Pre Built Gaming PC (help)

The title may be abit misleading, but here's the gist. I need a new PC, my last one finally died, it was a 2004 Gateway GT5220, Win XP Home edition, Nvidia GeForce 6500LE, 1024MB DDR2 dual channel.

Now I have a $400.00-$500.00 budget. I realize I could go to walmart and get something to play ff11 well, but I'm considering 14 now, as well as some newer games. I dont need 100fps, just something that will work and last me awhile. I also understand windows 8 has issues with ff11, and really thats my main focus... I want to play ff11 again with the option of enjoying some newer stuff.

I'm looking for pre built becouse I dont have the patience to build my own anymore. My last pc was a Gateway and did FANTASTIC for 8 years... granted the last thing I tried to play on this other than ff11 was Starcraft2, and that BARELY ran.

So any advise/opinions would be great, thanks guys!

oh edit: This is what I've been considering so far, but all the reviews on it say its pure crap for gaming... so I'm not sure, its gotta be better than my 8 year old pos right?

Acer Aspire AX1420-UR10P (PT.SG9P2.003) Desktop PC Athlon II X4 645(3.1GHz) 4GB DDR3 500GB HDD Capacity NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

The computer you are looking into should be able to play FFXI on comfortable settings without a hitch. However, any current games (FFXIV, shooters, etc) are probably going to have a hard time running on a weaker machine like that. The Nvidia 6150SE is more or less only good for watching videos and editting images.

I had the 6150SE and it was trash. I probably had around 14 FPS on FFXI and that was on some of the lowest settings. Could never really play anything really well and it sure as hell won't play FFXIV. The 14FPS for FFXI though might've also been because I had a single core CPU for the longest time lol ;x

I was always under the impression that FFXI and nvidia didnt get along very well. I went with a Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 when I built my rig a year ago. Runs 11 and 14 awesome. Here is what I built, I'm pretty sure my mobo isn't made anymore, but you can find something just as cheap/good. I dont remember the exact model, but it was a $60 MSI mobo. All together parts cost me $600, but I paid a fortune for a NZXT Phantom case.

AMD Phenom II Black 975 quad 3.6ghz, 8gb DDR3, Radeon HD 6770 1gb card, 750 psu, 500gb hd.

I've since added a CPU liquid cooling kit and my temps are 90°f constant. not needed, but darn cool looking. Custom built PC really is the way to go, I had a blast putting this thing together. Here is the link to my facebook with some pics of it. NZXT Phantom

FINAL FANTASY® XIV for Windows® Recommended System Specifications

Operating System Windows 7 32-bit / 64-bit *
Processor Intel® Core™ i7 (2.66 GHz) or faster
Memory 4 GB or more
Storage Install: 15 GB or more
Download: 6 GB or more
Video NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460 with 768 MB VRAM or equivalent
Sound DirectSound® compatible sound card (DirectX® 9.0c or higher)
Internet Broadband Internet connection
Resolution 1280 x 720 or higher; 32-bit
DirectX® DirectX® 9.0c
Controls Mouse, Keyboard, Gamepad


Just looked this up, so that helps abit I suppose... And I was always under the impression that Nvidia was the way to go with SE games.

Just found this, looks promising, kinda at the high end of my budget though...

Acer AM3450-UR10P (PT.SHDP2.004) Desktop PC AMD FX-Series FX-8100(2.8GHz) 6GB DDR3 1TB HDD Capacity AMD Radeon HD 7350 1GB Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

The problem with pre-built PC's is the obvious price you pay for the parts, labor and shipping involved. So having said that. It's going to be kind of hard to find a gaming type PC with the budget range you ask.

I would suggest you look for a PC starter kit at any reputable online site that has a motherboard and CPU processor, heatsink, CPU fan and case fans installed then buy the power supply, RAM, GPU card, HDD/SDD drive, DVD/BD-Rom drive etc and install them yourself which is actually much easier than you think with minimal research. If you absolutely want to go the pre-built route, you may consider the following from http://www.ibuypower.com which is having a Black Friday sale. I altered the GPU card and upped the default processor to what I believe would make your PC a respectable mid-range gaming rig. The final pricing is $667 however.

http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Pre-sale_AMD_FX6

Case
AZZA Armour Gaming Case - Red
Processor
AMD FX-8120 CPU (8x 3.10GHz/8MB L2 Cache)
Processor Cooling
Liquid CPU Cooling System [AMD] - Standard 120mm Fan
Memory
8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 - 1GB - Free Upgrade to 650 2GB (Default was a Nvidia GT610 which is not recommeded) and for 10-20 bucks more you should probably opt for a GTX 550ti instead.
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3
Power Supply
500 Watt - Standard
Primary Hard Drive
1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 32M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive
Data Hard Drive (You can obviously opt for a cheaper 500 GB drive but the disk space/savings ratio isn't so great)
Optical Drive
24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Black

And of course the sound and LAN card are already integrated on the motherboard.

