I NEED A NEW COMPUTER

[Noobinhood]

i need a new computer. i know nothing about them so if anybody can help i would like to hear from you. thanks!!

[AntiHero]

What do you plan on doing with it? What do you wanna play on it? Do you have a lot of pictures, music and movies? Do you like it to be flashy or plain, and what is the budget?
One place to tool around on is www.ibuypower.com Although you need to know some basics.
To make a modern today machine for CoD4, Crysis, BioShock, etc. You will need if you wish to run it in Direct X 10 mode which is a higher form of graphics shading/filtering (as far as my understanding goes) it is vastly different from the version we're on now (9.0c for BF2) You would need to get Windows Vista, any version will do, although if you're making budget and buying the OS, Home Premium is good. You will need around a 160 gb Hard Drive Disk with 7200 rpm as opposed to the slower 5400 rpm. You will also want a dual core CPU running at a minimum of 2.0ghz, try to avoid AMD processors and ATI video cards, cause they have been falling behind in the competition. Go for Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad core if you wanna go all out and overkill. 2 gigabytes of 800 mhz ram should be sufficient for most anything, 3 if you wanna overkill a bit and 4 to be a bit stupid. 750 watt to 850 watt power supply is fine, and do not get one that comes with a case because they have a tendency to be a bit underpowered and cheap, they also may short out. A good choice on video cards would be a GeForce 8800gtx, if that's too expensive get a GeForce 8600gts. The 8600gts is significantly low end for a Direct X 10 card and slower than the GeForce 7950 models, but the 8600gts has Direct X 10 which is a bonus and is, even though slower, capable of Direct X 10 shaders. All other things really are just up to your uses, a DVD drive is a must, but burner isn't as much, although it's a useful tool for many things. Printer, monitor, keyboard and mouse are things i expect you to have. Don't bother with a Physics card because it's useless completely. SLI isn't a bad idea, but it's not a must. Sound card isn't too big of a deal, but it's still an ok idea. One thing you definitely have to watch out for is do not buy "Fatal1ty" products cause you can get equal performance for a significantly lower cost. Otherwise you're good to go. Tool around on iBuypower.com if you feel the need to experiment, they have pretty low prices and are easy to browse on. Laptops are a slightly different story, which is one I'm getting into because I hate sitting at a desk all the time. Good luck friend, if you got any more questions, I'll be checking here whenever there's new posts.

[Noobinhood]

i will mainly use it for gamming and surfing the web.   thanks guys

[Video_Master]

Give me a price that you want to spend and I will spec out a system.

[MR|337]

Guess I'm no good for you now Josh?

I've been trying to put one together for him in my spare time from my left over stuff. What I have so far:

CPU: 3.0 Ghz P4 prescott core Intel with hyper-threading

Mobo: Albatron I865PE Pro II (agp) with onboard sound. It will take four sticks of ddr400 (which I have none available)

Vid Card: Need one

OS: XP Pro

HD: 160 GB Western Digital

PSU: Cooler Master 450 watt

Case: Aspire X Super Alien ( MDK would cream his jeans  )

Thats what we got, just need vid and ram. Should run Source fine, it used to for me anyhow...

Case pix:

[MR|337]

I got to looking around, and if you could fork out the bucks for this one, all we would need is a vid card. AGP cards are hard to find now (good ones) and for the price you were going to pay for that 7950, this would be more logical. Add a middle of the road pci-express card to it (150 bucks) and you are ready for the future with a killer board, best processor and good memory...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3557020&CatId=1599

[MR|337]

Antihero,

Both Noobinhood and myself have fatality mice. Mine has been flawless, his has some issues..So go figure?

[AntiHero]

Antihero,

Both Noobinhood and myself have fatality mice. Mine has been flawless, his has some issues..So go figure?

Like i said, you can get equal quality for less of a price. I ddin't say they were bad, i just said pointless, like stealing from a library...it's got the name tag on it, and it's not your name.

[V.I.P.]

well Mr. Steve, from the looks of your left over parts all you need is 1gig ram and that video card and CS:S will be a breeze =P

[MR|337]

Another deal from tigerdirect. It's AMD based (boo) but should do source well. At less than 400 bones, it's a steal...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3570023&CatId=1916

[AntiHero]

beware of tiger direct's bullshit shipping.

[MR|337]

I've spent boo-coo bucks there and never had a shipping issue.

[AntiHero]

My friend bought a 150 dollar video card, and the only shipping offered was over the cost of the video card. I just dislike their fees.

[MR|337]

We ordered his stuff today:

Intel Quad Core Kentsfield 2.4Ghz Q6600 CPU

XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Socket 775 Motherboard

4 gigs of Corsair TWINX 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz E.P.P.

2x EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 

PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad PSU

OCZ Vindicator CPU Cooler

WD Caviar 160GB Serial ATA HD

LITE-ON 20x DVDRW SATA

[wonder.]

Sounds nice... Good luck with it. 

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