Universal Chat Thread

[Dragon Lord]

So I'm looking at the Prime Day deals and I see that this pre-built gaming PC is on sale for $999 (normal price $1400). Trying to decide if it'd be worth buying. My plan was to originally just build one, but if this is a pretty decent pre-built PC, then I could just change out whatever parts I'm unhappy with and replace them with parts I want. Plus it'd save me the time of looking up individual parts myself and then putting them all together (because that means not being lazy and idgaf about PC gaming enough to do it). 

One of the streamers I follow builds his own PCs, so maybe I'll message him and ask him if this would be a decent beginning point for the price.   I don't need anything too amazing, so perhaps this would be a good option for me. Reviews on it seem to be very positive, so that's a good sign, I guess.

I'll have to ponder it as I slumber.

[Nightingale]

@PM: B! Because it is putting me off the most XD

[lp0 on fire]

So I'm looking at the Prime Day deals and I see that this pre-built gaming PC is on sale for $999 (normal price $1400). Trying to decide if it'd be worth buying. My plan was to originally just build one, but if this is a pretty decent pre-built PC, then I could just change out whatever parts I'm unhappy with and replace them with parts I want. Plus it'd save me the time of looking up individual parts myself and then putting them all together (because that means not being lazy and idgaf about PC gaming enough to do it). 

One of the streamers I follow builds his own PCs, so maybe I'll message him and ask him if this would be a decent beginning point for the price.   I don't need anything too amazing, so perhaps this would be a good option for me. Reviews on it seem to be very positive, so that's a good sign, I guess.

I'll have to ponder it as I slumber.

Personally I would spend the 99 cent extra and get the i7, I am suspicious of how long AMD will keep up with Ryzen (since they have a history of dropping support/turning things to shit). But then I saw the AMD one comes with an SSD and 16 gigs of RAM so that makes it a bit more to the AMD for the cost.

But it looks like that GPU is in a weird place according to some bench marks I quickly looked at the 4 gig version (which the computer comes with) is between the 1050Ti and the 1060 3 gig but below the 1060 6 gig. SO you should be okay for 1080 gaming.

Also DL if there is a Microcenter near you I might be able to help you find a better deal.

As far as changing things out as you need, I do offer this word of caution: MAKE SURE THE PARTS FIT THE CASE/MOTHERBOARD

My brother went full derp and bought a 1070Ti a few weeks ago, only it was too large for his case, AND too large for his motherboard (which to was a miro ATX) we got a solution working (via a PCi extender) but he also had the issue of the fact the card takes up the space of the three PCi slots so he couldn't fit his wi fi card back in.

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@PM: B! Because it is putting me off the most XD

PRAISE BE TO THE GRASS MASKS! ONLY THEY CAN GUIDE US TO SALVATION IN THE LAND OF TAT! ALL HAIL TO OUR GLORIOUS OVERLORDS!

[Dragon Lord]

Unfortunately there's no places around me for PC building. The best I could do is buying parts myself and putting it together. Which is why I'm starting to lean more towards pre-built instead. I just want to make sure that the pre-built I buy is at least decent for the price. I don't need something godly. I won't be running any high graphic games on max settings, so I don't need a beastly PC. Just some thing that will run the games I do play smoothly.

The biggest concern I have about it is whether or not they are worth the price. Are either of those good PCs for $1,000? I know I could do more building myself, but are they good? As long as I get my money's worth, I can be happy with either one.

[lp0 on fire]

Unfortunately there's no places around me for PC building. The best I could do is buying parts myself and putting it together. Which is why I'm starting to lean more towards pre-built instead. I just want to make sure that the pre-built I buy is at least decent for the price. I don't need something godly. I won't be running any high graphic games on max settings, so I don't need a beastly PC. Just some thing that will run the games I do play smoothly.

The biggest concern I have about it is whether or not they are worth the price. Are either of those good PCs for $1,000? I know I could do more building myself, but are they good? As long as I get my money's worth, I can be happy with either one.

For the prebuild cost I would say "around average"
Microcenter has an in house brand of prebuilt PCs, the price is not that bad, and what I did for my brother at first. The only draw back is that Microcenter's in house brand can only be bought in store.

