Do I need to build a "gaming" computer?

[InbetweenDreams]

[MENTION=22914]Cobalt[/MENTION] What kind of games are you playing? You mentioned the original Sims...you could probably play that fine with any new "general purpose" computer for the most part. If we're getting into games that are more modern or just newer...something like Warframe then yeah you might want to buy or build a gaming computer. Then that's where things get kind of foggy. Generally speaking adding a good graphics card will enable you to play games, then there are things like flight simulators (like X-Plane) which reccommend having over 20 GB or RAM, while it isn't the case for something like Warframe...

I honestly don't do much gaming at all but [MENTION=19807]SilverBullet[/MENTION] does and he's no slouch on computers either

Just depending on your budget and the sort of games you're wanting to play and so forth will dictate what you will want to buy. If you prefer the easy route you could buy something like Alienware, which are fine just that you would get more bang for your buck buying the components and putting it together yourself but not everyone wants to build their own computer and I certainly wouldn't suggest that if you have never built one in the past.

But lets start with the games, expectations and perhaps a budget....