said:

-- HP = Okay rep.. they are much better than they use to be. Quality has always been okay --

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I'd always recommend the business HP machines over HP consumer machines anyway. There have been some real horror stories in HP consumer tablets and laptops, same with some of the desktops but I would recommend building your own.

stonewall50 said:

These are gen 2 i7s processors. The other computers I gotta look for, but they are the gen 3s

Click to expand...

You would do better to go 3rd or 4th generation i7 processor. If I recall ArrowDirect will just about always put you in a Dell. And while they are not bad machines, there are better options for "gaming" type systems.

Just to check this out spend a little time on Newegg and TigerDirect. I'm not saying you have to buy from these sources but you can see the reviews on their systems more set up to be gaming rigs. You can look over everything from raw parts to build your own up to the complete out of the box ready to go systems. Agreed with others that Alienware products are overpriced for the performance they offer. There are plenty of solid i7 3rd and 4th Gen processors out there where the system itself will be anywhere from $800 to well into the $2000 range. ASUS based systems are great options, and there are plenty of options from ASUS to consider.

It them comes down to the other parts. You mentioned ARMA3. And like GTA5, and BF4, and several others system intensive games the better the video card the better the overall performance.

For these types of games I would be looking at a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB or better. That card did the best with ARMA 3 when running the whole thing on "very high" graphics settings across DirectX 11. The older 650s and 500 series all fell below 30 frames per second at some point during testing. Which means lowering resolution settings to hold better frame rates.

Same story on Memory type, speed of, and amount of. You would do better to have 16GB the better speed supported by the motherboard of installed Ram (Memory) for these system intensive games. 8GB is fine, and generally meet the "minimum requirements" but minimum has an impact on game performance. Always has, always will.

To help you out... my gaming PC (which is older.)

I still use a 2nd Generation i7 2600K CPU at 3.40GHz, on an ASUS motherboard, with 16GB, and 64 bit Windows 7 Pro OS. I also have the very GTX 770 2GB video card I talked about above. On ARMA I usually hit roughly 65-70 fps, on BF4 and BFH my fps is well above 100 no matter what is on the screen, on GTA5 I hold their 60 fps max no matter what is on the screen as well. Very rarely does my PC see a performance hit, but I keep up with memory and video card upgrades as needed. I am sure you can see why.

That said, very little on the page you gave us from ArrowDirect will keep up with what I run on a gaming machine that several years old. Why? Video card, memory, and motherboards in those Dells. Again, does not mean they are not good. Just means those systems you quoted us will not have the same performance I get out of a 2nd Gen i7 based rig.

PeteEU said:

Err do NOT buy. Gen 2 processor is ancient. They are moving to Gen 5 now, and Gen 4 has been standard for almost a year. You should get 40% off for a Gen 2.. seriously not a great buy. No SSD either, and you will invalidate warranty by putting one in yourself.

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Thanks that I did not know

stonewall50 said:

Thanks that I did not know

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Yea it is the drawback of buying brand PCs.

1) They have to save money somewhere for the price. So for example, if there is no dedicated graphics card, but they use an onboard card instead.. chances are that the PCI-E slot is not there. Or ram.. only enough slots for the ram advertised. Been screwed once or twice on this issue.

2) As soon as you open up the case... warranty is gone. There is usually a seal on the side.. dont break that. That means you cant install all an SSD without breaking the warranty... and that is provided they did not "save money" by only having just enough SATA slots on the motherboard.

So they are the big drawbacks you have to look out for. Now a machine from ASUS might not have the above problems, because they actually make the motherboards in the first place, but I know Dell and HP have those issues, especially for the cheapest models.

stonewall50 said:

So I have a unique opportunity to get 20% off of a PC with an I7 processor. That is a huge bargain and I'm looking to get an i7 processor. The game I want to play requires a good processor (Arma 3...apparently the processor makes or breaks this game due to the way it is made).

Anyway. Anyone able to direct me on this? Good idea? Bad idea? Pros? Cons? I'm not really a "computer guy." I know a little more than normal people, but less than the true fans lol.

Any help would be great.

