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