Alienware Gaming Rig
If ever there was a device perfectly suited to drag someone back into the PC cult, Alienware has built it. Their machines are ostentatious, aesthetically pleasing, compact and powerful. They’re also crazy expensive, but if you’re committed to being this level of generous on Christmas you might as well go for the brand-focused folks at Alienware. The Alpha series is pretty beefy without jumping into $2,000+ territory, sporting a respectable GTX 960 graphics card and an equally respectable Intel CPU. They also sell one they call ‘Area 51’ if your loved ones are the heirs to like, a candy company fortune or something.
Origin Gaming Rig
If you’re rolling in filthy lucre but unimpressed with the aesthetic sensibilities Alienware has to offer, there’s always Origin. Composed of former Alienware employees, Origin offers up a similar high-end PC gaming experience with a wealth of customization options available. You can even contact their designers to create a custom look for your tower. This means you could potentially gift someone with a high-powered gaming PC with a hideous case. It would be a pretty expensive way to mess with someone, but if you’ve got Origin PC money, why not? All kidding aside, their budget model (codenamed Neuron) comes with a GTX 1050 Ti. Again, a pretty respectable card for the lowest tier gaming PC they have for sale.
Rigs on The Cheap
Maybe all this talk of high-end rigs is giving you the heeby-jeebies. Maybe you want to be generous, but not like, too generous. In that case, let’s look at something more budget-friendly. PC Part Picker’s Canadian site runs compatibility tests as you choose each component, so it’s less likely that whatever you cobble together will simply refuse to work. I put together a modest build for just under $800 here, although it didn’t include an operating system or an optical drive.
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