20+ Years in PC Gaming Delivery Australia Wide Gaming PCs, Laptops & Accessories 4.9 Star Google Review Rating 100% Australian Customer Support
20+ Years in PC Gaming Delivery Australia Wide Gaming PCs, Laptops & Accessories 4.9 Star Google Review Rating 100% Australian Customer Support
What a time to be a PC gamer! Incredible tech, mouth-watering visuals, and with the emergence of VR and streaming, so many different ways to play, watch and learn. There has never been this much attention on and hype surrounding our favourite pastime.
The team behind Allied has been at the forefront of PC gaming since Doomguy was knee-high to a Cyberdemon, and we’ve loved every minute of it. We know the excitement speccing up, buying and setting up a new PC brings firsthand, and we’ve helped countless gamers experience it for themselves, listening and fine-tuning our offerings along the way. But we also know that all that choice, all those possibilities, can make for a confusing, sometimes a little overwhelming, and potentially very time-consuming and expensive process.
Whether you’re considering a preconfigured or customisable desktop gaming PC purchase, there are some core questions you need to ask yourself right from the beginning, and the answers to those questions will shape your decision making.
We’re going to share some of our knowledge to help you ask the right questions, get the right answers, and choose the right gaming PC for your needs.
Let’s start with the most important word for you in this entire process. To get the most out of your gaming PC, and your budget, there’s one word that overrides everything else in terms of importance, and it applies to everything: your budget, your component choices, and the way you’ll use it.
Balance.
Everyone has a set amount they’re looking to spend on their PC. Some budgets will be at the entry level, some people will have plenty to spend, some budgets might be rigid and some might be a little more flexible, but everyone’s working to a dollar figure. And that dollar figure will ultimately determine what you can buy.
But it goes deeper than that, because, with most of the PC’s cost coming from its processor and graphics card, you might be tempted to stump up for the highest-tier graphics card, or the most expensive processor on the market, thinking this will give you the best performance.
It won’t. Apportioning too much of your overall budget to one component will inevitably mean skimping on others, and that is going to throw the balance of your build out of whack.
The truth is, neither a crazy-powerful processor nor an ultra-spec graphics card on their own are any good, because you’ll run into bottlenecks, where one can’t keep up with the other. They have to work together.
Simiarly, going too deep into your budget on both CPU and GPU doesn’t help either, because you still need a great case and plenty of storage and memory, to be able to game with confidence and without worrying about running out of storage space, being hampered by low, or slow, RAM or having your components starved of cool air.
Balance. It forms the basis for our Ready To Ship PC range, a collection of beautifully balanced, preconfigured PCs at various price-and performance-points in which you don’t need to change a thing. Every PC sports a perfectly paired processor and graphics card, rock-solid chipset, loads of storage, fast RAM and a reliable power supply, all housed in a stylish, functional case with serious wow-factor. And they all ship in lightning-quick time.
Your quest for the perfect gaming PC could very easily end right here, but if you want to keep reading to learn more, go right ahead.
Your PC’s processor and graphics card are the brains and the brawn of your setup, responsible for the bulk of its performance in gaming, productivity, and general use. This is also why, as we’ve said above, they’re responsible for the majority of its cost. Here are the most important questions to ask yourself, and our advice on answering them!
PC cases come in 4 classes: ITX/small form factor (tiny), M-ATX/mid-tower (compact, conventional), ATX/mid-to full-tower (conventional, and quite large) and E-ATX/super tower (very large through to statement pieces). The two most common, M-ATX and ATX, will physically fit in the majority of workspaces or gaming setups, and are also functionally very similar. M-ATX motherboards are shorter in length and might feature one fewer PCIE or expansion slot than an ATX motherboard, but otherwise, it’s mostly just a size thing.
The way we structure our builds, there is a “cap” on the tier of graphics card and processor that we’ll house in our M-ATX Stinger case, due to the size and compatibility limits in the smaller case. In the ATX Patriot case however, more space = more power, and there are no such performance caps in place; the Patriot handles any modern processor or graphics card.
In the super-tower M.O.A.B. that principle is taken even further, with again space for any component, but additional fans as standard and compatibility with 360mm liquid coolers, and a commanding, awe-inspiring physical presence. You’ll need a lot of desk space for this big boy.
This is 100% down to personal taste, but all we’ll say is: we love the way our cases look just as much as we love how they perform. There are just too damn many dark, drab cases out there, using RGB lighting as a crutch for uninspired, overly-clean-bordering-on-sterile aesthetics, or those just look weird, so we felt an overwhelming urge to flip the whole thing on its head.
That’s why we settled on our light, bright, white cases, in which RGB lighting is complementary, not compensatory. Go with the black box herd if you want, but if you want your gaming PC to stand out, you know where to find us.
