Hey guys, help with my dilemma!

[ravenvii]

I have a PC tower, right? Well, I don't use it much. I do most of my gaming on consoles those days.

So I'm thinking of selling my PC. I've been doing all of my computer stuff (browsing, email, etc) on my Mac now.

HOWEVER, this season was a whammy of PC games that I want to play. Rome: Total War, HL2, WoW and more.

So I'm thinking of dumping the tower, and converting it to a Mini-PC so I can easily transport it between college and home. Problem is, it'll take money. Probably lots of it, since I'll probably be forced to upgrade much of my components, due to the many new architectures today (different CPU slots, different graphic card slots, different memory slots, etc). My dilemma is: is it worth it just for gaming? One side says NO, it's just games, just stick to consoles. The other side says HL2, HL2, HL2, HL2...

What do you guys think I should do? Any ideas how to do this cheaply?

[Daehawk]

Why? The only difference it will bring is size. And it will cost a fortune so if you have a working tower why bother?

[stiffler]

As a pretty hardcore PC gamer I would really have trouble justifying the cost it will take to build a truly wonderous rig with the sole intent to play games.  Sure, there are a TON of great games and features you can't get anywhere else, but will it be worth the price of admission?

My suggestion (and maybe I am wrong) would be to build the best rig you can so you don't have to worry about upgrading for a good long time, at which point you will once again find yourself asking this same question.  This is going to cost more, but I think it is money well spent in the long run.

If you can spare the money, go for it.  If not, stick with consoles and kiss PC gaming goodbye.

I would miss PC gaming, but I could probably survive without it.  Hey, you can always wait a few years and hope for the off-chance that Aspyr will port your favorite PC game to the Mac.  :lol: Or you can save a ton of money and buy console games that will look and play great everytime, right out of the box.  You will undoubtedly miss out on a few genres (strategy comes to mind) and mods, but you will still have a ton of games to play.

The again maybe an upgrade just isn't that expensive these days?  Depends on what you are looking for, which is an entirely different thread.

[ravenvii]

Why? The only difference it will bring is size. And it will cost a fortune so if you have a working tower why bother?

If you read my post, you'll know. The tower is big, heavy and unwieldy. I can't bring it back and forth between home and college, and I don't have room in the car for the tower. So I basically only get to use it 4-5 months out of the entire year. Right now it's sitting at home, collecting dust until my Christmas break when I'm bringing home my monitor. (It's a LCD, and I can fold it flat, so it's about as small as a laptop once flattened. I love it).

Whether or not I should upgrade it isn't the question anyway; it's either I sell it/get rid of it, or downsize it.

[Daehawk]

Yeah i read it I just did'nt see a problem..Ive lugged mine around for years and its a super tower. Makes me think "why when i was your age we had to carry around computers as big as washing machines through 3 feet of snow just to go to a lan party."  

I saw someone had a super fast minicase for gaming..was about $5000 lol

[Semaj]

If you cant fit a tower in your car, your car is a shwinn

[Jeff]

If you cant fit a tower in your car, your car is a shwinn

or ... "if you can't fit a tower in your car, you need to adjust your priorities"

Kidding, R7.  Mini cases (aka SFF) are pretty expensive, but you might could transfer your CPU, vid card, and ram, and whatever CD/DVD drive you have, as well as your current hard drive(s).  

The case will come with a motherboard, and will run anywhere from $150 to $300. and that's *without* all the other stuff (well, you'll get a power supply).

to truly go "mini", you'd need an LCD monitor, if you don't have that.

[ravenvii]

I don't think they're expensive at all. I paid $30 for my PSU, $100 for my case, and $100 for my mobo. That adds up to... $230. Not much of a difference.

If I do decide to go ahead with this, I plan to spend about $500 plus whatever I can get from selling the unused components on the project. Basically, I have $500 to spend, and whether it goes to the PC, or to new games for the consoles, DVDs, etc, is the question.

[Jeff]

For $500 and your current components, you should easily be able to make the switch. What are you waiting for?