hardware advice Thread

I am looking into replacing my computer. It's pretty old and I wasn't into programming when I bought it so it's nothing special. I want to get something much better suited to video game development. I have several questions though. I would really prefer to have a laptop so I can have it completely separate from the family computer. I just don't want to limit the computer though. I also am considering a custom build, but am not sure of that is better than just buying one or not. Lastly, and this really depends on the first 2 questions, but if I don't custom build, is Mac a good option?

Mac is a good option if your making mac games, but your really just paying for the apple logo and not getting much more in the way of performance. You will never get the same performance from a laptop vs a tower.

Personally I have an ASUS X552C it was fairly cheap @350£ (2-3 years ago) and has a ((dedicated ) a must for games) Nvidia 710m GPU reasonable ram (6gb) and CPU (i3) performance.

However this is not my main PC and if it was to replace my main PC i would go for and i7 CPU with 16gig of ram and the most uptodate dedicated GPU, I could find, this could set you back over £1000~

Current main rig is over 5 years old and cost £1500+ so i see that as a worthwhile investment as its still performing well considering its age.
(1st gen i7, 8gig ram, GTX 960 (replaced hd5800) this was a custom build and cost less than a store purchased pc. (if you can get 16 - 32 gig of ram you will have alot more wiggle room and its probably worth it now days with the higher bus speeds)

Hope that helps.

It does very much! Thank you!