I need to buy a new computer, what should I be looking for?
I would like to buy a desktop PC which would be mostly used for internet, a bit of gaming, some photo and video editing, and watching DVDs What type of CPU, RAM, hard drive capacity and video card should I consider for good performance. I would like to be able to use it for awhile before having to upgrade again. I'm looking to spend between $600-1000 (I don't need a monitor or any peripherals).
Thanks
Thank you for your advice, I've already bought a computer!
Please don't tell me how much better a Mac is, I am not interested!
Thanks
Thank you for your advice, I've already bought a computer!
Please don't tell me how much better a Mac is, I am not interested!
![[IDEA] Uses for OLD computers](http://www.instructables.com/static/defaultIMG/default.SQUARE.png)
Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »
I just built a new gaming-centric machine and it set me back about 800.
These days I've switched to intel chips - amd let me down too many times, but thats personal opinion. For a given price point you'll achieve very similar results with either.
If you want it to last a generation or three, get quality parts from real brands with real reputations/reviews. Fact is nVidia or ATI simply make the GPU chips, and its up to resellers to put those chips into video cards or motherboards. I recommend msi, asus, gigabyte, corsair to name a few respectable brands. I currently have an Asus Nvidia GTX 460 with 1gb onboard ram -- ~200 dollar video card that can handle most games on high or ultra settings. In the nvidia line, the 400 series is the everyday model, and the 500 series are the pro uuber models.
Windows 7 these days isn't as big a hog as vista was for RAM, but its still good to have plenty and again quality is important. I'm running 4gb of corsair ram, and I never have slowdown problems.
Hard drive is a point of contention: The price/gb these days is constantly dropping, and with different interfaces, colours, and architectures it can be hard to decide. Everywhere you go you will find wildly fluctuating reviews of different drives because they have the highest failure rate of any computer component.
I have a 2TB Western Digital Green (low power) drive. It won't knock your socks off with speed but it is quick enough. To supplement it I use windows' Readyboost feature on an 8gb thumbdrive and my computer outperforms my friend who uses a solid state drive.
A thought; drives are getting cheaper these days, consider 2 in a mirrored raid array for redundancy - Drives being so big its really like all your eggs in one basket so its important to safe, or backup often.
Motherboard: Compatability these days is MUCH better than it was a decade ago - now if the chip physically fits theres a good chance it will work. Most computer places will guide you in what exact chip and motherboard you should aim for.
Processor: Intel currently has a wide array of chips - There's the i3 series, the i5 series, and the i7 series which you will find most often. I got a Core i5 quad core Socket 1155 LGA. It's the SandyBridge chipset @ 32nm and I run my 3.2ghz chip up to 4.2ghz (very overclockable) Also in the 200 dollar range...
It uses 100 watts and likewise needs a suitable cooler. Since I overclocked I picked up a bigger cooler but that probably wasn't necessary as stock coolers have also vastly improved.
The i3 series is lower speed, lower power, lower awesomeness, but more affordable.
The i7 series will set you back double the cost but have double the fun (speed, etc).
Lastly, power supply: you have to total up the requirements of all your components to figure out how big a power supply you need. MOST cases with a single processor and single video card a 500 watt supply will do just fine - and it's not much more expensive to go with a quality brand which will pay dividends compared to a cheap psu that may fail and destroy your motherboard. My machine as I described it draws 350 watts at the mains and I have a 500 watt corsair builders series supply; perfect!
Optical disk drive: el-cheapo dvd for when I need to load a driver disk, really I don't need it. Everything is already digital in my multimedia world.
I've not included the cost of windows OS in the above, but I have win7 ultimate, another few hundred dollars.
and macs are not as fast as a well built pc, like a high end alienware.
and have them load widows XP. A
Step up to the new technology!
You might want to think about a notebook. Some of those are really good now. Here is one with a 17.3 inch screen.
http://sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP5175
As to the topic, if you only want to do "casual" computing and are not looking for the build from the ground up experience, I would suggest buying a mid-level preassembled computer. I hate to say it because of long built prejudice, but Apple has some nice wares if you want to be doing multimedia as well. You should have little to worry about as far as gaming because of their growing market share for personal computers.
You shouldn't need top end components with the exception of having a RAID mirror is a good idea, especially if you still go with a sizable hard drive for a large archive. You would hate to lose photos and videos.
Note: AMD processors are cheaper than Intel for the same thing. Just saying.
Watch your displays. Standard HD-res monitors are cheap and common now, but they're quite a few pixels short of the old high-res monitors (typically 1920x1080 instead of 1920x1200. But then you can get two of the 1080p monitors for the price of the "graphics standard" monitors. Which might be worth looking at.
Check number of USB ports. Yeah, you can add hubs, but it's nicer if you don't have to.
Raid is somewhat disrecommended. Last I checked there was much anecodtal evidence that RAID increased complexity without actually improving reliability much. Two separate drives and the appropriate backup software should accomplish nearly the same thing is a more understandable way.
A built-in flash card reader is nice, if you take a lot of pictures.
now, the acer has an athlonii dual core 3.1, 8gigs ram, and a terabyte hard drive,, i already have 3 external drives totaling 750g for back up. any way, it's FAST!
i had resisted win7 for far too long, and the acer/win7 provides just enough challenge to keep it interesting. it's not a very steep learning curve going from xp to 7.
good luck!
My BEST recomendation is to google for the 'dell outlet' store and look around there. They have some unbelievable deals on refurbs, cancelled orders, and some scratch&dent items. I was able to save so much on what I wanted (bought one for $997 that would have costs me $1450 to build) that I bought a second one as a gift for my Dad for Christmas.
It's worth checking out for the savings, but if you want to do it yourself I would follow the other ideas.
Along the lines of doing it yourself, you can also search for a 'bare bones kit' that has the case/motherboard/ram/power supply already inside, and then add the drives and video yourself. Amazon has a decent selection of BB kits.
Hope this helps.