Building a PC

Recently I played a video game (Destiny 2) on a friend's xbox and now I am interested to play some on my own. However, I want to play on a PC so I stared saving money to buy an Alienware Alpha, but online everyone says that its too expensive and that it is better to build one. I however have no idea what to buy and why. What are some of the things I should know before I buy PC parts to build my own? Also how do I compare between video cards and processors? The cost of an Alienware seems to be just as much as it would take for me to buy the components individually to build one myself? Is there something I'm missing. I am new to this and any help would be appreciated.

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Here you go buddy. PCs can get expensive fast but just stick with mid range stuff. They'll run everything just fine and are good values most of the time compared to high end shit.

>What are some of the things I should know before I buy PC parts to build my own?
what you are going to do with it. and if you are playing games, what are you playing. If you are only going to play cs:go or dota, then you don't need a pc that can play the witcher 3 or gta:v.

That's the website I used to compare prices, but if I want to buy parts that match an Alienware's specs, it costs just as much.

I don't really care for ultra high quality and frame rate game performance that most people want. I want a computer that can run a game smoothly like an xbox.

Won't mid range stuff have difficulty running future games? I don't have much knowledge on what mid range means, if i5 processors and GTX 960 are considered high range, what is a mid range?

Well I played Destiny 2 and I liked it very much, I also want to play the new Star War game and the COD game that is coming out this November.

i5 and gtx 960 are low to mid range. 1060/970 and upper i5/lower i7 is mid range. 980/1070/1080 and most i7s are high range. That's only nvidia/intel stuff, consider AMD too!

Oh and PS (same guy here), I have had an i5 4590 and 960 for about 3 years now and they run all the games I like to play (highest end being GTA v and maybe overwatch at high fps) at med/high settings fine.

Get either a Ryzen 5 or Core i5 processor with with a GTX 1060 GPU. This'll run games quite well, especially if you're only playing at 1080p, for quite a while. I'm still using an old FX-8300 and a GTX 970 and I have no issues with any modern game at high or ultra settings.

>Won't mid range stuff have difficulty running future games?
Only gpu's age really quickly and by the time you want to get a new one, you can sell your old card and make some if not most of your money back to buy a new gpu.

>I don't really care for ultra high quality and frame rate game performance that most people want. I want a computer that can run a game smoothly like an xbox.
you say that, but after you spend all that cash, you wont want it to perform poorly or just getting 45fps, on medium or low settings. I've had this mindset that you have the first time I've built a pc and I had to suffer with my choice for years in the form of poor image quality and sub 60 frame rates. now that I have a i5 7500 and a gtx 1060, it's much easier to keep my frames north of 60 while keeping good image quality.

i5/960 is outdated and below entry level. Entry level would be a like a ryzen 3/i3 and 1060/580, mid range is 1070/1080/vega and ryzen 5/i5, high end is 1080ti and i7 8700k.
CPU has more to do with how many frames per second you want. A ryzen 3 and 1080ti would be great for 4k 60hz while even a ryzen 7 and 1080ti would be poor for 1080p 144hz.
Right now you want to buy a ryzen 3 and rx 570 with a freesync 75hz monitor(unless you already have one) for the best value.

I'm saving up for to buy a $900 PC. So maybe I'll go for i5 with a 1060/580 then. What about ram? Will 8gb be enough?

Usually. 16 if you want to do something like video editing, 3d modeling, rendering, simulation, host VMs, etc. Otherwise 8 is fine.

Given RAM prices right now, 8Gb will be fine. 16Gb would be more future proof, but I was able to get 16Gb for $70 and now it's ridiculously expensive.

Do you happen to be underage by any chance?

>>>/pcbg/

get the ryzen 5 1600 and either a 1050 ti or 1060 6GB, and go from there.

I'm 22 why'd you ask?
I just never had the opportunity to play video games growing up and now I found an interest playing them. But now I can afford to save my own money to buy a computer.

Just did this for 1080p 60fps ultra settings and it's solid, around $1000 total but could've cut some corners and got it down to $800ish

Just your choice in games

He probably has no reference

I'm just new to this, I watched their trailers online and they had incredible visual details. I am planning to buy a PC that can run games like that.

Try The Witcher 3. Has great graphics and is actually a decent game at the same time.

>cut some corners
This is important OP, learn where to cut corners
>cheap PSU
You get a housefire
>cheaper ram without leds
Just doesn't look as cool

Yep. I could've opted for 8gb ram, 3gb 1060 (or 1050ti) and a smaller ssd instead and there's that difference right there.