If my memory serves me right, the NVIDIA GeForce 6150 you listed for the Acer Aspire you are considering is an integrated video card. Integrated video cards are the bane of any PC gaming rig as they use shared memory. I doubt the Acer would run FF14 at playable FPS. So bottom line, I can't really recommend the Aspire for your FF14 needs.

This was all just a quick browse from just one of of many online custom built sites. Generally speaking, you're better off having a PC custom built to order through Velocity, Ibuypower, Cyberpower, local businesses, etc, then already pre-built PC's from major manufacturers like Dell, HP, Acer, etc. The price to performance ratio is typically better. But again, I'd look into building your own even via starter kit. You can save hundreds.

http://www.dell.com/us/dfh/p/studio-xps-desktops.aspx?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&~ck=mn

The dell outlet is a good place to go. It's where they post PCs that have been returned, refurbished, or were scratched/dented. Inventory cycles through constantly so it would be best to check it multiple times per day. The XPS8500's typically are solid systems, the only thing you might need to do is get a newer video card dropped in.

The prices vary widely, right now they have a bunch of their upper-tiered ones posted for the 800-1300 range but they also can be found for 400-600. One thing you can do, and is what I did just back in July, is add a computer to your cart and then hit the 'talk to a person' link. I don't remember exaclty what it's called, but it takes you into a live chat. Tell the person you have an item in your cart and ask if they can help you lower the price. You should be able to get a 20-25% off coupon from the rep. If they say no or try to sell you an upgrade in order to get the coupon, thank them for their time and close the chat. Wait a few minutes and try again to get a different rep. It only took me 2 times to find someone who was willing to flat out give me the discount.

This is what I was able to get:

It's not the beefiest of video cards, but it should be able to play FF14 out of the box (I played FF14 beta using a 5570 which is 2 generations older of the same video card and much lower specs on everything else). I replaced the video card with a 7770 that I was able to buy on sale, but I'm now using the 7570 this came with in my media PC.

ugh prebuilts and ugh people who think they can get a good machine for under $500 especially when they can't build it.

oh and ugh Acer.


Get an Asus if you're too lazy/incompetent to build it yourself, at least you won't be getting crap.

There is absolutely no reason you can't get a decent budget gaming computer for under 500 (building yourself).

Seriously, $500 can make a machine that will play any game on the market now. You won't be able to do it at max settings, but not everyone cares that much about having the best graphics.

And pre-builds have come a long way, it's a matter of knowing what you're getting and modifying it to suit your needs. Now, a pre-built 'gaming' machine is going to be overpriced as hell because people don't understand what's really needed to handle most games and think that they HAVE to buy a computer specifically designed to game.

Definitely agree with going ASUS.. Computer I'm on now is a refurb prebuilt ASUS and I've never had a problem with it (it's years old now) save for me doing stupid ***like messing with the registry <_<.

Stay away from ACER, you'll thank me for it later (well okay you won't because you won't know what I saved you from, but if you do get it, you'll definitely end up going "I shoulda listened".)

Also, you're not really going to get a 'gaming PC' for ~500. You might find a PC capable of playing a fair amount of games, but it's not going to give much in way of performance.

A quick education on Video card numbering.

ATI Cards, HD series:
These cards are labeled with 4 numbers, the first number corresponds to the generation of the card (A 6450 and a 7450 are more or less the same card, but the 6450 is a generation older. The 7450 will be better than the 6450 but not by leaps and bounds). The second number is a rating of its general capabilitys, the higher the better. Anything less than a 5 is considered to be an 'office and home' type of card. Don't expect much gaming capability out of these cards. The x500 series is the introduction to 'gaming' capable cards. The other numbers are just lesser indicators of the performance of these cards.

A 7450 is going to be significantly weaker than a 5800 even if though the 7450 is quite a bit newer, simply because the 5800 was designed to be used in high-graphic situations.

Nvidea:

Similar in concept to ATI, but only using 3 numbers. The first indicates the generation of the card (450 is the older version of a 550) and the second indicates the type of performance you can expect. The difference being that the 'gaming' threshold starts at x60.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

This is a good tool to determine where a card rates when compared to other cards. A typical rule of thumb is to not bother with an upgrade unless the card you're getting is at least 2 tiers higher than the card you currently have.