As an example the laptop that is their in house brand (PowerSpec) I own has the following specs:
1TB HDD + 240GB M.2 SSD
i7 7700HQ 2.8Ghz (base clock 3.5 or higher I Forget turboboost)
Nvidia GTX 1070
16GB DDR4 RAM
1080 15in screen.
it retails at full price around 1.4k (I got a better deal because open box, and I lucked out in the fact the pervious owner upgraded to win10 Pro)

Amazon and others had laptops that were speced at 8 gigs of RAM and a 1060 (not sure if 3 or 6 Gig version) for 2k+

If you do live near a microcenter these are my suggestions

For 800 Bucks I would have pointed you to this:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/50716...p_Computer

The 1060 is more powerful then the AMD 580 and if you wanted to down the line upgrade to an intel i7 - 8000 series it also includes 16GB Intel Optane (which I really have no idea what its use case is and Linus from Linus Tech Tips also seems confused from the videos I saw of his about it)

It also has a larger SSD then the iBuyPower PC

If you want to go team Red (AMD) for a CPU for 900 bucks there is this:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/48812...p_Computer

Outside of the R 5 1600 (vs the iBuyPower R 7 1800) it either matches or beats the one you are looking at.

Now if you wanted to blow an extra 400 bucks (so 1.4K, this is mainly for comparing prices) you could go for this:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/49708...p_Computer

an 8th gen i7, 16 gigs of RAM, 420 GB SSD (but no HDD, so add an extra 4o-60 for a 1TB HDD) and an Nvidia GTX 1070TI (which is between a 1070 and 1080 in performance).

[Dragon Lord]

I talked to my brother in law about the computer, because he used to build PCs as a living and went to university for all of that jazz, and he said that the $999.99 computer would be worth buying for what I'm looking for. He obviously acknowledged that I could build something better, but he said for what I'm looking for, that is more than good enough. So yeah, I'll probably pick it up then.

[lp0 on fire]

I talked to my brother in law about the computer, because he used to build PCs as a living and went to university for all of that jazz, and he said that the $999.99 computer would be worth buying for what I'm looking for. He obviously acknowledged that I could build something better, but he said for what I'm looking for, that is more than good enough. So yeah, I'll probably pick it up then.

Are you getting the AMD one or the Intel one?

[Dragon Lord]

Intel one. He said that one was the better buy. I just need to decide if I actually want to get it right now or not. Like, it'd be nice, but would I really use it that much? Even with a PC like that, my PS4/Vita would remain my primary gaming sources. 

Wondering if I should just hold off for now and instead have my brother-in-law help me pick out parts to put a PC together, because he could assemble it for me and it'd probably end up being cheaper than buying this one.

On the flip side though, it would also be nice just to buy a gaming PC and not have to worry about it later. I'd just have it, and when I'd want to use it, it'd be there. Plus it would be nice to have a desktop computer again in general.

Decisions, decisions. Like, I could buy the computer now, or I could buy a nice monitor on sale right now, and then buy a new laptop for now, and then at a later time, look into getting/building a gaming PC. Which would probably be the smarter option, because there's some good deals on laptops and monitors right now.

Ahhhh I just don't know what I want to do.

[lp0 on fire]

Intel one. He said that one was the better buy. I just need to decide if I actually want to get it right now or not. Like, it'd be nice, but would I really use it that much? Even with a PC like that, my PS4/Vita would remain my primary gaming sources. 

Wondering if I should just hold off for now and instead have my brother-in-law help me pick out parts to put a PC together, because he could assemble it for me and it'd probably end up being cheaper than buying this one.

On the flip side though, it would also be nice just to buy a gaming PC and not have to worry about it later. I'd just have it, and when I'd want to use it, it'd be there. Plus it would be nice to have a desktop computer again in general.

Decisions, decisions. Like, I could buy the computer now, or I could buy a nice monitor on sale right now, and then buy a new laptop for now, and then at a later time, look into getting/building a gaming PC. Which would probably be the smarter option, because there's some good deals on laptops and monitors right now.

Ahhhh I just don't know what I want to do.

I have mixed feelings, on one hand Intel has a better track record of backing their CPUs then AMD (but Ryzen is suppose to be their redemption story so only time will tell), but the AMD one does offer more bang for the buck in what you get (Double RAM and an included SSD which makes things way better in my experience).

Yes you can add an SSD and most likely upgrade the RAM in the intel one but RAM prices unlike GPUs are still on the high end from what I have heard.

Honestly I would say if you can wait, wait until you and your BIL can build one together (maybe even see what you can do to help build it)that way its what you actually want and it is truly yours.

Nvidia's GTX 1100 series is rumored to be coming out soon so again if you can wait the 10 series prices should drop too.

