[tacoshell826]

So I've had a love of building/taking apart electronics, and seeing as how I have now started to get into games which require a better PC, like Rocket League, I am now saving up to build one. However, when it comes to PCs, I know next to nothing. On average, how much does it cost to build one with above average specs?

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[Rowebot]

Depends on how much above average that you want the specs. Plus if you are comfortable replacing things in used machines as they break or prefer new stuff only.

#1 question is laptop or desktop. Because laptops you find and buy in one piece but can't change much. Desktops you can change a lot and build up from pieces. Laptops get abused -- the only ones worth buying used are the toughest business ones you can find -- which suck for gaming.

Buying new: if a big retailer has exactly what you want, then usually it is cheaper to buy from them. This is because they get a much better deal than you do on the MS Windows license. Sometimes it is still cheaper to buy more than you want than to put together exactly what you want from pieces.

Recommended strategy #1 for buying used: buy name brand used business class equipment like Dell (Precision, Lattitude), Lenovo Thinkpad, HP (Elite). They are easier to find fiddly parts for (except the non-standard power supplies) and they hold their value when you go to resell. The big upgrades for you will be hard drives to SSD, maximize memory and a better video card(s). Because these machines are for business and not gamers, be very sure the high end graphics card or cards that you want will fit and can be powered and cooled adequately.

Recommended strategy #2 for a gamer on a budget -- non-brand name stuff -- piece together what you can by looking for people getting rid of broken machines. Buy someone's working 5 year old gamer's machine with a top end case and power supply (top end when they bought it) then replace the innards as you can afford to -- good cases and good power supplies tend to last longer than the innards. People get rid of machines with bad power supplies or a burnt motherboard or burnt CPU or burnt RAM all the time for very little money. Gamers with high end stuff know the value of their components so you can't find the really nice stuff very often -- other gamers will beat you to the deals. But you can piece together a good mid-range gamer system for little money. Generally, you may be forced to buy a video card, gamer case and power supply. Don't scrimp on power and airflow -- get the best case and power supply you can find.

Examples of what I just bought recently and expect to get 5 years from each -- I have business needs that require a bit more money than you need to spend:

Used 5 year old Lenovo Thinkpad X220 laptop with i5 dual core, no hard drive and 16GB of ram ($360 CAD). Added 256GB SSD ($110 CAD). Does not have discrete graphics and only Intel's HD 3000 built in graphics -- this is a work machine that can't even do minecraft very well. It is light, fits on an airplane seat table and runs 7 to 9 hours with the new battery in it.

Two used 5 year old Dell T3500 each with a mid-speed quad core Xeon, 12GB of ECC memory, a Quadro4000 graphics card and dual 1TB 7200rpm drives ($300 CAD each). Replaced the hard drives with a 256GB SSD($110 CAD) and replaced one graphics card with a NVidia GX 550ti that I had lying around because I wanted the Quadro in my T7500. Not the best gaming machine -- CPU is only around 3GHz and is 5 years old -- newer processors at the same speed are faster -- graphics card is middle to low end with 1GB of RAM. Power supply only has one power adapter for video cards -- the higher end cards need 2 or even 3 power plugs. As it is currently setup, it can run Minecraft on a 2560 x 1440 27" monitor full-screen and at the highest settings without slowing down. Reading Rocket League requirements -- should run that easily too.

Used 5 year old Dell T7500 with 2 times 6 core Xeons, 36GB of ECC memory (6 x 2GB and 6 x 4GB sticks), 2 x 320GB drives and a lower end Quadro ($760 CAD). Replaced graphics card with Quadro 4000. Bought used 6 x 4GB to replace the 2GB sticks to bring memory to 48GB ($150 CAD). Added a 4 port USB 3.0 PCI card for backups to external drives ($40 CAD). And the 2 big ticket items: added 256GB Samsung EVO 850 Pro 256GB for OS and 1TB Samsung EVO 850 Pro for data ($850 CAD). Has a 1100 watt power supply with 2 plugs for higher end graphics cards -- or for 2 card SLI setup. These 6 core processors don't have a good single-threading top speed needed by most games. I need many cores and ram for running virtual machines to test software on many versions of Windows -- works for my needs.

[Thorsassin]

Been thinking about building my own recently and was watching some youtube tutorials on building a pc. Some of them are quite long but worth it if you are really interested.

For me though, while it's cheaper to build your own PC, i rather not mess anything up and waste money, so i'll play safe and save up and buy from someone. If your confident and decently smart it's pretty easy as long as you can afford it.

I can see how people can make profit from building pcs and selling them on. They can at times make anywhere between £50-£350+ if not more. Even if not selling the pc on, and just building your own PC, that's quite a bit saved. There are websites that lets you put parts together and gives you links to the cheapest parts that they know about. Go make a PC on some site, then go to some PC website and compare the prices.

An average gaming PC can cost between £400-£500 ($533.97-$667.42) - Higher gaming PCs tend to be around £750ish.

PC parts site > http://pcpartpicker.com/list/QZs7XH (Click system build to start your own or go look at others builds)

P.S, by no means an expert, just spent a sh*t-ton of time reading about PCs.

Edit: Most important thing for a gaming PC is the Graphics card (with decent cooling fans) then a decent CPU and around 8gb ram.

[firegene]

There is a book called building a PC for dummies

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[DK_]

Cost greatly varies depending on what parts you pick. AMD is cheaper than Intel, but when you get to the higher end CPUs, AMD can't really keep up. The other way around is true as well. Lower end, Intel is too expensive. But you can get a pretty great gaming PC for around $600.

I'd personally pick an Intel Skylake CPU, or wait until AMD release Zen in 2017, mainly to leave more options for upgrading in the future. Buying older hardware could result in you needing to buy completely new hardware in a couple of years. GPUs are gonna be the most expensive part of your build. Take a look at the RX480 or the GTX 1060. Both are great, new performance cards. An SSD is definitely worth the extra money, but PCIe-based M.2 is not yet.

Look around the internet for benchmarks, don't just compare numbers. https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc is a great place to look for advice. Also check out sites like http://www.newegg.com/, they have deals pretty regularly.