Edit:
So, if you're wanting to 'game' at all, you'll want a video card that is at least a x500 series if purchasing ATI and at least x60 series if going Nvidea.

i'm gonna parrot this bit here. i have an Nvidia GeForce GT540M and it completely and utterly conflicts with playonline.

it would immediately crash within seconds of startup every single time.

luckily ffXI is pretty low demand, so the pc can run the game without the graphics card, and i eventually figured out how to set it up to automatically NOT try to use it (for weeks before that i had to manually disable the graphics card through the device manager every time i booted up ffXI)


i dunno that it's ALL Nvidia, but the one i have could not be more broken for FFXI

Well, the OP is talking about continuing to play FF11 with the option of being able to play FF14 and from the sounds of it SC2. $500 is going to give him that option and allow him to play it smoothly, he'll just have to sacrifice graphical quality to achieve that goal.

decent =/= good, and I'd have to disagree on the "pre-builds have come a long way" crack.

cheap prebuilt computers don't measure up to finding great parts at a decent value.

No point in getting a prebuilt when you have to replace everything but the CPU to get a quality build.

It's all subjective. What I posted earlier will easily suit the OPs needs and can easily max out FF11, even using custom settings to set his background resolution to 2x his monitor resolution, play StarCraft2 on medium/medium-high and should be capable of playing FF14 at a good framerate with lower settings.

I consider that "good" for meeting the stated goals and staying within the budget.

If you consider the PS3 and the xbox360's graphical capabilities to be the benchmark for "good", since that is what most people are used to, then a 500 dollar prebuilt machine where you get at least a x570 ATI or x60 Nvidea is going to be "good" to them.

I just don't like it when people try to discourage others when it is entirely possible to play all modern games on an inexpensive computer. Not everyone cares about max resolution and the highest-detail available on a game.

A cheap prebuilt (like jet says) isnt worth it. If you care about playing on low settings to be able to play,buy a console.

I don't consider consoles the baseline for "good" and my judgement of "good" is parts that won't die because they're pieces of ***.


I wasn't even commenting on the level of graphical ability...

In the instance of FF11 I'd consider the ability to use windower and spellcast to make the purchase of an affordable prebuilt to vastly outweigh the additional cost savings of an Xbox.

And that's ignoring any other non-gaming uses a person may get out of having a computer.

I've been using a pre-built dell since 2007, the machine is on 100% of the time and is now used as a media computer hooked up to my TV. They only thing I've done to it was put in the 7570 I took out of my latest pre-built in order to use the HDMI hookup. The OP had his Gateway for 8 years before it finally died.

Please, where are you getting your information about cheap parts that die?

Experience, and from more than 1-2 machines.

Dells are garbage...

Your personal experience with 2 machines just doesn't compare.

Yep, Asus. Pre-builts aren't too bad, bought one so i could have lots of parts then ended up replacing most of them over time. Spent $300 + ~$200 replacements and I can run FFXIV at 60fps high settings. You just have to know what parts to replace.

i just tried looking at some prebuilts for the OP and i honestly could not find a single pc that i would recommend for him.

the only option i saw that he could probably pull off since he isn't used to good graphics is buying a a computer with a nicer i5 or i7 and using the intel HD 3000~4000 graphics chipset until he saves enough and buys a videocard.

intel HD chipset has come a long long way, it's still ***, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be. it will play FFXI and many other games on lowest settings. I'd say he could run with that till he saves up like 150~200$ and grab a graphics card. (dear santa etc.)

Unfortunately, not even an intel 4200 hd chipset can run ffxi, going to need a real card.

I've gotten XI to run on an integrated intel card, don't recommend it though.

I am rather fond of Newegg's outlet section. Its is three parts, refurbished, open box, and close out.

The only real trick to shopping there is winnowing down the selection so it isn't 20 these are useless to me items to 1 possibility.

A quick look at today's refurbished selection shows nothing capable of running FFXIV in the $400 - 500 range, but several in the $500 - 600 range.

Follow the video card suggestions above and check it out.

I'm afraid I side with Jet.. I've had quite a few pre-built computers in my day and you get what you pay for. All the computers that came from Walmart (one place to buy the cheap, entry-level computers) had at least 1 premature component failure, although most had 2+, premature being 1 year or less in this case. I treated none of them any differently that I do with my current ASUS, the only difference being that my ASUS is an ASUS and was twice as much. ASUS has given me no problems, if I had a cheapo comp I'd of had to replace at least 2-3 components by now.

For prebuilt I'd get this.
It's had an onboard 1gb card. Weak but better than none. I'm not 100% but that may be able to work with the A8 in dual graphics. If not you can upgrade to an AMD 6670HD for less than $100(I say 6670 because I know it works in dual graphics and dual graphics output is amazing for enrty level components) later on down the road with no hassle.

Edit: Ohhh just saw that about Win 8. hrm idk what to say then.

plus it's almost cyber monday! Newegg gogogo!

Lots of good info here guys, I really appreciate it! And yea black Friday/cyber Monday is kinda when I actually plan to make the purchase so I'll have some time to dive into all this.