my best advice to pc gaming newbies - yoru first rig - AionSource.com

building your first pc is intimidating, even if you get solid part selection advice from places like /r/buildapc .

too often overlooked though, is that in the US you can walk into any fry's or microcenter, or in canada NCIX, memory express, and iirc canadacomputers, and have them build the pc for you, for a low fee (iirc it's about $50-100 on top of the parts and shipping).

a few things to have prepared:

your budget.
brand preferences (like intel vs amd, nvidia vs amd)
OS preference(idk if any of these guys will do linux, but maybe you want win 7 instead of win8, you probably deffo want 64 bit though).
any peripherals you may need (mouse keyboard, and what you're willing to allocate to each from your budget- it might be a better idea to buy these separately.)
what size and resolution of monitor do you want. i suggest 22" 1680x1050 or 24" 1080p. you may wan to buy this separately.

these guys will work with you to select parts, and then build and test it, and either ship it to you complete, or you can pick it up in store when it's ready.

i especially recommend this approach to peopel coming from consoles, or people that have only ever owned OEM pc's like from DELL or HP, adn have yet to upgrade their ram or video card on their own.

newegg and tigerdirect also sell some prebuilt packages that are solid buys.

EDIT: this post is advice for people who are otherwise holding back from pc gaming, because of the building it yourself and or research aspects of pc gaming. as pc gamers, we've been rather successful in getting out the word that building it yourself means better quality parts that make more sense together, over the premiums that dell and HP or even worse alienware charge. this is for those people that simply are unwilling to take that plunge, even if they are willing in terms of wanting the pc gaming experience and have the money to spend.

i've done a number of builds or assisted in builds for friends who were in that position. tired of what xbox or ps3 offers, and ready to step in to the world of high end high frame rate gaming, but not knowing where to start, where to look, or who to turn to. i woke up this mornign and thought, what about those people without friends like me, who will part out and build a leet gaming rig for them for a case of beer and a double big mac meal? these stores can be that friend, and it also starts their relationship with these stores, which i'd wager most of us know about from word of mouth, and their reputations.

yes building your own is fun and somethign to be proud of, and it's easier than it sounds. but rather than constantly throwing frozen meat into a frying pan full of hot oil, maybe we can help thaw them out and season them a bit before cooking them up eh?

anyone know the bbcode for bullets on this forum? i thought it was [*] but i guess it isn't QQ :sidefrown: