Looking for a prebuilt gaming computer...what company?

[Cooljt1]

A bud of mine wants to get a system with the price range of about $2000 to $3000 including monitor(s)

He's looking for this system to last about 2 to 3 years. He plays wow but wants to be able to play other first person shooters or what not like crysis. Now if he was local I would build him a computer myself but since he's not prebuit is looking like the best option plus the fact that he's not too computer savy. I was taking a look at Alienware systems but I know they used to be on the pricier side for what you get. Any suggestions would be great.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Sounds like the perfect time for him to learn something....help him pick out parts maybe, and give him tutorials on how to build it...imo.

NOTHING runs Crysis

 

[DaveSimmons]

Alienware is OK if you must buy prebuilt, as long as you pay attention to the parts mix and don't buy stupid options like "gaming RAM" that's $500 extra or a quad core CPU that's $900 extra and no faster than an E8500 Core Duo.

You'll pay an extra $300-400 for the assembly and factory warranty, but on a $3,000 system that's not too bad.

Actually the $1,629 (no monitor) Area 51 7500 special they have right now is pretty good -- 2 x 8800GT in SLI (faster than the new GTX 260 -- see the AnandTech 280260 review), Q600 2.4 GHz quad core, 250GB HD, 4 GB RAM.