Gaming PC

[Reaper59]

Never have I bought an expensive high end gaming pc but now I'm highly considering one (maybe it's a mid-life crisis ha ha) I've got my eye on this Dell Alienware and I'm wondering if they are any good (and worth the money. I'm thinking my budget is between £2k and £4.5k

If not then any recommendations with different desktop gaming pcs will be very welcome.

Haven't looked at any monitors yet but I will do when I find my ideal Gaming PC.

Thanks for any replies and guidance

 

[Quartz]

Gamers Nexus did a review of an Alienware R15 prebuilt recently and it did not come off well.

OCUK will be delighted to build you a PC of your own configuration for a modest fee. There are many here who will happily help you design it.

Haven't looked at any monitors yet but I will do when I find my ideal Gaming PC.

This is actually a key choice and many things will flow from it. If you want to play driving games then you will find a 21:9 monitor a better choice than an ordinary 16:9 monitor. Further, monitors range from the very cheap to the very expensive.

Let's start with the basics:

Which games are you going to play?
Are you going to be doing anything else with the PC? Including streaming.
Do we need to include the monitor in your build budget? How many monitors will you want? (E.g. one for gaming and one for monitoring / chat / OBS etc).
Do you need to buy other peripherals (e.g. a wheel if you want to play driving games)?

 

[StarShock]

You're gonna want to remove the competitors link.

Unfortunately in recent times, basically since dell took over, the alienware desktops have been pretty poor. Overpriced and under powered.

 

[Kelt]

Never have I bought an expensive high end gaming pc but now I'm highly considering one (maybe it's a mid-life crisis ha ha) I've got my eye on this Dell Alienware and I'm wondering if they are any good (and worth the money. I'm thinking my budget is between £2k and £4.5k

If not then any recommendations with different desktop gaming pcs will be very welcome.

Haven't looked at any monitors yet but I will do when I find my ideal Gaming PC.

Thanks for any replies and guidance

Best off building your own, if you can (plenty of guides on youtube), that way you get what you want, and cheaper.

 

[Tetras]

Never have I bought an expensive high end gaming pc but now I'm highly considering one

What resolution do you play at and what kind of games do you like/want to play?

I'm thinking my budget is between £2k and £4.5k

That's a big difference, what are you willing to pay more for?

 

[Reaper59]

Oooook, that review on the Alienware pc made me hesitant to buy it now.

Getting OCUK to build me a pc is very tempting, and I will need a loooot of help as I wouldn't know where to start. The closest I came to building my own pc was many many years ago from Eclipse computers, and that didn't work out well. I wasn't pleased with the outcome.

The games I usually play are games like these.
* The Division 1 & 2
* Red Dead Redemptions
* The new Starfield game hopefully (as I'm super hyped for that.
Basically games like that.
Not really into racing games, and only sports games I play are Madden and NHL.
No streaming and only 1 monitor needed.

Building my own is kinda scary to me ha ha. I wouldn't know where to start, I'm afraid that I'll waste a lot of money and have so many parts lying around doing bugger all. But getting someone else to build it is very intriguing.

I should have just said my price range is £4.5k max (including monitor)

 

[Reaper59]

Also i've been browsing around on OCUK for monitors and came across this one.

Iiyama 34" G-Master GB3466WQSU-B1 3440x1440 VA 144Hz 1ms Freesync Premium Curved Gaming Monitor

Order Iiyama 34" G-Master GB3466WQSU-B1 3440x1440 VA 144Hz 1ms Freesync Premium Curved Gaming Monitor now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

I'm kinda thinking about purchasing this one, but it says pre-order, does anyone know when this will be released, just out of curiosity really as it'll be a while before I even buy a PC.

 

[Noughtboy]

The budget double is wide enough to fit Dianne Abbot through. You can go for a good well balanced for the lower end and a "bragging rights" at the higher end. You will not get VFM at £4500...in fact, even with a RTX 4090 and that monitor, you are "only" £2k so unless you are looking to throw money away for the sake of it, I would set a more reasonable or certainly a tighter budget. We could probably spend the £4500 but there may not be a need.

Anyway, here is an example of an "in budget" system. 1/3 of the price is the GPU. 1/5th the monitor so approximately 53% on those 2 components. For the MB I went with the MSI MPG Edge because it has PCI 5.0 support for an SSD. I only used a PCIE 4.0 drive there to keep within budget. You could have course get a smaller PCIE 5.0 SSD or get a cheaper MSI Tomahawk MB and completely forgo PCIe 5.0 support.

Case is an example of pushing the budget. Select one that you like the look of so long as it supports the GPU. You can "get by" with 32GB of RAM and of course, the monitor may be too large so you can get a smaller one for less. I am just showing you that your budget could reduce substantially and still be great and VFM

