Since I don't trust myself putting them together anymore since it's been years. I was wondering where was a good place to go to pick one up that isn't ridiculously over priced. I'm either thinking about getting one now and making payments on it or just waiting until I do my taxes.

I get almost all my parts from ncix.com (there's a store near me, so I pick up my parts instead of having them shipped). Check out ncixus.com since you appear to e in the USA. They have regular sales, and you can choose your parts and have them build the rig for you (I think they charge 50 bucks). You can often get free shipping during their sales as well. The only thing they don't install when shipping is the video card. This is to eliminate the chance of damage to the motherboard during the shipping process, so you have to install that component yourself.

Not as of yet was gonna do some shopping around first before I make any decisions.

Is it the picking the components or the actual installation. If it's the former, do yourself a favor and get a barebones kit from a reputable dealer. That way you get all the stuff for the CPU, but can readily add extra RAM or swap the disks for something that you want.

Otherwise, there's plenty of places where you can get just the CPU without the attachments if you want.

I'm personally partial to Tigerdirect's barebone kits, they have just about everything you need and usually the harder to pair items in one place.

I just recently built 2 awesome computers after not having built one for years. It takes some research for sure and there are many things that can go wrong, but thats part of the fun and challenge. If anything ever goes wrong, I am now the best qualified to fix it since I built it.

There are so many resources now to help you pick parts, as well as a wealth of info on the actual build process. Youtube and pcpartpicker.com are two examples. Pcpartpicker in particular is so great. You pick your parts and it will tell you if there are any potentail issues or incompatible parts. It tells you how much power draw you will have at idle and at load so you can pick the proper power supply. I could go on...

If you are not up for a challenge then by all means buy a prebuilt model or have one built for you. Personally I had a blast, but there were times I was on the verge of pulling all my hair out because something always happens during a build you did not plan for. I had to walk away a couple times.

Good luck, and if you need any help, just post or send a chat.

Great post. I had never heard of them before, but after checking out the site, that looks like a pretty good option if you dont have the time or patience to build yourself. Kindve hard to find the build options so I included them bellow along with some thoughts:

The NCIX PC tab at the top takes you to their own builds to choose from or customize. I noticed the Kube model uses the same case I did. Awesome.

Another route if you dont want one of the above is buried in the menus: Go to to main page left column / More Categories/ NCIXPC Options/ Assembly Options. This is where you find the $50 or $75 premium assembly options... Thats super reasonable IMO. Id go for Premium if you get a windowed case as they spend more time making it look nice and neat.

I noticed they also include a Windows Disc. Not a recover disc but an actual disc to reinstall Windows. MANY mainstream manufacturers are dropping the ball on this. Im glad to see it here but would rather have it on usb 2.0 stick as its easier to install on modern systems, but you can download that yourself as long as you have your Windows key.

I bookmarked this site even though I build my own as some of my friends dont, and might want to have one built.

iBuypower.com is a good place to start looking. They aren't horribly priced on what you get, and they conveniently assemble everything for you. It also eases incompatibility fears. I got my PC there 5 years ago and it's still holding strong, about to replace my GPU with a GTX1060 or 1070. Spent $1300 on my machine that is still pretty good other than the GTX 660 Ti GPU.

Yeah I was looking there and I like how I can make payments if I can't pay it off all at once.

The #1 piece of advice I can give you is: Don't buy your new gaming desktop from Dell.com. They have awful customer service, which is sad because they used to have great customer service.

Depending on what you plan to do with the desktop there's a few different approaches. In all approaches I'd avoid Windows 8, 8.1 and 10.

1) Older games, pre 2005

In this case, probably a used, refurbished or Barebones system will do you, as quite a few integrated chips will do the basic job and do a lot of what would be dedicated expensive video cards like the ATI-Rage 128.

2) Semi-newer games, 2005-2010

For games in this range, a Barebones or refurbished will still work, but getting a video card (possibly on heavy discount, or from a friend) will do the majority of the work. You can install it yourself, or have someone a little more tech savvy do it. Might also pick up a larger harddrive, and more ram.

3) Custom built

This is what I would recommend. Using NewEgg I'd find a computer combo kit which gives you a motherboard, case, CPU and power supply and everything you basically need, then add a video card and extra ram and hard drives.


You can also save quite a bit if you already have a keyboard/mouse/monitor/cords and thus all your money goes to the actual computer.

Price: $100-$300

If you have very little money, getting refurbished is probably the best choice. I've seen Ubuntu computers for $100 or so. I've gotten a barebones system for $300 before that was really good, so you can get a lot of bang for your buck, it just might not upgrade well.

Price: $300-$800

I'd say getting the parts and installing them yourself. The price of the computer is added half again to double the price for someone else to build it. It only takes about 2 hours to do the full job, so for my time I'd only charge you $50, not including OS install :P

Price: $800-$5000

You probably have more than enough money to blow on just getting an Alienware system or something similar where it's prebuild and meant for higher end gaming. Few tweaks required. No suggestions on this though.


A few notes.

Stay away from apple products. First they have more heavily DRMed, and second they cost twice as much usually for the same power or result, and aren't necessarily any better, especially when they moved from the SPARC system to X86 a few years ago so the hardware is pretty much identical now.

Pretty hard to avoid 10 if he wants to play any newer or upcoming games. And since he said he wants a 'new gaming' rig, I'd say that's pretty much his only option.

If you are absolutely set on not building your PC yourself, an excellent alternative is Origin PC.

Reasons:

- They charge a very reasonable premium compared to other gaming PC builders. Don't get the case paint job though!

- Their customer service, shipping, returns are top notch.

- They let you customize every single part down to the specific brands and models, if something's not available online you can email them. Compare to something like Dell that use cheap no-name memory chips, or custom crappy mobos most of the time.