what do i need for a gaming desktop?

I have an alienware tower, and the hardware I had gotten with it is crap. I want to rebuild it all into a decent desktop so for a budget of maybe 350? what can you guys come up with starting from motherboard to the hardrives. I really appreciate the help guys.

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Answer #1

What year is the Alienware and what model? Just because its Alienware does not make it crap. But if it is older than 3 years then it may not give you the visuals that you may be looking for.

$350 will not get you much of anything. That’s about how much a mid grade video card will cost by itself and some gamers and yes some Alienware computers include two of them.

A motherboard will cost you around $150, video card $350-$600, memory $120, CPU $150 etc. You will still need a powerful PSU unit, Hard drives, optical drives, heatsink units, a case with good airflow, operating system and various miscellaneous totalling another $500 easily.

What about the extras like a gaming keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor?

Then what really would suck is if after you put all that together and specially if your Alienware is less than a year old, guess what, you will not really see that much difference.

PC gaming is really expensive if you are going for better than what a two or even three year old Alienware system can currently offer you.

Answer #2

when I got it the tower was just a shell with a crap motherboard and stuff put in it. so in other words its got butchered when I got it. there’s no alienware parts in it. thats why I wanted to know what a good setup would be with it.

Answer #3

Depends on a few factors such as:

1.Brand you like 2.Knowledge of parts and various connectors 3.What kind of games you want to play and at what resolution.

For a mid-range gaming PC, you could go the AMD route and get something like: AMD A4-53xx Series Dual-Core APU Socket FM2 MSI FM2A55 mATX (1xPCIE2.0x16) PNY 8GB RAM ASUS Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 128-bit (I know, 128-bit is crap over 1080x1920 res.) Gigabyte Case Samsung 320GB HDD (Unless you download sh*tloads, you don’t need over 320-400GB) Rosewill 530W PSU (Dual 12V rails!, enough to power even new cards)

Comes out to around $350-355 USD. You really should consider two options: 1.Increase budget to at least $450. This allows more and better hardware to be bought. 2.Try to use any old parts that still work with newer things (Monitors, keyboards, cases)

It’s a pretty tight budget, but it can be done if you really look for some combo deals and whatnot. Most stores have deals on CPU/Mobo, or GPU/PSU, so look around. I would suggest NOT going the Intel route, it’s much more expensive and often times, they are outperformed by their rival. Intel is great, I had a P4 which lasted 5 years and ran strong, but be prepared to pay $100+ for an entry-level core i3 when you can get an A10 Quad for the same price.

Answer #4

so what would you suggest for a 500$ setup with HD and DVD burning? I do download alot I can do 80gbs in about a week if I wanted.

what do i need for a gaming desktop?

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