So my gaming laptop finally died after 6 faithful years of service, which leaves me out a home computer entirely. I won’t have the savings to get all the parts for a few months.
A local retailer offers 0% interest funding, I’ve got a stable decent income and I’m confident I could make the payments. Is it worth it?
If you’re considering financing, then I’m presuming you don’t want to be spending money now?
Have you tried to troubleshoot your existing system to see if there’s a way to fix it?
Prices are very high now for almost all parts, including pre-builts.
I’ve got the laptop in the shop right now. They’re running physical diagnostics on it.
I believe it’s the charger port that’s bricked, thing only maintains power for about 30mins or so when plugged in, then hard shuts down without warning. If it was the battery (which has also been shot for a while) it would still maintain power as long as it was plugged in.
I’m looking at something like the “Magnificent Intel Gaming/Streaming Build” on PCPartPicker, but probably with a 2000 series rather than a 3000 series, mainly because 080s are rarer than gear from Nathria right now.
I can hopefully salvage the SSD and TB HDD from my existing laptop. But that budget looks like about $1000 to $2000.
And it’s not that I don’t want to spend the money, I was saving up to get like a $5k build, top-of-the-line, it’s more like I’d rather not be out a home gaming build for 2 months while i get the money. And who knows what’s gonna sap my budget in that time.
what’s your budget? do you have best buy credit?
Everything desktop is hiked up right now. Might be worth it to get a so-so laptop (to replace your current one) to game on, then when circumstances improve, you can spend more on the desktop you really want. Then just keep the laptop for mobile use.
Budget is up to about $2500 atm, as long as I can get it financed.
The monthly payments? Not a problem, tbh I’d almost prefer it, I’m horrible at saving money.
I’ve got a local retailer I’ll looking at rather than the big chain, they actually have my laptop now, and they’ve got finance options, i just gotta do some research.
Idk I guess I just need to to know, would I be paying more in the long run even for 0% financing than I would be buying it wholesale.
Not worried about building the thing btw, I work in IT, although I’ve never built a full desktop before I can get help easily enough.
The problem is that it’s hard to get some parts now like graphics cards and new CPUs without going through an OEM.
So if you wanted to buy a new graphics card right now, you either buy it with a pre-built or pay an ebay scalper a 100% markup.
Or camp for it on alerts. Graphics card is really the biggest issue. Even last gen stuff is low stock and/or marked up to the moon.
My old last gen GPU is worth more now than when I paid for it in 2019.
Yeah that’s why I’m comfortable with a 2000 series rather than a 3000 series, as long as it’s RTX.
Even that is difficult to find.
2070 Super, which was around $499-549 new last year is going for almost 50% markup generally on secondary markets, and are pretty much just unavailable new.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=rtx+2070+super&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_BIN=1
That’s just plain stupid, wow.
Yeah might have to go for a prebuilt I suppose.
The best strategy is really just camping for an MSRP new card, and then once you get that, get the other parts. Don’t buy anything until you get the GPU in your hands.
But since you are out of commission and can’t really just wait around, you might be stuck.
If you have a microcenter nearby, i’d try there right at opening every couple days to see if they have anything new.
Bookmark this and check it every so often, or follow discords/twitch streams for in-stock alerts.
Few prebuilts from Best Buy. Monitors are going to depend on with GPU you buy. Nvidia card, get Gsync. AMD get Freesync as a rule of thumb.
1080p
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberpowerpc-gamer-master-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-5-3600-8gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-580-2tb-hdd-240gb-ssd/6430867.p?skuId=6430867
1440p
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypower-trace-mr-gaming-desktop-intel-i7-10700f-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660ti-6gb-480gb-ssd-1tb-hdd/6437986.p?skuId=6437986