Barebones Gamer - Is This the Answer to High Gaming PC Prices?

by Michael Quarles

A top of the line gamer can cost as much as a used car. One alternative to the high prices is a "barebones gamer". Here's how much you can save, and what's involved.

This is an unfinished PC. With the barest of the barebones you get a motherboard and CPU, mounted in a case, with a power supply. You buy the rest, and assemble it. Barebones units aimed at the gamer will usually be a notch above this. They’ll have some RAM installed, though perhaps not as much as you’d like. A few I’ve seen lately have dual core CPU’s. The motherboard may be SLI ready, and on rare occasions you’ll find a Crossfire board.

For just about every barebones, you buy your own hard drive, CD/DVD, and most important for game play, the graphics card (or cards). Since you’ll want maximum speed, get extra RAM, particularly if you intend to run Vista. Both Premium and Ultimate versions require 1GB.

By bargain hunting for parts, and assembling it yourself, you can shave $300 to $500 off the price by going the barebones route. To do this, you’ll have to be patient, always looking for sales and rebates. Scour the internet on a daily basis, if necessary, because the real bargains on hard drives and such can sell out in a matter of hours.

Also, don’t forget the “big box” stores when parts hunting. Only days ago, I was surprised to find an 80GB hard drive selling for $20 cheaper at Walmart than any place else.

With all this talk of money to be saved, you’re probably asking yourself “Okay, what’s the catch? Are they really hard to put together? And just what kind of quality can I expect?”

Assembling a PC is relatively easy. Anyone with a good how-to manual can do it in an afternoon. As to quality, you may actually come out ahead of the mass produced factory machines.

What you must look for in a barebones is a good motherboard, and a big enough power supply to handle the job. Since your CPU will be an AMD or Intel, you know you’ll be getting quality. Some merchants will try to get rid of off-brand boards, or too small power supplies by selling them in barebones units, so check carefully.

Look for features like PCI Express slots, and SATA on your unit’s motherboard to get maximum speed. Require your power supply to be at least 500 watts to handle the demands of a fast processor and GPU.