I'm looking for a dirt-cheap but powerful laptop or desktop computer to satisfy my guilty pleasure of gaming. I don't care much about the build quality or noise/heat production, as long as the price is low and as long as it can run CIV5, SC2, anno1701 and TF2. Those are all not the very latest of games, so it should be possible.
Back home, 800 euro would buy me a brand-new no-brand computer with the latest specs from a guy who would put them together in the back of his truck. A normal PC with those specs would've cost me 1800 euro. The battery performance was lamentable and the heat and noise production very high. But I used it as a portable workstation rather than a mobile computer, so that was mostly fine.
Any ideas? I'm sure Chinese can pull off something similar? Or are there any good markets in Kunming where I can just buy the components at wholesale price and then put together the computer myself?
Build a desktop yourself I reckon, really it isn't that hard if you do the research and have a tinkering spirit! And I am 99% sure you will be able to pick up the bits from the IT malls on 121 road...
Hardest part is usually deciding the motherboard. Once you have that and a case, all the other bits just slide into it and you are away. Note though that you should probably buy some components from a single shop (maybe mobo, hard drive) so you can get the OEM version of an operating system - usually only sold with HD and/or mobo.
Most expensive bits are the processor, mobo and video card depending on how good it is. If you want real gaming performance get an SSD hard drive (solid state drive), put the OS on the SSD and any game you want to play. But if you want cheap, SSD will be out of your price range. Instead get some fast RAM and a lot of it (8GB recommended for Win7) plus a speedy (7200 RPM) HD and you would be away laughing.
Just remember things like always touching the case before touching any components (frying your RAM or mobo with static electricity is not fun), making sure you have enough fans for your insides, make sure you have enough power (get +30% more than what you need at least) and a good heat sink for your processor. Research and price everything first before you build - if your budget is 800 euro you will be able to build a pretty good box for that here.
If you don't know where to start, find a system that would be good that's about your price range on a western site and check to see if you can buy the components here. An example of the box it sounds like your after is:
www.pp.co.nz/products.php?pp_id=COM00434
This is 680 EUR as a straight conversion and would play the games you specify damn well.
If you don't mind building a desktop yourself, I would check out the shops along YuanTongBeiLu. The ones closer to the zoo are a bit cheaper, though you have to haggle. Also, around yieryi jie and longquan lu there is a multi story complex selling electronics. Not sure which is area cheaper, but I think you could buy all the components for less than 800 euro. However, since you are in China, the instructions probably would be in Chinese and the bios might boot in Chinese only. I bought a router there and even though it was DLINK, there was no way to change any settings to English. That made setup and troubleshooting much harder.
a dirt cheap powerful laptop ?
Well if you want cheap, copied hardware and software is your thing, don't expect it to last long though.
Why are people so goddamn full of themselves on these forums. TICexpats, I've been around in the IT world long enough to know that that's simply not true. Can you stop writing abrasive answers into threads that you don't know shit about?
AlexKMG and blobbles: thanks for the advice. I'll look into those hardware marts as soon as I get the money ready. I've built plenty of my own computers before so I think if I can find the right components cheaply, I'll be able to make a nice machine.
However, I was still hoping to get a laptop so I could take it whenever I move homes (I feel this could be a regular thing) and wouldn't have to sell it everytime I travel longer distances. Any ideas there?
Making a laptop is usually a bit trickier, but not impossible. The problem is that they are more often than not custom designed to fit parts exactly e.g. the case has been designed to fit a specific mobo perfectly (so no consideration for others, which may or may not fit). Where desktops have the ATX standard for fitting mobo's, laptops sometimes use the mATX standard, but this is applied willy nilly at the descretion of the makers (you can imagine a marketing person in the company saying "But I want this edge to be rounded!", which means the engineer has to work on fitting the mobo into a smaller space and hence modifying the mobo!)
I know it is possible to get bare bones laptop cases in the west that usually come with a mobo at least and usually HD as well. But not sure about their availability here. Often when you go down this path with a laptop though you will pay more than buying a new laptop with the same components and it can be a lot more hassle than with a desktop. Though not impossible, I wouldn't do it myself for these reasons.
My advice would be to get a generic branded laptop with a good video card. The games you want to play aren't that taxing and some new laptops come with half decent nvidia mobile graphics cards. I have one in my laptop and can play GTA4 on high settings pretty well - it just causes quite a lot of heat build up - so I would buy a cooler pad if I was gaming on it a lot. I am sure you could look around for one of the big brand laptops in the shops though and check out the video cards they come with. Something like a Nvidia GeForce GT 630M/550M/555M etc would do the trick easily. Just make sure you can buy an international warranty with it which covers it all over the world and for 3 years (I recommend this to anyone buying a laptop as most of their parts have a planned obsolescence period of about 2 years... the last laptop I bought had EVERY SINGLE piece except the keyboard and case replaced for free between 2 and 3 years under warranty). I usually buy Dells because I can get it online, customise lots of parts and their 3 year intl warranty is excellent. But their site here is crappy and their computers are much more expensive than in the west. Better bet is probably to visit the resellers here. I have seen some decent laptops in shops here with good mobile video cards so they are available at least, just not sure about the price and availability of intl/extended warranty.
Oh yeah - another option if you want to build yourself again could be a mini ITX case. Probably small enough fit in your pack but can be packed with enough power to make playing games easy and for not much more than a desktop...
