[abek0]

Guys, its either I get a Surface Pro, or build my own computer. I want to mainly use it for gaming like Counter-Strike, nothing big like WoW or Diablo. But I want to have low ping and NO lag whatsoever. If I can get suggestions from people, that'd be awesome. Oh, no budget really, but dont want to go over 2k.

[slickxsparkie]

Build if you're NOT looking for portability. Surface if you are

[Zeroplanetz]

For 2k you could build a serious system that would be relevant for a long time.

[failed1234]

Or you could build a lower spec one and save that extra cash to upgrade it.

[BIGPADDY]

Why not both if your willing to go up to 2 grand. The surface will be about 700 then spend the rest on a gaming PC.

[abek0]

Now, what I'm thinking of doing is just building a super sweet desktop. Get a nice monitor, new keyboard and mouse. And build an awesome desktop.
Sent from my HTC 8x using Board Express

[calfee20]

I like this web site

Best CPU Best Processor | Hardware Revolution

And of course Tom's hardware

[Laura Knotek]

For 2k you could build a serious system that would be relevant for a long time.

Why not both if your willing to go up to 2 grand. The surface will be about 700 then spend the rest on a gaming PC.

Both Zeroplanetz and BIGPADDY are correct.

You could build a beast of a desktop for $2K, or you still could build a desktop that runs the games you're interested in and get a Surface Pro for $2K.

You didn't say you want to play games like Crysis, so you probably don't need something as high-end as $2K.

[berty6294]

You can build a better gamer than the Surface Pro for $500/$600.

[Ridemyscooter86]

yeah, you could build a decent gaming rig for under 1000$, since I do this I'll give you a couple of tips as to what you might want to spend and skimp on to get the bang for your buck.

1). 3 things to put the money into
1. Power supply - ABSOLUTELY do not cheap out on this part, spend at least around 100$ because if your power supply goes, chances are the rest of your computer will, I sell computers for a living and it amazes me the people that will build a nice rig and cheap out on the PSU and then have to buy everything over again once their system breaks because it fried the motherboard, GPU, and CPU, and RAM. I like antec, corsair(if you can spend the money), and seasonic(if you can spend the money, they are the manufacture for corsair PSU's)

2. Mother board - Spend a decent amount on this, around 100$-150$ will give you a good mother board with a good array of ports and expansion slots to upgrade you're computer easily
(gigabyte being a personal fave, I like MSI as well)

3. GPU, choose whether you want an amd or NVidia and try to get the best bang for the buck, so try to spend around 250$, go for 300$ if you want a better one, but after that point you will start wasting money on getting marginal gains in performance...the gtx 660 and 670 are good buys for NVidia and the AMD Radeon 7870 and 7950 are good buys for amd. EVGA is by far my favorite card manufacture for NVidia as their customer service is phenomenal. For AMD I like sapphire, and MSI are pretty good too as they do a better job than other manufactures at the heat sinks.

2) Things that are OK to cheap out on:
1) CPU - if you are only doing gaming and nothing too intensive like photoshop or CAD, an i5 would be fine and an i3 would work too. Most games don't really use multiple cores/threads of if they do they use like 2. so this is one area where it won't make much of a difference.

2) RAM - I would go for like 8Gb, anymore won't make much of a difference with gaming and you could possibly get a way with 4Gb, but since RAM is cheap, just do 8
3) Case- unless you want to keep the case forever or you want one that's super stylish, a cheap one will do the job just fine.
4) dvd drive-not really necessary anymore, buy a cheap lite-on and save the money
3) iffy- HDD, you can cheap out on but the higher end ones do last longer IMHO so I would recommend spending the money if you can.

4)SSD- I recommend these for every computer. If you can spend the money, buy at least a 64gb ssd for the boot drive as it will do more for the speed of your computer than anything else can. The HDD is the slowest part on a computer so an SSD makes a huge difference on any machine.

that being said, you can definitely build a good system for around 1000$ maybe 1300$.

[Ridemyscooter86]

BTW, I meant to say that don't use a surface for gaming. Sure it will probably run CS source with the intel HD4000 GPUs but you'll be much better off with a Desktop for serious PC gaming. Get a surface for your portable tasks or save the money and get the RT for light tasks/mobility usage and the desktop for serious gaming.

[kbilly70]

As others have posted, for 2k you could build a beast of machine. You could easily build a gaming rig for 1k that run what you want and could still get the Surface Pro

Tom's Hardware has a build your own series article recently with price points of $1000, $800, and $600 that you can check out.

I wish I could get my wife to approve a 2k budget for a new gaming rig for me.

Good luck!

