Morning all,
I'll keep this as concise as possible.
- I am from Georgia and go to school in California. At school I have a Lenovo T400 - great laptop, not so great for gaming. Looking to have more gaming power available to me here. At home, I have a moderately powerful desktop (specs on that below).
- I want to spend up to $500 to increase my gaming capability here. This includes all costs - shipping if the best way is to ship my old computer/parts thereof, all components for a setup to run a desktop GPU through the T400 expresscard slot, etc. Spending less than $500 is fine - bonus points for enough less that I can buy a used Wii to play super smash brothers on with my roommate. I'd be willing to go up to $600 only if it made the difference between a mediocre and great solution.
- For most of this summer, I will be elsewhere doing math research. So I either want to buy in the next week and a half (which lets me build and use the system in Georgia) or in August.
Desktop back home, as best I remember:
Case: Lian-Li, big, fairly spacious. Looks like this except there's a side fan. case
PSU: Truth be told, little recollection here. I know I went with a decent brand - either Enermax or Thermaltake. Somewhere between 620 and 850 watts.
Motherboard: Asus M2N-SLI deluxe (socket AM2)
CPU: AMD Athlon 6400+ x2 (socket AM2)
GPU: Radeon 4870
RAM: 8GB Patriot DDR2
Hard drives: pair of OEM Western Digitals from Newegg, total 400GB
Optical: some OEM DVD writer.
Monitor: 1680x1050 P-MVA
Here are the answers to the posted questions if I ought to be doing a full or partial build:
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Most time consuming is work - office and programming - and web browsing. Most frequent use of power would be gaming.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$500, including all taxes and shipping.
3) Where do you live?
California for the school year, various parts of the southeast for the summer. It'd be nice to build/use over the summer, but I'd have to ship again out to California.
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
I am happy to reuse anything I already have, including case, motherboard, power supply, graphics card, RAM, optical drive, hard drives, monitor, and keyboard. As mentioned, if I use those, I will have to pay to ship to California. Counting anything reused, it'd be: case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, hard drive, optical drive, monitor, keyboard.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
See above. I'm not sure what there is worth paying to have shipped.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Not initially. Down the road minimally if at all.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
My current is 20 inches, 1680x1050. Aside from the cost of shipping it cross country, I'm very happy with it; I see little reason not to reuse it. I don't particularly care to have a higher resolution or bigger monitor. Maybe 1920x1080 tops.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Either in 2 weeks, which gives me summer usage, or early August, which gives me some summer usage. Both of these would require shipping it to California in late August. Otherwise, building early September is fine.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
I'm not picky here. I like being futureproof, so maybe USB 3.0. Crossfire/SLI only if two lower end card provide the best bang for the buck.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
My current desktop is running on an OEM copy of Vista. I'd like to switch to Windows 7, which I can get through my college for about $60.
One addendum:
For gaming, I don't much care about high resolution or ultra high settings. 1680x1050 works well for resolution, and sure, it's nice to run at top settings, but it's not essential. I'm more interested in being able to pick up a game that comes out a year or three from now and having it be playable and decent looking.
Thanks,
Tarrosion
I'll keep this as concise as possible.
- I am from Georgia and go to school in California. At school I have a Lenovo T400 - great laptop, not so great for gaming. Looking to have more gaming power available to me here. At home, I have a moderately powerful desktop (specs on that below).
- I want to spend up to $500 to increase my gaming capability here. This includes all costs - shipping if the best way is to ship my old computer/parts thereof, all components for a setup to run a desktop GPU through the T400 expresscard slot, etc. Spending less than $500 is fine - bonus points for enough less that I can buy a used Wii to play super smash brothers on with my roommate. I'd be willing to go up to $600 only if it made the difference between a mediocre and great solution.
- For most of this summer, I will be elsewhere doing math research. So I either want to buy in the next week and a half (which lets me build and use the system in Georgia) or in August.
Desktop back home, as best I remember:
Case: Lian-Li, big, fairly spacious. Looks like this except there's a side fan. case
PSU: Truth be told, little recollection here. I know I went with a decent brand - either Enermax or Thermaltake. Somewhere between 620 and 850 watts.
Motherboard: Asus M2N-SLI deluxe (socket AM2)
CPU: AMD Athlon 6400+ x2 (socket AM2)
GPU: Radeon 4870
RAM: 8GB Patriot DDR2
Hard drives: pair of OEM Western Digitals from Newegg, total 400GB
Optical: some OEM DVD writer.
Monitor: 1680x1050 P-MVA
Here are the answers to the posted questions if I ought to be doing a full or partial build:
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Most time consuming is work - office and programming - and web browsing. Most frequent use of power would be gaming.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$500, including all taxes and shipping.
3) Where do you live?
California for the school year, various parts of the southeast for the summer. It'd be nice to build/use over the summer, but I'd have to ship again out to California.
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
I am happy to reuse anything I already have, including case, motherboard, power supply, graphics card, RAM, optical drive, hard drives, monitor, and keyboard. As mentioned, if I use those, I will have to pay to ship to California. Counting anything reused, it'd be: case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM, hard drive, optical drive, monitor, keyboard.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
See above. I'm not sure what there is worth paying to have shipped.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Not initially. Down the road minimally if at all.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
My current is 20 inches, 1680x1050. Aside from the cost of shipping it cross country, I'm very happy with it; I see little reason not to reuse it. I don't particularly care to have a higher resolution or bigger monitor. Maybe 1920x1080 tops.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Either in 2 weeks, which gives me summer usage, or early August, which gives me some summer usage. Both of these would require shipping it to California in late August. Otherwise, building early September is fine.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
I'm not picky here. I like being futureproof, so maybe USB 3.0. Crossfire/SLI only if two lower end card provide the best bang for the buck.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
My current desktop is running on an OEM copy of Vista. I'd like to switch to Windows 7, which I can get through my college for about $60.
One addendum:
For gaming, I don't much care about high resolution or ultra high settings. 1680x1050 works well for resolution, and sure, it's nice to run at top settings, but it's not essential. I'm more interested in being able to pick up a game that comes out a year or three from now and having it be playable and decent looking.
Thanks,
Tarrosion