Click to expand...

if you are not a computer guy,and you dont know any computer geniuses,a name brand gaming computer is a good deal.

but buying a gaming computer is like buying a hotrod rather than making it,its cheaper to make it,but not everyone has the skills to do it.if you have the knowledge to build it from scrath,you will save money,if you dont,bite the bullet and buy a commercial gaming pc,just be wary some of them are poor deals,like coupling i7 processors with low ram and flimsy motherboards that cant support more than one video card or coming with integrated graphics with high ram processor etc.

research heavily what you buy.

PeteEU said:

Yea it is the drawback of buying brand PCs.

1) They have to save money somewhere for the price. So for example, if there is no dedicated graphics card, but they use an onboard card instead.. chances are that the PCI-E slot is not there. Or ram.. only enough slots for the ram advertised. Been screwed once or twice on this issue.

2) As soon as you open up the case... warranty is gone. There is usually a seal on the side.. dont break that. That means you cant install all an SSD without breaking the warranty... and that is provided they did not "save money" by only having just enough SATA slots on the motherboard.

So they are the big drawbacks you have to look out for. Now a machine from ASUS might not have the above problems, because they actually make the motherboards in the first place, but I know Dell and HP have those issues, especially for the cheapest models.

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i had a dell pc i bought in 05,it had 512 megs ram,a 3.8 ghz celeron,integrated graphics etc.

i used it for gaming,and it was what i could afford then.it was expandable up to 2 gb ram,but with xp and most game limitations then,i only installed a 1 gig chip next to the 512 making it 1.5.it only had 2 ram slots,but the big kicker was that it had no pci-e slot,no not even an agp slot,so i had to use a normal pci slot for my video card,luckily i found a 256 meg card that worked for win 98 pc's.

after researching it i found out the motherboard was a late win 95/early win 98 era motherboard,that dell kept using because later celerons and that ram type crossed over to many of the xp era machines,but due to its aged design did not have agp or pci-e.

beerftw said:

i had a dell pc i bought in 05,it had 512 megs ram,a 3.8 ghz celeron,integrated graphics etc.

i used it for gaming,and it was what i could afford then.it was expandable up to 2 gb ram,but with xp and most game limitations then,i only installed a 1 gig chip next to the 512 making it 1.5.it only had 2 ram slots,but the big kicker was that it had no pci-e slot,no not even an agp slot,so i had to use a normal pci slot for my video card,luckily i found a 256 meg card that worked for win 98 pc's.

after researching it i found out the motherboard was a late win 95/early win 98 era motherboard,that dell kept using because later celerons and that ram type crossed over to many of the xp era machines,but due to its aged design did not have agp or pci-e.

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Yep that is what many of the brand named PC makers do/did. Not sure about ASUS, but I do know that ACER still does it. But ACER does not make components, but ASUS does. That might be a difference between the two.

stonewall50 said:

So I have a unique opportunity to get 20% off of a PC with an I7 processor. That is a huge bargain and I'm looking to get an i7 processor. The game I want to play requires a good processor (Arma 3...apparently the processor makes or breaks this game due to the way it is made).

Anyway. Anyone able to direct me on this? Good idea? Bad idea? Pros? Cons? I'm not really a "computer guy." I know a little more than normal people, but less than the true fans lol.

Any help would be great.

Click to expand...

You've already gotten good advice from people in this thread, but I'll add a bit more.

Not all Core i7 CPU's are equal and not all i7's are more desirable than an i5. The model and the use you intend makes a big difference...not to mention cost.

Here's a good article aimed at "normal people" to explain things: Which CPU Should You Buy? Comparing Intel Core i5 vs. i7 | PCMag.com

Generally speaking, video gamers will see no benefit from an i7 over an i5. The primary benefit of the i7 is hyperthreading, and I don't think I've ever seen a video game set up to even use hyperthreading. It is something that primarily benefits things like 3D modeling or video rendering.

The higher base clock setting is of little benefit for the extra ~$100 price tag on the processor, and if you buy a processor that can be overclocked (the -K models) there is no benefit at all. (in fact, the i5 models tend to actually overclock better)

Most games are bottlenecked by the GPU, not CPU. Arma 3 seems to be an exception to that.

A machine with an i5-4690k is probably your best bet these days for high-end gaming CPU.