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4090 Trinity 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-13E-ZT) = £1,499.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £419.99
1 x AMD - Starfield Ryzen Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-00523) = £0.00
1 x MSI MPG B650 Edge WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-373-MS) = £299.98
2 x Kingston FURY Renegade 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C32 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MY-29N-KS) = £149.99
1 x Noctua NH-D15 Chromax Pure Black CPU Cooler with Dual 140m Fans (SKU: HS-03M-NC) = £109.99
1 x Corsair iCUE 7000X RGB Tempered Glass Full Tower Smart Case - Black (CC-9011226-WW) (SKU: CA-26C-CS) = £320.00
1 x Gigabyte Aorus 48" FO48U 3840x2160 4K OLED 120Hz 1ms FreeSync HDR HDMI 2.1 KVM Gaming Monitor (SKU: MO-00P-GI) = £818.95
1 x Corsair Force MP600 PRO LPX 4TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 Solid State Drive with Heatsink (CSSD-F4000GBMP600PLP) (SKU: HD-06N-CS) = £374.99
1 x Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 1000W Fully Modular Native PCIE 5 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-1BN-TT) = £174.99
1 x Power Cable for Thermaltake GF3 850/1000/1200 Power supply (SKU: CB-000-TT) = £0.00

Total: £4,318.86 (includes delivery: £0.00)​
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[Noughtboy]

Oh, not a fan (if you'll excuse the pun) of water cooling so stuck with an excellent (yet probably unnecessarily expensive air cooler) to use your £4500. You could buy a water cooling option but not my area. You do however, have another £180 to spend

 

[kchakkar]

You could look at the link below for pre-built systems

Custom Gaming PC's Built to Order | Overclockers UK

Looking for the latest gaming PC? Explore our range of award-winning, customisable gaming computers, and configure your dream gaming PC at Overclockers UK.

www.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Removed User 345456]

Can I ask why you don't want to build it yourself? As you'll often end up paying way more for lesser brands/specs...

And surely being a part of this forum half the fun is the customisation/building satisfaction?

Or is it a matter of time/wanting a warranty for it as a whole from one place?

 

[Reaper59]

It's not the fact that I don't want to build one, it's the lack of trust and knowledge in knowing I won't **** it up and end up with a pile of uselessness

 

[Removed User 345456]

It's not the fact that I don't want to build one, it's the lack of trust and knowledge in knowing I won't **** it up and end up with a pile of uselessness

Nah don't be silly man, just read the motherboard manual and prepare yourself for where stuff goes and watch any installation videos for things like heatsinks/processors/thermal paste etc etc, pretty much all manufacturers put up videos for installation these days and forums/youtube is your friend if you get stuck/need build advise before purchasing/installation.

You'll be fine honestly!

 

[Reaper59]

Maybe one day but for now its to late. I caved and bought a custom gaming pc from OCUK.

 

[Removed User 345456]

Maybe one day but for now its to late. I caved and bought a custom gaming pc from OCUK.

Just have a good nose around when you get it and start to familiarise yourself with the parts/locations/how they appear to fit?

Then in the future it becomes common sense/relatable and second nature.

 

[Removed User 345456]

And then start fiddling/removing/re-fitting stuff and you'll pick it up, the only thing you've gotta really be careful of tbh is installing a cpu if it has pins into the socket, making sure the direction marker matches the slot on the motherboard (all of which a manual will tell you ) but they're pretty easy tbh, if it goes in nicely it's correct if it's lifted, just remove it and try again vs applying force.

The rest of it is simply plugging in cables/plugs into the motherboard for things like power/reset/fans and making sure they're the right way around - but most of them tbf have only 1 way they can go in just like the power plug on your graphics card for example.

So when you're bored next just unplug some stuff one at a time, take pictures of how it was beforehand and what the socket/plug looks like and then refit and go from there, then next time you can build your own beast

Glad you got it sorted anyway.

 

[Reaper59]

Cheers mate for the advice. I'll definitely have a tinkle around with it. Just waiting for it to be delivered now. It can't come quick enough. At least my monitor is (well should) being delivered tomorrow.

 

[Removed User 345456]

Cheers mate for the advice. I'll definitely have a tinkle around with it. Just waiting for it to be delivered now. It can't come quick enough. At least my monitor is (well should) being delivered tomorrow.

No worries mate, hope it didn't sound rude or anything, as I'm not the best with words and if anything wanted to motivate you, as it's so satisfying learning something new/doing it yourself and saving money in the future and knowing it's right because you've done it and sourced the parts cheaper/avoided labour, as with anything

This is ideal though as when it arrives and you've tested it works you know that's how everything is meant to be so can have a play and learn by fiddling/taking pics/vids. And if something doesn't work you simply check your work and then get the satisfaction of learning what the error was and fixing it. It's ideal vs building it yourself for the first time with what could be faulty parts and not knowing they're buggered and thinking it was your fault!

Hope you get it soon and enjoy it mate!

Haha yea I got my monitor afterwards and made myself not play the games due to going from 1080p to 1440p so didn't want to waste the first time playthroughs at lower settings - I did however give in and just plug it into my 65" 4k tv and play at 4k 60 for a bit as a compromise whilst waiting for the monitor though hahaha!

 

[Reaper59]

No mate, I'm grateful for all the advice (and criticism). That's why I came on here for help. I did go to another forum before here but I just got laughed out because I didn't know anything. So I though f......flip it, I'll go else where. Glad I did because I found the PC and monitor I wanted on here.

 

[syks]

No mate, I'm grateful for all the advice (and criticism). That's why I came on here for help. I did go to another forum before here but I just got laughed out because I didn't know anything. So I though f......flip it, I'll go else where. Glad I did because I found the PC and monitor I wanted on here.

Hows your new pc mate? enjoying it so far? what resolution did you go with and did you go for a Amd cpu or intel?