Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I want to buy a pre-built gaming PC as a base, and build and upgrade from then on. I don’t have a set budget, but I’m going to start saving up to get one. I don’t want to spend a fortune but I don’t want to buy a toaster, either. If anyone can give me some pre-built suggestions for playing GW2, shoot ‘em my way. If you have links, please either post ’em here or PM them to me here. I don’t have a monitor or keyboard, but I already have a keyboard in mind. Monitors are a different beast.

Thanks!

The problems with pre-built include tiny cramp cases, not so robust case cooling and underwhelming power supplies.

Do you have a budget in mind?

500-800, maybe a bit more. I’m aware of the limitations, but I feel it’ll give me a better idea of what and how to upgrade if problems arise. Honestly I just want a new PC to play GW2 with, as my laptop is starting to get pretty old.

What country are you in?

A lot of places only ship to one country or a few adjacent ones so for this it’s fairly important because a lot of suggestions we could give would be useless to you. It also affects your budget: 500-800 American dollars is quite different to 500-800 British pounds or 500-800 Canadian dollars etc.

Behellagh.1468:

The problems with pre-built include tiny cramp cases, not so robust case cooling and underwhelming power supplies.

Not necessarily, it depends on where you get it.

I’ve had 2 pre-built PCs: one was a Dell that my parents bought me for university. The specs were obviously fairly low because they were mainly looking for something I could do my coursework on and I couldn’t exactly insist on a gaming machine for that and because it’s a Dell upgrading it was virtually impossible. Not only because of the tiny case but because they use a lot of proprietary parts which are only compatible with other Dell parts.

My second pre-built came from Chillblast.com who basically do custom builds, just ones they choose and assemble for you. When I came to upgrade it the case and powersupply were two of the parts I was able to keep, even though I was putting in a new motherboard, processor and graphics card.

I live in the US. Apologies for not saying that outright, I just thought it was obvious considering the forums themselves.

This is the English language forums. Brits/Comonwealth and those that can speak English and are unsatisfied with their language forums responses also post here.

For the price of a pre-built, you can build a way better one. I can walk you through building your own. You certainly won’t regret your own PC.

Here’s the problem. You really should go Intel for CPU, preferably a true quad core. But that’s costly but the alternative, going AMD, will be an impediment since when the game binds up it binds up on the CPU side. However going Intel will likely mean you are forced to suffer playing under the Intel HD Graphics 4600 which is pretty low end.

Current crop of Asus M32 series only has VGA and HDMI out to your monitor. You can get an HDMI to DVI if your monitor doesn’t have HDMI in. But I can’t find any specs about what’s under the cover beyond a 300 watt PSU. The manual doesn’t even talk about cracking open the case for adding anything.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220739

Not sure if I recommend this without opening it and getting a better idea what’s inside.

Edit: By “what’s under the cover” in terms of number of memory and expansion slots. They obviously like CPU, amount and speed of ram and size of the hard drive.

Don’t waste your money on a pre-built anything if you’re only going to be upgrading unless you’re ONLY going to be taking a PC running an on board GPU and putting an a dedicated card. Aside from that you’re wasting money because you’re likely going to be tossing components you’ve payed for.

If you’re worried about assembling your own, don’t be. It’ll cost a LOT less than buying a pre-built for the same or better components. Especially with your budget.

Sagramor.7395:

Don’t waste your money on a pre-built anything if you’re only going to be upgrading unless you’re ONLY going to be taking a PC running an on board GPU and putting an a dedicated card. Aside from that you’re wasting money because you’re likely going to be tossing components you’ve payed for.

If you’re worried about assembling your own, don’t be. It’ll cost a LOT less than buying a pre-built for the same or better components. Especially with your budget.

Depends if they mean upgrading now or wanting the ability to upgrade in future.

When I bought my 2nd pre-built computer one of the things I looked for was the ability to upgrade it. I had no intention of upgrading it right away, but wanted the ability to do so in future if and when it became necessary. Upgrading my previous machine wasn’t an option and I wasn’t confident doing a new build but knew it wouldn’t last forever and parts would be cheaper than a whole computer.

In the end I didn’t change anything for 4 or 5 years and then the upgrade turned into more of a rebuild. A new graphics card required a new motherboard and a new motherboard required a new processor. But I still saved a lot by being able to keep everything else.

Having said that I agree that building your own isn’t as difficult as it seems. I did the above upgrade, which was basically stripping everything out of the case and reassembling it, with no previous experience except installing a new graphics card.

Reading all the manuals helped a lot and it needed what seemed to me extreme safety precautions like making sure you were grounded in spite of the thing being off, and unplugged (but I’m the type of person who considers touching the metal grill a good way to check if the oven has heated up).

Admittedly I did make mistakes but nothing that major. I just had to make 2 or 3 attempts to get things connected property, nothing broke. The hardest part was actually making sure I’d shoved the RAM hard enough to get it in without overdoing it and snapping the clips.

If the OP, or anyone else, does go that route my main advice would be to read all the manuals when you get them and be aware that some parts (graphics cards for example) don’t come with their own cables and you need to check what type of connection is needed at both ends before buying one.