Been debating whether I could argue myself into building another desktop to save some money; sad reality is I don't see much savings for the sort of performance you can find out of a gaming laptop these days even trying to buy quality budget parts from the ground up in a desktop.
Here's a build I made, focusing on low cost, high reliability 'value' parts, that can suit an old school gamers needs, I don't play many flashy games. Skyrim is probably the only game I have that can even test my GPU on my 2 year old laptop, so I figure anything that can hang toe to toe with my g73 asus laptop should due.
http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx
Can anyone suggest a better quality build for a lower cost? Only area I can see shaving some cost is the SSD but frankly I feel like load speeds for zoning in Everquest and some of the older games is a nice feature.
In case my Cart doesn't load correctly:
The SSD is $170 with 10% off coupon of $17
There is a 10% coupon on RAM for $7
Shipping looks to be less than $4 bucks.
Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm ...
$49.99
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - OEM
$29.99
XFX Core Edition PRO550W (P1-550S-XXB9) 550W ATX12V 2.2 & ESP12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified ...
$69.99
GIGABYTE GA-Z77-DS3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
$104.99
SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD250KW 2.5" 250GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
$184.99
Intel Core i3-3225 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ...
$139.99
MSI N650TI-1GD5/V1 GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready Video Card
$129.99
Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$69.99
LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model iHDS118-04 - OEM
$21.99
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL
$69.99
Shipping Method:
$3.86
DISCOUNT FOR AUTOADD #81781
-$49.99
Subtotal $871.90
Tax $0.00
Shipping $3.86
Promo Code -$25.50
Grand Total $850.26
(also $60 in MIR cards)