Custom Built Computer (San Antonio, Center, Howe: to buy, closing, tax)

[elnina]

Altex will do it for you.
Locations of Altex Computers and Electronics Stores
you might want to read this:
http://compreviews.about.com/od/gene...BuildvsBuy.htm
or this:
http://www.pscomputerhelp.com/custom-sys.htm (broken link)
and a step-for-step:
http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/

[Primo]

Originally Posted by AlamoCity

I've thought of doing that but not very good at building things and would hate to spend $1400 on parts only to screw something up and not have it work.

If $1400 is in your budget..then just configure your own Alienware...Just get the Aurora...Dell charges almsot $1,000 more for the Area 51 which is the full size tower. Their base Aurora is about $1,100..just upgrade your memory and video card..and you will be in business.

I am currently running:
Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz
12GB Triple Channel 1333MHz DDR3 (memory is cheap, what the hey!)
Dual 1.8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
32" Samsung LCD monitor
Windows 7 of course

Liquid Cooling is the way to go, my last gaming rig had 7 fans on it and all it did was heat up the room. My new rig runs so much cooler.

[tejano2828]

I would take haveblue's offer OP thats a generous price.....

[jrossjr79]

I also recommend building it your self. I build custom computers, so its kind of stabbing myself in the back, but building it yourself you are looking at parts and OS. Having someone else build it you are looking at parts plus commission as well as what ever over charge the person built it for you is wanting to charge.

Besides building it yourself you learn exactly what is in your computer.

[macbillybob]

[mod cut: this post has been deleted]

Completely agree with the ALTEX comment. I go there for cables and small stuff.

I have also been building my own systems for ever but I am much older since my first job out of college was building system with 8 bit processors, Z80 etc. (there was no such thing as DOS or MSDOS then.)The first hard drive I used in a system was a 15 mb. It was the size of a twelve-pack of beer. That would hold about 5 mp3s nowdays. We had to write all the drivers and actually make the cables from scratch. but i digress.

I recommend Newegg for parts also. With all the help on the internet you probably could do it yourself.

[rgomez912]

If you do build it yourself, please watch out for ESD (Electrical Static Discharge). You should buy a anti-static wrist band since you do not wan't to damage any of the computer parts. Also make sure the CPU socket on the motherboard matches the one you buy or you won't be able to put the CPU on the system board.

[dcjes]

Do not buy an alienware systems. They are now just overpriced Dell computers. You can find systems locally or online cheaper than them.

[roman001]

i am also looking for someone to build it for me i dont want to have to go through operting system set up and everything and if something goes wrong i wont know how to fix it ide rather have someone do it for me

[britishbird]

I was planning on building my own gaming rig last month, but one I had my cart on newegg I decided to quickly browse to see if I could find any pre-built machines with the same specs around the same price. I found this beast (I literally called it The Best) for $30 cheaper for a total of $1,340 at BestBuy:

Intel i7-3770K processor
1TB Serial ATA III hard drive (7200 rpm)
120GB solid state drive (this thing is sexxxxxy)
16GB DDR3 SDRAM (expandable to 32GB)
8MB L3 cache and 3.5GHz processor speed (with Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz)
NVIDIA GTX 660 graphics
2GB dedicated video memory
Liquid cooling already installed
Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit

I'm currently running every single game at max specs and couldn't be happier. It's insanely quiet too, yay for water cooling! You probably wont need 16GB RAM, but everything else was worth the $$$ - Especially the SSD! Get yourself a nice big monitor too of course, I've got a shiny new 27" one after buying this!

[dpantle]

tejano2828 hit it on the nose. Reference sites are right on. I tend to do price comparisons at pricewatch.com for h/w, s/w, os. You can't go wrong with newegg.com either.

Building it yourself will give you much more bang for your buck, and it's really not that difficult.