Hey, I've been browsing these forums from time to time and have noticed that it seems to be a community of fairly knowledgeable and helpful people, so I thought I'd come here looking for help. I am finally going to buy a computer for myself instead of using the crappy shared family one, and I need some help in choosing what to put in it. I want a fast machine that will last a good couple years without replacing and I also want something that can handle games as well. I went to a local computer store and got a quote on a possible computer system. It's around 1500$ Canadian and I just want to check with you guys if there are certain things I could change to maybe lower the price, but not compromise the performance of the system. Here's what is in it: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core 512 DDR2 667MHz RAM Western Digital Caviar 320GB Hard Drive BFG GeForce 7900 GT OC Seems like a short list, but the rest of the stuff is just a DVD writer and things that don't really need much deciding over or could really be replaced with anything cheaper.
Hi Acerbic, I'm in Ontario so we can talk real dollars here - the Queen's picture, right? I can build a heck of a rig for $1500 bucks. Are you including monitor in that price? Athlon64 x2 3800+ CPUs are found in $1000 rigs. For fifteen hundred we can do better. Big money is invested in memory and vidcards, and motherboards and especially harddisks are inexpensive. CPUs are quite a range; you can spend big if you wish to. You can spend generously if determined to spend $1500 - I recommend Core 2. Even the smallest Core2 CPU, E6300 (Allendale) is great for you. Lemme see here - Asus P5B-E mobo, E6300, 2GB OCZ Special Ops PC2-5400, and that BFG 7900GT OC (nice :^) are pretty well $1000 bucks CDN in Toronto right now. Just the memory and vidcard are almost $600 bucks right there... Polish it off with a nice case and powersupply, you could spend $200 for that - or you could spend $400 dollars, heheh... But a nice OCZ GameXStream 600W is what, only $140 bucks so no need to overspend (I am not personally into flashy cases, but could spend big on aluminum if wealthy). So there's a good rig for you, another $150 bucks for 2 SATA HDs and you're good to go for $1500. Another $40 bucks for DVD burner, ah well I guess your new widescreen LCD monitor isn't going to fit for $1500, heheh... But we can make everything fit, if you want. I am (we are) specifying top-drawer, 2007-model memory and vidcard for you and if you want that all to fit the lesser $1000 pricepoint I would select: Asus P5B-E Core2 E6300 2 x 512MB PC2-5400 ATI X1650Pro 512MB Case & powersupply - OCZ 600W? 160GB/8MB HD DVD burner $1000 bucks! But if you want those good powersupplies and Vista memory, you're gonna go over... LoL Regards
