In need of a new computer

[seph32]

It's better to spent 10-20 bucks extra than ending up buying another PSU for the future that's what I'm saying I never said he needed or not. Never know what you will be planning in the future, perhaps you will be needing a PSU with some more power and you have to waste another $100-130 to buy a new one that's all I'm saying.

[bechyni]

could said computer also run WoW/Aion

[Stromgarde]

He's not going to need 750 watts with anything he'll be plugging into that motherboard.

[bechyni]

well more focused on if it can run Aion or not

[bechyni]

if anyone has played the beta that is

[Gredival]

There's a big difference between whether Aion will run, and whether it will run well.

The minimum requirements for Aion are very low; a mid-level computer from 3-4 years ago could meet the minimum. But that means minimum settings and lag.

You're using ibuypower if I'm not mistaken; given what they offer I recommend you just go for either the GTX275 or the RadeonHD 4890. Either of those will run Aion pretty well, and anything less you're likely going to have to replace before too long.

Your options for PSU will be the 650W Thermaltake or spend the extra buck and get the 750W Corsair. It doesn't sound like you know enough to salvage the PSU for another comp though, so there's little value in going higher. But it's only a dollar. [You can save $50~ with the 650W Casegears unit but I haven't really heard anything about them as a company though.]

Up the RAM to 4gigs definitely. And even though IBP will overclock on stock cooling, I recommend spending the $40 to upgrade to the liquid cooling.

[bechyni]

the only thing thats really messing me over on price is spending the extra 180~ for windows xp professional is there anything else i could use? and what do i do if the computer comes with no operating system preinstalled? im hoping its as simple as just putting in a disc and installing lol

[Gredival]

iirc Vista Home Premium is less than XP at IBP and currently comes with a free Windows 7 upgrade. Definitely worth the money if you actually intend to use Windows 7 in the somewhat near future

If it comes with no operating system installed, it's pretty easy to do yourself if everything goes correctly. But you need to find a cheaper copy of Windows for this to be a viable option. If you're a college student you can usually do this through your school if it's a reputable 4-year college/university.

But otherwise it might be better just to fork over the cash to get it pre-installed for the free W7 upgrade and for the simple reason that means IBP will install all the drivers and other crap for you. If you get a clean hard drive you'll have to do all that yourself and it seems you might have trouble with that if it doesn't go smoothly (which can happen with customized machines)

[Isiolia]

the only thing thats really messing me over on price is spending the extra 180~ for windows xp professional is there anything else i could use? and what do i do if the computer comes with no operating system preinstalled? im hoping its as simple as just putting in a disc and installing lol

Sort of... you also need to install drivers for any hardware that Windows doesn't natively support.

Otherwise, yeah, pretty much you boot off of the CD/DVD and install.

You do need to get Home Premium for Vista in order to get a free Windows 7 upgrade - IMO, get the 64-bit version.

I would also agree with the earlier...get 4GB of RAM (no real reason not to, RAM is dirt cheap), get a better video card (even a good $100ish card like an HD4850 or 9800GT for now), and a bigger PSU.

Price-wise I don't think you'll be able to meet your goals there without dropping the CPU platform down a notch or two. Personally, I think it'd be worth it to wait for another paycheck or whatnot to buy one of the new i5s or i7s over a more dated CPU though.

[bechyni]

yeah i dont mind spending it on the card i just didnt like spending it on the OP, i heard vista was kinda of shit so i didnt go with it but it seems i might have to. which i5 is a newer one(guessing the one i selected must not be a newer model)

[melbufrauma]

i recently purchased this and ive been very satisfied:
http://content.gateway.com/www.gatew...fx6800-01e.jpg
Gateway® FX6800-01e
$1,129.99 MSRP
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor1 (2.66GHz Quad-Core w/ Intel® Hyper-Threading & Turbo Speed Technology)
Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit) with SP1
Memory 3072MB DDR3 1066MHz Three Channel Memory (3-1024MB modules)
Chassis Premium Tower Desktop with Media Control Interface with a Stunning Jet-Black Finish and Copper Metallic Accents
Video ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 with 512MB Discrete Video Memory (Ports: 2x DVI-I, S-Video includes DVI-HDMI & DVI-VGA Dongles)
Hard Drive 750GB 7200rpm Serial ATA II/300 hard drive with 16MB Cache
External Ports (8) USB 2.0 ports (2 Front, 6 Rear), 2-IEEE 1394a Ports (1 Front, 1 Rear), 2- eSATA Port, (2) PS/2 Ports
Application Software Microsoft® Works 9.0, Microsoft® Money Essentials & Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day complimentary trial period)4
Audio 8-Channel (7.1) HD Audio
Available Expansion Slots Available: 1 - PCI-E x16, 1 - PCI-E x4 & 0 - PCI x1
Backup Media Cyberlink® Power 2 Go
Dimensions (Box) 11.7" (H) x 20" (W) x 24" (D) or 297mm (H) x 508mm (W) x 610mm (D)
Dimensions (System) 18" (H) x 11.7" (W) x 7.5" (D) or 465mm (H) x 297mm (W) x 191mm (D)
Keyboard Premium Multimedia Keyboard
Media Card Reader Gateway® 15-in-1 media card reader with copy button
Memory Capacity Expandable to 16GB (6 Slots Total, 3 Slots Available)
Modem 56k ITU v.92 ready Fax/Modem (RJ-11 port)
Motherboard Systemboard with Intel® X58 Chipset
Mouse USB Optical 2-button Wheel Mouse
Network Intel® 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port)
Optical Drive 18X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti Drive featuring Labelflash™ Technology8
Power Supply 500W Power Supply11