[Dragon Lord]

I think I will hold off on it for now. Mainly because I found this monitor that I like, and I think I'd rather buy that for now and then have that for when I eventually get a gaming PC.

So yeah, for now I think I'll pick that up and then wait to build a PC a little later, when I have a tad more of a budget to work with.

Now I'm looking into those tablets with detachable keyboards (so they second as a laptop). Though I'm not sure what brands are good and which ones to avoid. I see some for like $80, but then you have the brands like HP and such that are $200. So I don't know if the $80 are just cheap and terrible, or if the $200+ ones are just overpriced.

[Nightingale]

Watched a bit of wrestling tonight.

Good show, America. That was really good.

[lp0 on fire]

I think I will hold off on it for now. Mainly because I found this monitor that I like, and I think I'd rather buy that for now and then have that for when I eventually get a gaming PC.

So yeah, for now I think I'll pick that up and then wait to build a PC a little later, when I have a tad more of a budget to work with.

Now I'm looking into those tablets with detachable keyboards (so they second as a laptop). Though I'm not sure what brands are good and which ones to avoid. I see some for like $80, but then you have the brands like HP and such that are $200. So I don't know if the $80 are just cheap and terrible, or if the $200+ ones are just overpriced.

Maybe my eyesight is shit, but if you get that monitor, change the resolution to 2560x1440 (IIRC), 4K/UHD is a bit too small (for me?) on 28 inches, I have 2 4k monitors. This is for non gaming use (e.g. desktop, surfhing the web, writing stuff on word, etc).
ALSO: I bought that monitor last year from prime day, its a lower quality TN screen and colors seem a bit off to me if I could I'd rather spend an extra 100 and get a second one of this:
https://www.amazon.com/MG28UQ-28-Inch-Fr...=srch&th=1

IMO the ASUS also has better control buttons (the samsung only has a stick controller that doesn't always do what I want it to do) also the ASUS can be rotated vertically making swapping cables way easier

Surface Pro 4 or the newer line of Surface is the best IMO (but costly), the cheap android ones are just a hot mess and normally from no name Chinese companys that may or may not have shady shit going on. If you link me to the tablets you are looking at I will give you my thoughts.

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Watched a bit of wrestling tonight.

Good show, America. That was really good.

[Dragon Lord]

I don't know, I think I'd rather stick to a Samsung or LG, since those are the brands I like the most. I'm not really the type that needs absolute perfection out of my monitor, so I'm okay if it's not 110% the absolute best looking thing out there.

Also I found this pretty nice looking tablet. This one. Detachable keyboard, has great reviews, decent price. Looks perfect for what I'm looking for.

[lp0 on fire]

I don't know, I think I'd rather stick to a Samsung or LG, since those are the brands I like the most. I'm not really the type that needs absolute perfection out of my monitor, so I'm okay if it's not 110% the absolute best looking thing out there.

Also I found this pretty nice looking tablet. This one. Detachable keyboard, has great reviews, decent price. Looks perfect for what I'm looking for.

As far as the monitor and my issues with it, I never used it for gaming party because of how the colors are (and well 4ms vs 1ms) I have it as second screen for text stuff status. It also doesn't adjust height (but maybe angle? it seems like it but Im not sure if I acutally did when I was moving it around as it required a lot of force).
the base also isn't as stable as the ASUS. Again these are just my observations and why they don't go "well" with me, and most of my gripes are "Quality of life" stuff that is more subjective and are non- essential to if it actually works as a monitor.

I have a few ASUS things and they never have let me down[The monitor, a tablet, 2 routers, my GPU, maybe other stuff], (Samsung also I never had an issue with) unlike LG... but I also understand I have terrible luck with computers and electornics (which is kind of how I learned how to trouble shoot and such)

Personally I see a red flag in the title saying "Android 6.0" but the spec sheet saying "Android 5.0", it looks decentish but depending on what you want to do 1 GB of RAM might be a deal breaker.

Hell my Samsung Note 5 with 4 gigs of RAM can get slow at times, so for light useage it should be okay.

[Dragon Lord]

The only thing the tablet will be used for is general web browsing and playing Star Ocean: Anamnesis, since my phone can't really run the game all that well. Nothing too intense. Maybe the occasional video/stream watching, but probably not all that often. That'll still be mainly on the laptop and desktop (when I eventually get one).

For $98, I don't mind seeing how that one performs. It's got really good reviews, and is the highest rated one on Amazon (for laptop/tablet combination), so it apparently does something right.