Budget Gaming Desktop ideas wanted <$1500

My gaming laptop is at the repair shop.

If it cannot be fixed, I want to replace it with a pre-built budget gaming desktop.

Right now I'd like to keep it under $1500.

I found some advice here:

https://www.ign.com/articles/best-budget-gaming-pc

and here:

https://www.pcgamer.com/best-cheap-gaming-pc/

Then I started looking at gaming desktops mostly on Newegg and Amazon.

This is the system that I like at the moment:

https://www.amazon.com/CyberpowerPC-Xtreme-i5-10400F-GeForce-GXiVR8060A10/dp/B08FBK2DK5/

Basically I want some BLF advice as well, which is the point of this thread.

General advice is good, but links to professional websites are also welcome.

Thanks in advance!

I'd like the system to be at least as powerful as the one I linked to, and I'd like to be able to upgrade it fairly easily.

Also important: a gaming desktop that doesn't overheat.

Building a gaming PC is the absolute best and cheapest strategy, If you cant do this for whatever reason, I would make a list of the parts you like and see which vendor comes close to what you are looking for. There are hundreds of companies like this one:

and

I don't feel comfortable building a PC.

And once I learn that I need to get a new PC, I don't want to wait for a company like cyberpowerpc to assemble it.

That's why I said that I want a pre-built system.

My kids godparents bought the ibuypower pc’s and ran into a bunch of problems so stay away from them. Dell has refurbished alienware, republic of gaming, Lenovo also has refurbished and razer has gaming pc’s though on the expensive side s

Unfortunately companies like ibuypower take $1000 worth of pc parts and sell them to you for $2000. If you do some analyses you can see what you are getting and what they are charging. Beware that companies like Dell embed the video card on the motherboard so when they say it comes with a RTX2070, its really not a full video card just a chip on the motherboard.

To me it seems like current GPUs are hard to find and expensive to buy unless you get them in a computer. I haven’t built a gaming PC for a long time because I don’t have the time for playing games and the budget is allocated elsewhere.

I have purchased a few “Powerspec” and Dell gaming computers from Microcenter recently for use as X-ray capture computers (needed strong GPUs). They seem to be fairly priced and available locally (for me in the Dallas area). Microcenter puts the GPU in most of the Dells they have listed. It is a discrete card, not a chip on the motherboard.

If you have a Microcenter near you, check them out or look here: Microcenter
Building a computer has the advantage of reusing old parts, or getting exactly what you want. PCpartpicker is a great resource for figuring out what can fit together if you go that route. PC componenets aren’t nearly as fragile as they used to be, and you can find good tutorials on youtube for putting the pieces together if needed.

Some tips:
be very careful with CPU pins, they are fragile and can make for an expensive mistake
use the right thermal paste. and apply it the right way (check youtube if you don’t know). The stock CPU cooler is probably enough if you don’t want to overclock (I wouldn’t)… and it usually has a thermal adhesive already applied.
Use standoffs under the motherboard (DO NOT screw the motherboard directly to the case)
Get a big SSD for your main drive initially and add extra storage later if your budget doesn’t allow for it now

Don’t bother before DDR5. It even has ECC as a mandatory spec. Literally wasting your money.

CPUs supporting it won’t be out before ’22.

(before anyone complains, the biggest benefit of ECC is actually never needing to run memtest for weeks on end to test borderline faulty ram that could be outed much faster with a proper testing gear only the mfgr can afford……)

Decent for a budget gaming rig and here’s the difference among the following 3 1660 series card…

GTX 1660 (low)
GTX 1660 Super (medium)
GTX1660 TI (high)

1) GTX 1660 Super sits between the GTX 1660 and GTX 1660 TI

2) The DDR6 video memory is faster than the GTX1660 memory. Same as RTX 2080 TI

3) No RT and Tensor cores. Yes you can do Ray Tracing but it’ll be choppy.

4) 1660 Super uses over 130 watts so need 600 watt and over power supply

WROOOOOONG

130 watts is nothing. You can literally add up an estimate of how much power you need, and it’s not likely going to be over 650w for any single card system on the market. Unless you got one of those exotic new 400 watt cpus they’re coming out with soon.

I’ve never seen my 2080 Ti pull over 50% from a 1080w rated UPS (700w psu), furmark cpu/gpu burn puts it up to 44

Generally speaking, a /good/ 500W PSU will power anything you throw at it. There’s a lot of falsely rated stuff out there though.

If you don’t want to build it yourself look for local shops like “microcenter” you can map out parts and etc on PC part picker and have Microcenter put it together for you locally for a very modest fee so IF something happens to any of the components you can bring it in for warranty without hassle of mailing it out etc.

Yeah sounds good. :slight_smile: I was just approaching this topic with the idea of efficiency today and in the future.

1) At half PSU load, the PSU will be the most efficient.
2) If you’re gonna over clock your GPU or processor in the future, then it’s better to get something beefy.

Sadly you’ll have to pay a premium for a decent GPU due to the current mining craze and overall low supply. Getting a pre-built might be the only way to get a GPU at a reasonable price.

I received a phone call from the repair shop.

I think they were able to fix my gaming laptop.

I'll probably be picking it up later today.

I still might want to get a gaming desktop, but time is no longer of the essence.

That means I can get a custom made desktop from cyberpowerpc instead of buying a pre-built system.

And, yes, I still do not feel comfortable building my own system even though that path is probably cheaper.

Thanks for all of the advice so far!

You can toss together a build on pcpartpicker.com and have it check basic compatibility. High speed Memory still needs to be checked against the motherboard qvl. Ddr5 would be great to have but like others have said it’ll be a while before that’s on mainstream platforms. If you didn’t mind buying used you might find deals on today’s hardware when people upgrade platforms for the ddr5 stuff in a couple years, just use new hdds just to be safe.

I picked up my laptop, and they fixed it.

The repair company also cleaned it inside and out, so it looks really nice.

I wish I knew someone locally that wanted to buy an older gaming laptop.

(I don't want to ship it anywhere.)

I think I will wait some months/years to get a gaming desktop.

They're selling for a premium right now, and I'm hoping the prices will eventually go back down.