Computer Buying Time

Adamb0mb

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Gonna get a small lump of cash from my tax refund and am planning to buy a new computer. I'm covered on peripherals and it's a just the box itself I want to buy.

Ideally I would put $400 towards the rig itself and then another $200 on the video card (I want decent gaming capability). Windows 7 is a must and future expandability is a plus. I've been browsing newegg.com and bestbuy.com only to realize that I'm a few generations back on my hardware knowledge.

Please, I'm mainly looking for ideas regarding, which cpu model/speed (and amd or intel), video card recommendations, and the type/speed/quantity of ram I should be looking for. Thanks in advance for any recommendations.
 
Subscribed. I have no recommendations howsoever.
 
What I can say, is not to bother getting more than 4gb of RAM unless you are getting a 64-bit system. Otherwise it will disappear, and it will be sort of useless and a waste of money, unless you buy the extra because the stick it's on sale or something.
 
If you spend 400 dollars on the and 200 on the videocard wouldn't you end up with a low end PC with a high end video card? that's not very useful.

What I can say, is not to bother getting more than 4gb of RAM unless you are getting a 64-bit system. Otherwise it will disappear, and it will be sort of useless and a waste of money, unless you buy the extra because the stick it's on sale or something.

32-bit windows cannot even handle 4 Gb. You would have about 3.3 Gb (give or take 100 megs)
 
Get one of the newer Core i3/i5/i7 processors

Don't buy a video card just yet. Wait until Ati releases the HD 5830, which should be in this month and around $200
 
32-bit windows cannot even handle 4 Gb. You would have about 3.3 Gb (give or take 100 megs)

My screenshot does not agree.

Spoiler :
 
For $400 you can get a really nice PC. I agree with i3/i5/i7 options above. If you're spending $200 on gfx then don't forget to budget for a nice, big monitor to play high resolutions on ;)
 
I dunno if i3 is doable for $400. Here's about the best I could do at Newegg:

Rosewill R230-P-BK Black 0.5mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - at $29.99, this is a pretty cheap case
ASUS P7H55-M PRO LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $89.99, the cheapest LGA 1156 board they had that had any ratings at all; drop $10 for their cheapest option at your own risk
COOLER MASTER Elite 460 RS-460-PSAR-J3 460W Power Supply - This might be too lean for an i3 build with a very good graphics card, and it violates GB's $10/1w rule of thumb (though it got very good ratings)
Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz - the cheapest i3 out there
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit - you won't want less than 2GB; you could save maybe $5 by getting a single stick, which might be a better option
Seagate Pipeline HD ST3500312CS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - dunno why RPM isn't listed, but seagate is respectable I think
LITE-ON 22X DVD Writer - DVD writer drives are pretty whatever, as far as I can tell, and this is the cheapest option

That's $421.93 without shipping. I don't know much about this stuff, so I'm sure someone here can pick apart this build, but maybe it'll provide a start.
 
the i7/i5 are just too expensive, especially if you consider the extra costs for a decent motherboard, the i3 more affordable but doesn't perform nearly as good as AMD processors in the same price class plus still suffers of to the aforementioned motherboard costs.

Newegg is running a pretty good combo deal for $390.97 ($380.97 after Mail-In Rebate)

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
MB: ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3
GFX: SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100284VXL Radeon HD 5750

but waiting a couple of weeks to see how the price/performance of the 5830 turns out, or even better wait for nVidia's new series, might result in a considerably greater bang for your buck because even if the nVidia cards turn out worse than ATI's prices will likely drop.
 
If you spend 400 dollars on the and 200 on the videocard wouldn't you end up with a low end PC with a high end video card? that's not very useful.



32-bit windows cannot even handle 4 Gb. You would have about 3.3 Gb (give or take 100 megs)

1. You'd end with a capable gaming pc. The budget is a little skewed, but it would still be a pretty good pc to play games at mid-resolutions. 99% of video games are limited by the graphics card. One of my friends is running a Conroe C2D at 2.2ghz and a GTX 275. Guess which one limits him in games? Ill give you a hint, it starts with a 'G'

2. It can handle 4GB. Thing is, all other devices on your computer with RAM partake in that 4GB. A 32 bit OS can access 2^32 -1 bytes of RAM which is surprisingly, 4GB - 1 byte exactly.

Wording matters.
 
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