hiya! i'm an old gamer and could use some advice. my goal is to play Skyrim and Fallout games as best they can be played. my 4yr old DELL XPS 17 w/ HD 4850 512mb has played anything as well as i'd like, except for these open world games w/ lotsa textures. so i want this PC to play them flawlessly. no lag or stutter. and i love MODS! always run a bunch but can't use hardly any texture or enemy spawn mods, so i want this machine to play like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzRwEYolrU


and before ya say it...i really don't wanna risk building this myself because i have health conditions that have made my eyes bad w/ small stuff and my hands tremble a bit. so thought about going with IBuypower. seems like they have some good deals for Labor day.

now 1st i was planning to gather the parts and take then to my local Microcenter, who've confirmed they'd build it for me ($150, plus i'd be getting some parts there). here was a list of parts recommended to me by some very helpful folks (last few posts on 1st page)...
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1423102/please-help-me-upgrade-or-buy-a-new-pc

but after adding everything up, and taking into account tax, fees, ect, it seems to be a bit cheaper at Ibuypower and some parts are even better (i think. i'm very ignorant on this).

so if y'all could look at the builds they gave mt at AVS, and what i'm thinking about at IBP, i'd really appreciate it. i think i could even bring the IBP build down cheaper. like do i really need the Asus Sabertooth mo if i'm not going SLI? i do want to futureproof and may go SLI sometime, but it's an xtra $173. by the time i wanna go sli i might just need a whole new mobo. and IBP has a good upgrade to the 660 3gb gpu. is the 670 4gb that much better for $278?? so if you could look at the IBP build, tweak it, add subtract whatever. i'd love to get it down to around $2000 shipped. or if ya think it's be better to go with the AVS parts and let Microcenter build it, or even something totally different, then let me know.

thanks for lookin and the build is in the next post.

edit: damn. don't know why that video is big like that. just meant to leave the link.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzRwEYolrU

Best thing you can do is go to the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1406651-the-community-tech-thread-no-119/ (over in the Community Forum). They do this sort of thing for people all the time, and have plenty of useful resources! (They helped me make my PC)

I've got some really good news for you, especially considering you're accustomed to Dell Laptop playing...

Any new Inspiron 17" model with a "dedicated graphics card" (NVidia GeForce, 500 series or better) will play Skyrim just fine. I just did a quick look and you should be able to get something under $1k, shipped, unless you also need to add in Office, McAfee, want more than 8GB, that kind of things. If you want full 1080p, then you're looking at just over $1k, but not by much, without shipping. Better news on full 1080p base models is that they're 600 series GeForce (650M), which is about double the performance of the 500 series. 500s can play on high NP, Ultra with some lag, 600 will be smooth as silk on Ultra, Also, the base 1080p models are stepped up from i5 to i7, not a huge difference, but some.

Now, if you wanted to go "gaming laptop" the Alienware base models are all on a par with souped up Inspiron models, maybe a bit better performance, but start around $1500 for 17".