So say you had about a 1,000$ budget. [Computer]

[Senoska]

Title says it all, if you had about a grand[give or take a few hundred $] to throw into a computer, what would your ideal parts be?

[Cletis]

LED lights

[dekamii]

it depends on what you want your comp to do.

as for me i would spend it on my motherboard (my current one is outdated) > processor (core2duo) > video card

[Bartylby]

http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/View. ... tail&id=36

[Scythiroth]

LED lights

Never again will I have a computer with these. I leave my computer on full time and those at night when trying to sleep suck.

[Senoska]

it depends on what you want your comp to do.

as for me i would spend it on my motherboard (my current one is outdated) > processor (core2duo) > video card

Pure for gaming.

[Charla]

LED lights

Never again will I have a computer with these. I leave my computer on full time and those at night when trying to sleep suck.

Loud fans can be worse. At least you can stick a box or something in front of the lights. Or, you know, not sleep in the same room, but that's just too much trouble.

[Tirrock]

Windows XP Professional is the best choice when it comes to a gaming operating system. Even though Vista has just been released, it has a graphically intense GUI, and gobbles up a lot more system performance than XP. Sadly, the price point on XP has not gone down. If you're willing to shell out an extra $40, you can purchase a copy of XP from Newegg through mid-March and get a free Vista upgrade coupon. For the sake of cost, the link above is to a different online merchant.

Be careful with this. When reading the newegg reviews of their OEM copies of XP, a lot of people said that the vista coupon that came with it didn't work.

That link is awesome for giving me second opinions on parts I'm looking at. Newegg is good, but trying to narrow down a list of 200 parts to 1 is kind of hard.

LED lights

Never again will I have a computer with these. I leave my computer on full time and those at night when trying to sleep suck.

There has to be a case out there somewhere that lets you turn the LED lights on and off... I didn't even think about the lights being on at night until now.

Loud fans can be worse. At least you can stick a box or something in front of the lights. Or, you know, not sleep in the same room, but that's just too much trouble.

I like the sound of the fans running. The "sound" of nothing drives me crazy.

[Jer]

If you were looking at case mods and cooling systems besides regular upgrades, http://www.xoxide.com isn't a bad place.

[SephYuyX]

Well, a reasonable mid/high pc would be about:

Core 2 will cost about 500, a good mobo will be about 150, a decent vid card will be around 250, ram will be about 150, case about 50, power supply about 80, HDs about 70, DVD burner about 60. fans/etc might total to about 50. So 1360$

I really wouldnt go under the 400$ core 2 regardless, you can grab a mobo for 80, vid card for 180, 100 for ram, case can be free or about 20, power about 50, HDs about 60, dvd burner 40, fans about 30. With this setup you can make a mild pc for 960$

Just depends how powerful you want it, and what you want to excel in.

If you want to go all out.. 1k$ for core 2, mobo for 200, card for 600, ram for 400, case for 100, power for 100, HDs for 180 each, dvd burner for 100, cooling/etc for about 200. A cheap 2880$.

[dietvanillapepsi]

$1k doesn't last very long when I think of my dream machine. One component could cost me that much or more.

Let me know when we are fantasizing with +$10k. :wink:

[Kinto]

$1k doesn't last very long when I think of my dream machine. One component could cost me that much or more.

Let me know when we are fantasizing with +$10k. :wink:

loalienware? I built close to a dream machine (qx6700, 2x 8800GTX etc etc) for less than half of that by building.

[Kinto]

LITE-ON Black 16X DVD-ROM
APEVIA X-CRUISER
Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB
EVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800GTS
OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI
CORSAIR XMS2 1GB (6400)
ASUS P5B Deluxe LGA 775
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
(all from new egg, no including mice, keyboard, soundcard(if wanted), speakers, OS)


1,217.00 with instant rebates, then you subtact another 35 for mail ins.


This is just a 15min quick shot at trying to make something, if you want a successful build spend time to read reviews and crap. Shop around using merchanthound, check out zipzoomfly which is my personal favorite. ResellerRatings is a great site to make sure if the seller is decent. the E6600 is a great CPU is you want to overclock. But the hard thing is, that everyone has different tastes in PCs; so its best to search on your own.

[Kriz]

I'm just trying to keep myself happy until I can blow 5k on a totally pimped out Mac Pro...

As for your situation... it still depends on what you want to do- if you want to run the latest and greatest games, you need a Vista-capable machine, which is a massive chunk of hardware to invest in.

A Wii | XBOX360 | PS3 would work too :wink:

I'd also think it wouldn't be too hard to get a nice PC specwise from a few years ago and be happy with it

[Kinto]

Vista isnt needed now, and the set up i posted would run vista relatively well...but would probably need some more RAM. But I wouldn't recommend vista to anyone at the momment still. PC > Console.

[dietvanillapepsi]

$1k doesn't last very long when I think of my dream machine. One component could cost me that much or more.

Let me know when we are fantasizing with +$10k. :wink:

loalienware? I built close to a dream machine (qx6700, 2x 8800GTX etc etc) for less than half of that by building.

Of course I wouldn't buy some prepackaged POS. I'm thinking more of the whole workstation setup with all the peripherals (speakers, monitors, etc.) To me, a good gaming experience is more than processing speed.

[Kinto]

I forgot to ask senoska, what type of games do you want to play?

[xingoo]

Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz+
DDR2 ram 1GB+
An Asus motherboard, I personaly like Asus, but there's a lot of good motherboards out there.
Geforce 8800 GTX PCI-Express

[Devek]

Core 2 is where it is at/

[GRT]

http://images.apple.com/getamac/imag...op20070130.jpg