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Can anyone tell me which computer is good for playing Skyrim on? I want one of the best, but i want a resonable price as well. And also if you play on PC can you tell me what computer you play on and how well Skyrim plays on it. Thanks!

There is no such thing as a good computer that you buy.

The only good computers are the ones you build yourself, anything else is a massive ripoff.

How much can those cost?

If you shop at a place like newegg.com, a lot less then some store bought counterpart.

I'm currently building myself a good computer for gaming, and so far it has costed me approximately 800 US dollars. My build in the spoiler:

Based off of reviews that I've read, this should handle Skyrim on Ultra with mods. For CPUs, you could go with an AMD instead of Intel, as they're cheaper, but in my opinion Intel is the way to go. They are more expensive, but I believe that they are more powerful. But as long as your CPU is a Quad-core and operates around 3 GHz, you should be fine.

For video cards, this page on the UESP has a good list, and the talk page is also something that you should read. Also just a matter of preference, I like ATI GPUs better than Nvidia, but that is just an opinion with no real reason behind it.

As long as you have a good CPU, video card, and at least 4 GB of RAM, you should be good to play. Just keep in mind that Skyrim doesn't need the best of the best components to run on highest settings. If you were willing to downgrade the graphics a bit, you could easily build a PC for about 600-700$.

Final note, always, always buy from Newegg.com. Everything there is just so much cheaper. I checked out Best Buy's website, and the only rig they had that came close to mine costed over 1,100 dollars.

^This

And also, there is simply no "best" computer for skyrim, there are a variety that are good, simply picking out 1 and calling it the best would be impossible.

I am not a computer nerd, (hell, I don't even like computers all that much), but, let me offer this advice anyway. Don't skimp on the power supply. While they aren't sexy, they are vitally important to how a computer functions. Unfortunately, power supplies often become lost and are overlooked in all the retail razzle-dazzle. An otherwise capable PC can be severely hamstrung by a trashy under-speced PS. Think of building a PC like building a house. In a house, the unsexy foundation is the most important element of the construction. If the foundation is weak or flawed, the entire structure is compromised. In a PC, the power supply is the foundation.

When it comes to power supplies, be sure you get one with multiple-rail power delivery. A PS that feeds everything from a single common rail can cripple an otherwise good PC.

If you're not that computer savvy and you're going to learn how to build a PC, then it's actually worth paying the extra premium for a pre-built PC since there are a lot of places where you could screw up even when you have great parts.

What Evil-i mentioned about the power supply is a good example, but that is just one of the many things that need to fit together to get a computer to achieve maximum capacity. A well built computer with worse parts will run much better than a poorly built one with better parts.

The premium has come down a bit now, too. It's around 20% more if you get it pre-built. $200 more for a $1000 computer isn't much considering it takes 10+ hours to learn how to and to assemble your computer (assembling is easy, tweaking is hard). $200/10 = $20/hr. If you make more than that, it's worth saving your time and doing work in the time you would be assembling your computer.

The best ones are indeed the computers that you build by yourself. Compared to the products on different website.
f.e.: one model of graphic card is much cheaper then when you buy it on another website (+-10/15euro's).

I bought the parts myself and put together a tower and spent like 1300 dollars on it. However I looked at what I wound up using and if I were to try and get the same stuff from say alienware it'd cost well over two grand (but alienware is over priced anyways) or like 1800 if I bought something the store I was in at the time had ready made.

Really... I stopped even looking at systems I see in stores cause they never have all the info I'd want to know about in an easy to see spot (and most of the time the clerks know even less about the systems they're tending).

Yeah, I'd agree with everybody else when they say getting a custom PC is the best way to go. It's easier to get what you want that way. Unless you build a really crappy PC, you should be happy with what you get.

I can't really add anything else onto what everybody else has said, but there is one thing (please keep in mind that I'm not expert with this sort of thing. This is only from experience). It's not really much of an issue, but if you want to play Skyrim or other games with a lot of mods and high resolution texture packs, you'll want to get a graphics card with more than 1GB of VRAM available. I'd go with a Nvidia card myself, preferably with 2GB or more of VRAM. I don't trust ATI cards anymore after an issue I had with shoddy drivers before (resulting in bright green, flashing screens). I've never had such a problem with any of my Nvidia cards. Of course, it comes down to preference. And cost.

My dad bought himself a new graphics card for his PC (a 2000 dollar rig). It's a Nvidia GTX 680 2GB, I think, and it cost him around 600 dollars. Expensive, yes, but you might be able to find a cheaper one somewhere.


My PC itself is three years old and runs Skyrim on very high settings (in other words: I'm running Skyrim on higher than high settings, but lower than Ultra) between 30-60fps. I've got a Windows 7 64-bit system with an Intel Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E6500 2.93GHz 2.94GHz, P5G41T-M motherboard, 4GB RAM, and a Nvidia GTX 285 1GB GPU. This thing cost around 1000 dollars three years ago. The same parts would be much cheaper. I reckon it would run an unmodded game fairly well. Remember: the 30-60fps I get is from a heavily modded game. I use many texture/mesh replacers (more than I should, to be honest), and have around 60 mods installed. This thing runs Skyrim fairly well considering how old and out of date it is.

If you want to run on Ultra, you'll need better. Definitely go for a Quad-Core CPU. Intel, preferably.


My exact Skyrim settings, for those interested:

Hooray for PC building! If I were you friend, I would check out reddit for some guidance. In particular, /r/buildapc and /r/buildapcforme. That first one will help you out quite a bit with research and give you feedback once you have an idea of what you want to get. The second one will give you a good build to launch off from if you have no idea what you want.

Here are some other resources that you may want to look at:
Logical Increments PC Buying guide - A big table that shows you what you should be looking at for any given price point (always ask for feedback, don't just take their word alone)
PCPartPicker - A wonderful site to keep track of your build

Also, to address the issue of pre-built: DON'T DO IT (unless you're buying a laptop). Somebody mentioned that the premium is only 20%, but that doesn't factor in two things: the motherboard and the power supply. When you buy pre-built the manufacturer will often give you a [&@%!] power supply and a [&@%!] motherboard, two parts which are absolutely integral and in the case of the power supply, can absolutely destroy all of your other components. Not worth it.

But yeah, you really don't need much computer to run skyrim. My crappy laptop can handle it just fine, and it's a 3 year old workstation laptop. On the other end, you can really push things if you're willing to spend the money. My desktop that I just built runs it at max settings with over 200 mods (mostly hi res texture mods), with ENB and ultra SMAA on top of that. All still at 60+ fps. I, however, had been saving up for several years to buy this thing, so I spent a pretty penny on it. You really don't need anywhere close to that much though.

My specs, if you're interested:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor overclocked to 4.5GHz
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X60 98.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Z87-PRO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Video Card overclocked to ~1067GHz base, ~1167GHz boost with 7ghz vram overclock
Case: NZXT Phantom 630 (Matte Black) ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800W 80 PLUS Gold Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor
Mouse: Razer DeathAdder 2013 Wired Optical Mouse

Pics are here, because it happened.