I’m getting my son a new computer for his upcoming b-day. He’s an avid WoW player. What do you recommend for a budget of about $2k. I’m ok with exceeding the budget by a little if there’s really good value.
Do you feel comfortable building it yourself or do you need a pre-built?
I can part out a system for you if you can put it together.
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Aye, and you’ll get more for your budget if you’re capable of building it yourself.
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If you AREN’T comfortable with building the PC yourself (or hell, with your son), the next best thing would be going through a builder like CyberPowerPC. There are a handful of those companies out there, and they have to make a profit so ofc it’s not as cheap as doing it yourself, but it’ll still be better than a prebuilt at Best Buy or whatever and you get more control over what goes into it. They also offer their own prebuilt things, but if you can get someone to help you pick parts yourself it would probably be better.
Other posters might know the “best” company to go with, but my SO used CyberPower recently and it was fine. All of them will take ~3 weeks to get you the PC you order, so hopefully there’s enough time here.
As a bit of an aside: $2k for a PC primarily being used for WoW is overkill. It’ll definitely ensure it lasts a bit longer, so I’m not saying don’t do it, but if WoW is the most intensive thing it’ll be used for? That’s a lot.
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Definitely pre-built. I have trouble just navigating the forums. 
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That looks pretty solid and fairly reasonably priced. It leaves room in your budget to get a good monitor and peripherals too.
Shame you can’t build it yourself, though. That could have been a fun thing to do with your boy!
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Good to know. Maybe we can save a little then. It’ll be pretty much WoW, Minecraft, a few other games, and of course schoolwork.
Get him this.
~https://www.digitalstorm.com/configurator.asp?id=2071290
Right in your price range, and with free shipping should just be over 2k. He will love you for this computer.
It does – my only concern would be the amount of storage. Not a lot there. Would probably go with a 2TB HDD, maybe more than one if kiddo’s Steam library is extensive.
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If that’s the case I would do what was mentioned up above. But treat it like such. CyberPowerPc really screwed my brother over on a few things when he ordered his. So like a used car, you really can be hit or miss, even with the same company.
Also 2k is plenty to build a beefy rig these days. WoW is very CPU dependent, so look for a good processor as your starting point. A decent sized SSD is really nice for cutting loadscreens out too, and having windows on it.
all that for 1.5k isn’t bad at all.
That’s what I thought! It’s barely marked up from what you’d spend if you built it yourself and it leaves wiggle room in his budget!
And it’s snappy!
Yep, but that’s cheap and easy to swap out. Could watch a youtube video and do it no problem.
Someone mostly just playing WoW and Minecraft won’t need 2TB. I have 30 Steam Games, WoW, SCII, Overwatch, Destiny 2, Minecraft, FFXIV, and Apex Legends installed and have like 275GB leftover with a max of 1.25TB (and there’s of course non-game stuff in there too, including like 40GB of programming junk, and a good amount of HD video clips).
Echoing this, I have had trouble with CyberPowerPC in the past. Digital Storm always treated me well though, which is why I recommend them.
True, but it’s nice to have additional space for future expandability.
And 2TB hdds are like $50 now-a-days.
Nope, but they’ll probably need more than 16GB of RAM if they mod Minecraft to any great extent. Java is a memory hog, and Minecraft especially so.
Acer Predator Helios 17.3"
Laptops are no bueno unless you just require the portability.
I have one now… love it (got it for gaming on the go while on business travel)!
As for towers, built my own with my son a few years back, lasted several years and the experience was invaluable. ![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
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Just dropping in to write how awesome it is to see the community so agreeably discussing things to help one of their own.
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