Building a Computer for Survivability

With simple upgrades, your computer can perform much better while avoiding the price tag of a new rig. This will allow you to keep maxing out settings on the latest games without forking over serious cash with a new every two deal that reminds me too much of my cell phone carrier without the subsidy.

Hold on a minute Dell can help...I think
The following graphic is Dell's payback program which it offers to customers who purchase their gaming (Alienware) PCs. After 6 months, Dell will pay you 50% of the value of the rig and will pay a diminishing amount as time goes on up to 2 years.

Source:www.dell.com

Good Deal?

This may sound like a good deal if you are already considering an Alienware computer; however the truth is far from it. The low-end gaming systems from Dell start at $1000 and go up from there, somehow I got past $7000 when selecting some more performance parts, but the outrageous prices can be a conversation best suited for another time. Let's consider a typical $2000 build for this type of gaming system. After one year, Dell is saying your once $2000 system is now worth $800. Let's say you take them up on their offer and get that $800, now you will need a new computer, so be prepared to fork over another $1200 to get the same kind of experience you had one year ago.

There are simple upgrades that will achieve the same benefit of this $1200 expense for less than half of the cost. I am not talking about keeping the case because you bought a cool sticker to put on it and you can't part with it, I am talking about reusing most of the current components to achieve equivalent results to that $2k build. Key upgrade components that are the most common include: graphics card (GPU), central processing unit (CPU), and memory.

Biting the bullet early, will save cash in the long run

There is a caveat to these components as the foundation of your computer must have a bit of future proofing built into it. By foundation, I mean the motherboard (primarily) and power supply (PSU) need to be compatible with the potential upgrades a year from now. For power supplies this is a relatively simple task as there are great power supplies in the market that have the power and efficiency to power rigs for multiple upgrade cycles. Spending an extra $30 for that highly efficient/well-rating PSU will undoubtedly help you out in the long run as it can extend save you more than $100 in replacements when that first and second upgrade cycle come along. For motherboards it is a little more complicated as new standards such as the latest USB and SATA being present in the motherboard, are a great way to get peak performance of components purchased one or two years down the road. Getting the best is not always recommended though.

Don't invest in R&D

The paragraph above is not a blind statement to invest in the R&D cycles of AMD and Intel. I rarely buy the latest CPU's and GPU's out on the market as their prices are ridiculously high and do not justify the marginal performance gain of the best in class of the previous generation of technology. Case in point, when the AM3 technology was just released, I scooped up a motherboard with AM2+/AM3 capability and put an AM2+ CPU while reaping in significant savings. Nine months later, I swapped out the CPU without having to change any other component on my computer.

How do I know what to upgrade?

What gives me the best bang for my buck is a constant question on my mind as well as many other gamers out there. This is where +1PC has come to the rescue as we have developed a great tool to evaluate upgrade options for a system you have either built yourself or purchased through an OEM such as Dell, HP, or others. Check out our UPGRADE TOOL to find what you need to keep your system surviving for another year or two.