[ninjaap]

Spend most of the money on your gaming rig, a good N router and cheap out on the Surface. I say cheap out, because you can just get a Surface RT for $400 cheaper than the Pro and use Remote Desktop via home network (or over the internet) to connect to your gaming rig and play your games from your tablet.

[thed]

Spend most of the money on your gaming rig, a good N router and cheap out on the Surface. I say cheap out, because you can just get a Surface RT for $400 cheaper than the Pro and use Remote Desktop via home network (or over the internet) to connect to your gaming rig and play your games from your tablet.

Last I checked, DirectX is not even supported over Remote Desktop. I don't know if that's changed with Windows 8, but even if it has, I'm guessing that playing games over Remote Desktop is not going to be a good experience. I'd look at a different solution.

Edit: I did a little research, and apparently it is possible to get DirectX working over remote desktop, starting with Windows Vista. The bad news is that it's still very slow, most likely unusable for gaming:
3D graphics acceleration over Remote Desktop - virtualdub.org

[berty6294]

Last I checked, DirectX is not even supported over Remote Desktop. I don't know if that's changed with Windows 8, but even if it has, I'm guessing that playing games over Remote Desktop is not going to be a good experience. I'd look at a different solution.

Edit: I did a little research, and apparently it is possible to get DirectX working over remote desktop, starting with Windows Vista. The bad news is that it's still very slow, most likely unusable for gaming:
3D graphics acceleration over Remote Desktop - virtualdub.org

SplashTop. Apparently it uses 3D graphics acceleration, but in my tests I don't see much difference over TeamViewer.

[pseudoware]

I made a similar decision recently. If you do your homework, you can find ways to cut costs on your build. Things like going 2nd gen i3 or i5 instead of 3rd gen i7. You don't necessarily need the latest or most powerful stuff to build a capable gaming system.

If you can still fit a tablet in the budget, maybe consider one of the Atom processor models instead of the Surface RT (you need desktop mode, imo). I got the Acer Iconia W510. However, trying to use RDC on it to game is useless, imo. Good luck.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[ninjaap]

I made a similar decision recently. If you do your homework, you can find ways to cut costs on your build. Things like going 2nd gen i3 or i5 instead of 3rd gen i7. You don't necessarily need the latest or most powerful stuff to build a capable gaming system.

If you can still fit a tablet in the budget, maybe consider one of the Atom processor models instead of the Surface RT (you need desktop mode, imo). I got the Acer Iconia W510. However, trying to use RDC on it to game is useless, imo. Good luck.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

Gaming on an atom might be worse than gaming using remote desktop. At least with RD you're still using your main PC's hardware and signal is dependent on wifi network. Games will probably just crash an atom tablet.

[rimlover]

buy a surface spend the rest buying games? ;) haha. oh, if you don't desperately need it now then i'd wait. intel haswell is almost out (this summer i believe). it's supposed to be some folds better.

[TechAbstract]

Buy Surface Pro and get Xbox 360 or PS3 with a mouse/keyboard adapter. PC gaming has a bunch of botters.

[thed]

Buy Surface Pro and get Xbox 360 or PS3 with a mouse/keyboard adapter. PC gaming has a bunch of botters.

You can use a mouse/kb with the Xbox 360? o.0

Can you play games with the mouse? This just might get me to finally buy an Xbox if it's true.

[Narse77]

You can use a mouse/kb with the Xbox 360? o.0

Can you play games with the mouse? This just might get me to finally buy an Xbox if it's true.

Last time I checked, No

[berty6294]

You can use a mouse/kb with the Xbox 360? o.0

Can you play games with the mouse? This just might get me to finally buy an Xbox if it's true.

you can use the keyboard through the usb on any xbox.

There are however a few accessories you can buy to connect between the mouse and keyboard to the xbox that will translate your keyboard and mouse movements into xbox controller movements! One for instance XCM

[gsquared]

Here is some good advise for ya.

If you need to ask a bunch of strangers on a message board for advise you shouldn't be building your own machine. Go pickup something off the shelf with a decent vid card. Ideally on sale. Throw some more RAM into it and your done.

[berty6294]

Here is some good advise for ya.

If you need to ask a bunch of strangers on a message board for advise you shouldn't be building your own machine. Go pickup something off the shelf with a decent vid card. Ideally on sale. Throw some more RAM into it and your done.

You gotta start somewhere! That's how I started learning and I've built about 5 machines while still in high school! Probably put together about $12000 worth of computer!

Building a PC on your own is a cool experience, it really teaches you a lot! I suggest anybody with a passion for tech build their own computer! Its cheaper in the long run because its easy to upgrade so it will never become dated!