> "I feel like most people on this site could afford a small gaming machine, though." Always check if one of your local universities has a "University Surplus"

> "I feel like most people on this site could afford a small gaming machine, though." Always check if one of your local universities has a "University Surplus" store or similar. Many universities try to recoup some of their expenses by selling their old computer (and other) hardware when they upgrade, and it's usually ridiculously inexpensive to find a decent PC tower that you can toss a hard drive in and have a mostly pretty tolerable little gaming rig. A couple upgrades later and it can be a totally tolerable gaming rig. I've found many decent bargains at my local University Surplus store in the $50-ish price range for a working starter tower with motherboard, CPU, RAM, etc.