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Hello all, long time since I've been on [H]ardforums. I am finally upgrading my 4 year old desktop computer and would like some advice on what to get.
Just for reference, this is my current system:
AMD 2500+ M
MSI Nforce2 Mobo (forget the model after all these years)
1.5 GB PC3200 Corsair RAM
Geforce 6800 Ultra 256mb
Sound Blaster Audigy
250GB 7200RPM 8mb buffer Hitachi HD
Windows XP Media Center 2005
It's been a fairly solid machine, but it has definitely reached the end of its useful life for me. New games destroy it and I seem to fall further and further behind. So it's time to build a new PC. My budget is around $2000, I could go up to $2200 if needed.
What I'll be using this computer for:
GAMING (older games like CS:S and newer ones)
Video editing (encoding, working with large files, etc.)
Other misc stuff like browsing and etc.
I am going to be getting a laptop to handle all of my other stuff like Word/powerpoint/excel/whatever else I need for school. This will be a cheaper, but very portable laptop that I'll be getting at the end of the summer before I have to go back to school.
I also am going to most likely need a monitor to go along with this system as I have a very old LCD with a 16ms response time so I could use an upgrade. I can go with prebuilt or build it myself, but I might lean towards the prebuilt because I can get some nice student discounts on these (12% with dell, more or less with other companies). I can of course also build myself, but I would need everything, Case, PSU, LCD, cooling system, etc.
Note: I also would like to keep the computer as small as possible. I'll be living in dorms during school and would like to have this computer take up as little room as possible. A Shuttle or similar sized system would be great, but I think I could get away with a mid-sized ATX tower also since that would most likely let me get better components.
Just for reference, this is my current system:
AMD 2500+ M
MSI Nforce2 Mobo (forget the model after all these years)
1.5 GB PC3200 Corsair RAM
Geforce 6800 Ultra 256mb
Sound Blaster Audigy
250GB 7200RPM 8mb buffer Hitachi HD
Windows XP Media Center 2005
It's been a fairly solid machine, but it has definitely reached the end of its useful life for me. New games destroy it and I seem to fall further and further behind. So it's time to build a new PC. My budget is around $2000, I could go up to $2200 if needed.
What I'll be using this computer for:
GAMING (older games like CS:S and newer ones)
Video editing (encoding, working with large files, etc.)
Other misc stuff like browsing and etc.
I am going to be getting a laptop to handle all of my other stuff like Word/powerpoint/excel/whatever else I need for school. This will be a cheaper, but very portable laptop that I'll be getting at the end of the summer before I have to go back to school.
I also am going to most likely need a monitor to go along with this system as I have a very old LCD with a 16ms response time so I could use an upgrade. I can go with prebuilt or build it myself, but I might lean towards the prebuilt because I can get some nice student discounts on these (12% with dell, more or less with other companies). I can of course also build myself, but I would need everything, Case, PSU, LCD, cooling system, etc.
Note: I also would like to keep the computer as small as possible. I'll be living in dorms during school and would like to have this computer take up as little room as possible. A Shuttle or similar sized system would be great, but I think I could get away with a mid-sized ATX tower also since that would most likely let me get better components.
But I need to figure out if anything isn't going to work together (mostly concerned about space since I'm doing a SLI setup in a pretty small case).