Just out of curiosity. If i wanted to build out a pc just for gaming - what would i need?
I upgraded an old pc a couple years ago with a new graphics card and new power supply (and more ram) just to be able to play rome total war ( the first one)
But at this point I’d rather build a new one from scratch. The mother board on the other must be ten years old.
Microcenter (I think it’s local to Georgia, but if not...) is very VERY good. Dell used to be amazing, but they abandoned people for corporations. Microcenter filled that ‘civilian market’ out our way. Build if you must, but I had them make me a machine for nearly the same price as a manual build.
High end: Alienware machines. WATER COOLED. Oh yeah.
About $2000 will build you a truly monster box that will last years. You can get damn good for less.
My sys is a couple years old. It screams with the new vodeo card. Anything rated higher than this is great but overkill to play F4 type games
I would build at least this today from scratch.
Z97 mobo with 4GHz or better CPU
BIG air cooler or a smaller liquid prefab/bolt in sys (I have a small LC setup and no heat issues)
8GB of the fastest ram you can afford to match the mobo
GTX970 or R9390 with 4GB of VRAM or better (more is always better)
SSD drives. Big is good. Two smaller ones id better IMO. One for games, one for system.
And your standard Bluray etc stuff. Big case is better than small.
If you hve the cash to spend, more is better. IF you don’t, you can get some great deals on things close to the above and they will serve well for a while. Once you get a solid base of great mobo/ram, the rest is all upgradable from there as needed (video cards mostly)
Oh and get a bigger power supply than you actually need. If your ‘need’ is 600W, get 1000W. It will work less hard and last longer without actually drawing the extra power.