[Isiolia]

yeah i dont mind spending it on the card i just didnt like spending it on the OP, i heard vista was kinda of shit so i didnt go with it but it seems i might have to. which i5 is a newer one(guessing the one i selected must not be a newer model)

IMO, within the $150-200 range is a pretty good sweet spot for GPUs right now (which basically falls in line with the 4890/275GTX suggestion). You can get something lesser that'll still do quite well with current games - part of the consideration is what resolution you will be running at. If you want to get a 24" LCD and run everything at native res with the settings cranked, you will need a beefier card than if you're running a 17" LCD.

Vista is a mixed bag. The two main centers of complaints are performance - which is largely a moot point on new hardware, and the end result of overzealous security, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially as applications are recoded to actually work the way they were supposed to before.
In both cases, Windows 7 is a big improvement, and you get a free upgrade when it comes to retail in about a month.

The i5 -is- "the newer one", along with the i7 800 series. The i7 900 series have been out for a while, and are still great CPUs. The difference is one of platform. The 900 series are mated to the LGA 1366 socket and associated chipset (X58 atm), whereas the 800 series and i5 are mated to the LGA 1156 socket with, currently, the X55 chipset.
They're pretty new (last few weeks), and reviews have been very favorable. The X58 platform is more robust, with more room to grow later...but mostly on features that cater to the high end. The X55 stuff gets you basically the same performance for a little less money, albeit with marginally less powerful subsystems (dual channel RAM instead of triple channel, fewer PCIe lanes for multi GPU, etc).

If you can stretch your budget for an i7 860, that'd probably be good, but the i5 is still nice. One of the big features that the new CPUs have is that if you're gaming or doing something that doesn't typically support quad core, they run only two cores, but clock faster. So the ol' compromise for a faster dual core for gaming versus a quad for general computing is set aside.
What the i7 860 mainly offers over the i5 is Hyperthreading, which makes each core "act" like two cores - it's not always much of a boost, if one at all, but it's a nice feature to have if supported by the app.

[bechyni]

sent you a PM isiolia

[bechyni]

Case-CoolerMaster CM 690 Gaming Tower Case Black

Noise Reduction-None

Internal Expansion-Internal USB Expansion System

Processor-Intel® Core™ i5 750 Processor (4x 2.66GHz/8MB L3 Cache)

iBUYPOWER PowerDrive-PowerDrive Level 1 - Up to 10% Overclocking

Processor Cooling-Certified CPU Fan and Heatsink

Memory-4 GB [2 GB X2] DDR3-1333 Memory Module-Corsair or Major Brand

Video Card-ATI Radeon HD 4890 - 1GB-Single Card
Video Card Brand

Motherboard-Asus P7P55D LE -- Intel P55 Chipset CrossFire Supported w/7.1 Sound, Dual-Channel DDR3, Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, Dual PCI-Ex16 MB

Power Supply-700 Watt -- Power Supply-SLI Ready

Primary Hard Drive-1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s Single Drive

Data Hard Drive-None

Optical Drive-22X Sony Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive Black

2nd Optical Drive-None

Flash Media Reader/Writer-12-In-1 Internal Flash Media Card Reader/Writer-Black

Meter Display-None

Sound Card-3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Network Card-Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)

Operating System-Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium + [Free 60-Day !!!] Microsoft Office 2007(Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access ....)-64-Bit

Keyboard-iBUYPOWER USB Keyboard-Black

Mouse-iBUYPOWER Internet Mouse-Black

Monitor-20.1" LCD 16:10 Wide WSXGA HD(HDCP) Monitor Support DVI Video up to 1080P(HDMI)

Speaker System-iBUYPOWER 2.1 Channel Stereo Super Bass SubwooferSpeaker System
External Hard Drives [USB 2.0/eSATA]-None

This is what I finally decided I'm gonna go with. Thanks to everyone who posted on here with advice! <3 Isiolia

[Omniyoji]

Nice setup Bech

[bechyni]

Thanks ending cost was about $1129

[Fisban]

You could save some money and get a Quad Core, they are pretty cheap ATM... all be it a dead processor...

I just built a HTPC Gaming Rig, which can rock the shit out of just about any game atm, including Crysis!
CPU: Q9550 (Overclocked to 3.4ghz and a Mini Ninja Cooler)
MOBO: GA-EP45-UD3P
RAM: 8GB 1066 DDR2
VC: GTX 275
HDDs: 1 400GB (Used for OS), 3 1TB Drives in a RAID 5 for Storage (1.9TB after RAID)
PS: Cosair 750w
ROM: BR
Case: SilverStone LC17 (HTPC Case)