Windows 7: should I build my own gaming rig or buy one pre built?

I use to hold this to be true myself untill I started keeping track of my expenses.

Anyway it's not so much that it's cheaper to build than it is that you can customize the way you want.

Yeah, I can by a 600 dollar system, but i'm not going to get what I want at that price; building it can get me what I want, but chances are the price will be higher since I'm customizing to my liking.

Anyway most people who build their own system aren't looking at it from a cheaper point of view, but rather a customized point of view.

Anyway I'm sure you can build a good gaming system for around $800 bucks.

My two cents.

Hey guys sorry I haven't been replying but I found a good cpu for about 605 dollars can you tell me if these are good specs?

case: Rosewill black steel R103A Mid tower computer case
video card: vision tek radeon HD 5770
cooling fans: Cooler Master Sickleflow 120 R4-L2R-20AR-R2 120mm + extreme power plus 460
hard drive: Western Digital half terabyte hard drive (caviar Blue)
motherboard: ASUS M4A785-M AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
RAM:corsair ddr2 4GB 2 piece 2GB RAM sticks
CPU:AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX640WFGMBOX
DVD Burner:ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS - OEM
processor: Windows 7 Home premium

So can y'all tell me if that's a good rig for the price im getting or do you recommend upgrading any of those parts?

I honestly built my system with 366 dollars, that's without the monitor or case, I rebuilt that. My suggestion is to start low and go high. I'm planning to do a system upgrade here soon, and this is a year after I built it.

Well, going with Intel I can tell you right off the bat will take a BIG chunk of money, for obvious reasons. I use AMD and haven't had any regrets!

But on a side note, go with a 750 watt PSU to start off with, 500 isn't enough to support the latest NVIDIA graphics cards well...

Go with DDR3 RAM, AM3 sockets support that, DDR2 is on its way out of the door. Also, definitely get more RAM, on Newegg, there are some eight gig dual bus?(Damn, I lost the word for it) kits. Go for the lowest timings, as in 7-7-7-19, or 21.
Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Memory, Desktop Memory, 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM, 8GB (2 x 4GB), 7

See if you can get a Phenom quad core, those overclock well and perform pretty great.

For a gaming rig, one must need fast storage performance. I'd look into seeing if you can support a RAID config. With 250+ MB/sec, that'll improve system performance like no other.

I do like the madreboard! I myself have an ASUS madreboard!

thanks for the recommendation I have switched around the RAM and CPU and only went up about 20 dollars also I don't really know how to find out if I can support RAID with that build sorry that's the first time i've ever heard of RAID so if you could tell me that would help also my case is the right size for all those computer parts right? just want to know before I buy the parts.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Basically, for people that work with servers, it's uber great because it actively backs up new data on the fly. There are about 10? different configurations, with RAIDs 0, 1, and 5 configs being the most popular. RAID 0 is generally most used for gaming and hard core machines, but has the risk of losing a MUCHO amount of data if one of the drives fails.

Basically with RAID 0, you have two 500 gig(or whatever equal sized)drives with about 100 megabits of read speed and when two come together, it turns into a terabyte with 200 megabits of read speed. Essentially, you can think of it as a dual core processor for storage, two processors work together in one and gets more work done. A RAID has two or more drives working as one with faster read speeds.

RAID 5 is like 0 but it has redundancy, meaning two hard drives actively back up the other two drives. It's great since if one drive dies, just throw a new one of equal size and the array will rebuild itself over a period of time, depending on how much data you have.

It's a bit much, but oh well!

Then there's Solid State Drives, but those are bank breakers at this current spectrum of time....

Oh shoot! Forgot something else, if you get the Phenom processor, also consider a different heatsink cooler for it. The heatsinks that come with any processor is generally iffy, especially if overclocking comes into play.

I'd recommend a heatsink that has copper heat pipes and a lot of fins on it with a fan that has high airflow.

Or an el cheapo water cooler.
Corsair H70 is popular for entry level.

I read this differently. I thought he was trying to keep this gaming box price under $600 as he was trying to pinch pennies to keep money for an eventual Core i9. Besides, what's a core i9? Perhaps he meant, Core i7-990X....which in and of itself is $1,000.

yes that's my fault for kinda being stupid saying I want a 600 dollar computer with an i9 but yes intel does make the i9 processor let me explain: It's a lot like the Core i7, except built with a 32nm fabrication process and two extra cores for a total of six meaning it's a hexacore.