Here’s where we’ll be frank: we’re often dismayed, and more than a little shocked, at some of the PC cases still in use today by some of the major brands. Visually unique, aesthetically pleasing, on-point brand-wise? Sure they are. But functional and fit for purpose in the ways that really matter? We’re honestly not so sure.
Along with the power and performance of current-gen components has come a substantial increase in their thermal needs. That’s a fancy way of saying this new tech gets hot, and PC cases need a lot of cool air coming through them to keep component temperatures down. What happens if components get too hot? They can experience thermal throttling (lower performance), and even sustain damage over time, in the most serious instances.
In our view, a high-airflow case isn’t just a recommendation, it’s a non-negotiable. That’s why all our cases – the Stinger, the Patriot and the M.O.A.B. – feature multiple intake fans, at least one exhaust fan, additional roof ventilation, and unobstructed front panels that allow for unhindered airflow to critical components.
Wherever you go for your next gaming PC, please, don’t settle for a dark, dank, hotbox when so many better options are all around you. Your components (and your wallet) will thank you for it.
There are many great gaming PC builders doing their thing on Australian soil. But there are also well-known brands that take and fulfil their orders from regional distribution centres based in South East Asia. Buying from a brand that assembles their PCs in Australia, supports Australian business, supports local jobs, and ensures profits stay here in Australia. You’re supporting local professionals, whose enthusiasm and passion match your own.
This might not come as any great surprise, but those brands who are fulfilling out of South East Asia? Much of their support is hosted there, too. Sub-standard customer support and warranty service is so 2006. Local support, and local warranty service is where it’s at.
Think of a major PC brand, then Google said PC brand + “overheating”. Or + “technical issues”. Or + “low framerates”. You’ll be shocked by how many results show up, on enthusiast forums, Reddit, and even the brands’ own website support forums. Page after page of complaints about temperature issues, performance issues, basic build quality issues…there’s just no way every PC that’s being shipped is being stress-tested and thoroughly checked before being dispatched. If they were, these issues would be being picked up and resolved.
And if they are being picked up, but still being shipped out? That’s worse.
It’s a basic and reasonable assumption that the PC you’re buying for thousands of dollars is going to last a decent length of time, and in the future (unless there is a major generational hardware footprint change, which does happen every so often) you’re going to be able to upgrade the components in said PC to keep up with technological demands with relative ease, even if it takes a bit of know-how. Right?
Wrong. Many leading brands use proprietary hardware, hardware that belongs to them and them alone. This means you can’t upgrade your PC without going back to them, if it’s even possible at all, because of some obscure (or nefariously intentional) design decision that means you’d have to buy an entirely new PC to get better hardware.
It’s more common than you think. At Allied, our PCs are built using technology that’s freely available in the open market. So if you want to upgrade your PC further down the line, you can.
We even offer an Upgrade Program, where we’ll give you credit for components purchased through us, to help get you into better hardware, for less.
This is a bit of a nit-pick, but it bugs us that prebuilt gaming PCs featuring, say, an RTX 3080 10GB graphics card, are nearly always paired with ultra-high tier processors like Ryzen 9 or Core i9. Don’t get us wrong – there’s nothing wrong with doing this in terms of performance.
But their prices are just prohibitive, like, crazy thousands of dollars.
Where’s the balance? What’s wrong with offering the best bang-for-buck processors on the market – the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X for example – with these graphics cards, when they’re perfectly matched performance-wise?
The answer is pretty simple: they can charge a hell of a lot more for an 8- or 12-core processor than they can for a 6-core processor. They’re trying to make it seem like these expensive (and depending on what resolution/settings you’re looking to play on, potentially wasteful) processors are the only suitable pairings.
Don’t let them tell you this. They’re not.
From nit-pick to full-on bug-bear, for the love of all that is holy in this world, don’t buy a high-tier system in a case that isn’t fit for purpose. Many of the leading brands are using cases whose design and aesthetics cost millions in tooling and development, but are functionally antiquated to the point of being unfit for purpose.
These brands are so heavily invested in their chassis that they have no choice but to keep foisting them onto unsuspecting gamers when in reality, a quick glance at those brands’ own support forums will tell you all you need to know: avoid.
The most damning of all. Prebuilt PC pricing is bloated and unreasonable, especially in these times where individual components can be difficult, if not impossible, to find. It might be going too far to call it price-gouging, but seriously, when we check out our competitors’ pricing, we actually wince.
We’re not aiming to be the lowest price in the market, and we’re not saying you couldn’t build it yourself for less, but we are saying that pricing out there is too high, and our commitment to making PC gaming accessible to everyone starts with our commitment to reasonable, fair pricing.
So there you have it. We hope the information here has helped you ask the right questions, and armed you with knowledge you need to make the right choice for you.
If you have any other questions, hit us up via email via [email protected], or on socials: @alliedgamingpc, and we’ll be happy to share our knowledge.
