after a year of using this shitty toshiba laptop for college, ive decided i want to upgrade to a PC, fuck laptops

you guys got any recomendations for a good PC??

it needs

- GOOD graphics card! doesnt have to be the most advanced on the market, as long as it can play counterstrike with ease
- reasonable price, nothing more than 1500 hopefully

all im gonna use it for is music, homework, internet, and gaming....nothing else

thats about it, throw me some suggestions

 

I got the following setup from newegg a month back

- xblade gaming case
- 500 watt ps
- nvidia geforce 6800GT 256 meg pci-e card
- foxton mobo
- amd athlon64 3200+ cpu
- extra fan
- burner + dvd combo
- half life 2
- sound card
- klipsh 2.1 gaming audio system
- dell ultrasharp 1905 FP monitor
- Microsoft office elite keyboard and mouse

EVERYTHING for ~$1800 shipped

If you have a monitor ($345) and audio ($130), subtract that from the total

 

oh, and im running halflife2 at ~107 frames at 1280x1024 res

 

 

ew^^

make your own definitely, it ends up being the cheapest and most customizable way to get a computer

 

Cheapest in the long run. Usually a bit more expensive up front if you don't have any parts to begin with.

I personally would go with an NForce4 MoBo, as much Athlon64 CPU as you want to throw $'s at and which ever NVidia or ATI PCI-e card you like. On the Nvidia side, I still think the 6800GT ranks pretty good on the dollar-for-dollar scale. I'm not up on ATI's current offerings. IMO, don't cheap out on the power supply and RAM. You can have a smokin' machine, but what's the point if it hangs every hour or two.

 

werd!

 

ew^^

get a PC like the rest of the world, and if you do get a mac, dont get that little junkbox

Koolance water cooled tower
Abit ic7-max3 motherboard
intel pentium 4 3.01 ghz 800fsb processor
2gig corsair 400 speed ram
ati 9800 video card (i need a new one )
2x 74 gig western digital raptor 10k drives in raid 0
creative 5.1 card (not the one with the front panel, but the one right below it)
antec true power true550 550 watt power supply

i overclocked my processor to 3.3x ghz and my video card is upped by 23% in core speed and 14% in ram speed

my keyboard/monitor are the logitech elite/mx700 and my monitor is an nec fp2141sb. i got some 5.1 creative speakers (like $120 before rebate) and a wacom pad. i also got the little inside cleanup kit with the wire bundling and molex quick release connections.

i paid i think somewhere like 2200 for everything - the monitor

i know i need to upgrade the mobo/processor/fasterram/vid card but this box can still run hl2 at high rez/framerate



and yes, i did use this opportunity to shamelessly plug my computer

 

the 6800gt can be overclocked very easily to match the 6800utra's speed

 

WHAT ARE SOME GOOD PLACES I CAN BUILD A PC?!?

im checkin out the best buy website and i see a few deals like 700 for a AMD athlon computer with ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 IGP 128mb card.....would 128 be enough for gaming or should i shell out more for the 256??

should i get a PC with better speed than 2,0 ghz or am i safe on that

im not exactly the richest person, i would be very happy if i paid less than 1000$

 

I always tried adding up the cost of Building your own computer, and it always came out more, whats the trick?

I would rather get a computer with service and support but thats just for my peace of mind

 

So, are you ruling out building it yourself or are you just unsure where to go to purchase individual parts? Help us who are trying to help you. If building is indeed an option, then http://www.newegg.com/ ownz all.

As Raheel and I mentioend, building will likely be a bit more expensive the first time around but it's definitely cheaper in the long run.

 

hmm.....i dont kno all that much about computers and im not that breaded, so i prefer going to a store like best buy or compUSA and getting a computer thats already hooked up and i can pay installments on

what stores or brand computers do you recommend?
ios a 128mb graphics legit enough for some counterstrikin or hl2?

 

if youre gonna get a pc prebuilt - www.dell.com

i dont know how they sell stuff so cheap...

 

slickdeals.net
bensbargains.net

 

I leave it to others for advice on out-of-the-box systems. Regarding the video memory, I would personally recommend throwing the money at upgrading to 256MB as opposed to bumping up the processor one additional speed notch. That's just my general impression, however, I haven't seen any benchmarks to back that up.

 

dont just look at the amount of memory for a vid card, lood at the clock speed.

I still reccomend a 6800GT 256 meg card...its almost $400, but totally worth it when you start to play Half life 2 in full res.

New egg is good, with one exception...returning parts is a total bitch (15% restocking fee if you return ANYTHING).

I was inches away from buying a computer from http://www.ibuypower.com, (the difference in price was only like 10-15% between there and the exact same PC built at newegg, plus you get a warranty), but I decided building one would be more fun

 

one final thing, look for the review of EVERY SINGLE component you buy online, from the vid card to the power supply to the case.

 

thats an awesome rig

 

Isn't the ASUS SLI-Deluxe MoBo the hot commodity now? I see Alienware is now offering 6800GT cards with 512MB of DDR3 memory

Um, why would a gamer even look at any Apple product?

 

no offense nokio, bkknight369 your comp is much better


absolutely do NOT get integrated graphics, you need a dedicated video card to play games well. also check www.newegg.com for competitive pricing on parts

 

hey!!!! i have uv lights tho!!! they make the coolant glow

i need to upgrade to a pci express board so i can use my nvidia employee discount finally and run an sli with a gig of memory <3

 

my computer is almost my life (minus the gym, drinking, procreating) so every year i rebuild it to be the best at that time

if you lookup the info on all my parts minus the video card, they were the cream of the crop during last summer


btw i didnt include the generic things (which is why the price seems steep) like the dvd rw drive, a second cd drive (for replications), zip drive, floppy (ya, im nostalgic), an extra usb/firewire access panel setup in the front bays, and all those little things like fans and junk that are there, but you really dont think about

the most important thing, that i never thought mattered and was simply a luxury is the liquid cooled case. it may seem expensive at first, but my computer(cpu temp) never goes higher than 36C on a hot day running a graphics intensive game at high res (it cools my processor and vid gpu)

 

yea same here, except i havent rebuilt in 2 years
im going to build a system around a dual core athlon64 x2 this june when they come out. you work for nvidia?? what do you do?

 

thx!

 

internship starting summer

 

nice... post some details sometime when you start, I'd be interested to hear what you get to do

 

they have a bunch of fields (9 of them) listed in the info email, so i can get anything from marketing to hardware to testing, but im trained in EE/CS

 

did you consider an internship at the Microsoft mountain view campus?

 

When I build my computers, they always tend to come out the same price. Customizing is great cause you get all the best parts, whereas buying an already built computer has some cheap parts in there. So if you're getting all the top of the line parts, it gets more expensive.

 

same with me, electrical computer engineering, if they'd let you do any hardware design thats the route I would go

 

duh...

 

Hah, what are you? An HR Recruiter for MS?

 

no, just curious, and wondering if he wouldnt for any particular reasons