Possibly building a new desktop

Well guys.



It's time that I accept the fact that my poor Laptop is no gaming machine.

It's really about time to upgade to something bigger and better. I'm planning on moving back with my parents soon, so that way I can go ahead and get a desktop to suit my needs. I'm thinking either two things.


Something simple from Dell that would be cheap and upgradeable, (and comes with a nice fancy flat panel monitor)..

OR

Go completly all out, and build through www.Ibuypower.com or www.newegg.com something of that nature, Tiger direct, doesn't matter.

A buddy of mine just built his through NewEgg, and i've done business with them for years, I've just been out of the "gaming" community for so long that I don't know what's even worth a damn anymore, or atleast what things are valued at. Obviously, i'm going to want to go Dual core, more than likely i'll be loading XP on this Machine so that VISTA doesn't use half the resources and waste my time like it has on the Laptop. Atleast 2 gigs of ram, minimum, hopefully something more along the lines of 4 gigs, I'm not too caring of the HD space, anything 160+ would be essentially fine for anything that i'd ever need.

Now, where it really matters. I'm really going to need some recommendation for a nice Video card, back when I was into gaming the Dual video cars were just coming out (pci-express .. don't remember the ABBV they use though) but anything that will run CS source, BF 2142, Starcraft 2 (when it's released) etc, will be fine for me. I know I don't really need too much for these games, just something good along the lines of a video card is all I'm honestly worried about.

Any recommendations?

Newegg. Buy one from Dell and it'll cost you twelve times the price it would if you bought the individual components from Newegg. They're an absolute rip-off.

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As an idea of what you could do, here are the specs of the computer I built my Uncle recently, and if I may say so myself, it's a fucking good computer:

Mobo: Asus P5K Premium Wi-Fi Intel P35 LGA 775
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz (Retail 775)
PSU: 600W
HDD: 320gb
RAM: 4gb DDR2 PC-6400
Graphics Card: 800GT 512mb PCI-E OC
Drives: x1 DVD
Speakers: Creative T6100 5.1 Surround
Monitor: 19" WS

That came to about £650 ($1278).

Changes I'd make to it:

- Get the 3.00ghz CPU, or even better, a Quad Core
- Bigger PSU ( 600W < x < 1000W)
- Multiple hard drives
- Since I built it, nVidia have released a new line of graphics cards, which I'd definitely go for over the 8800GT - the newest one out is the 9600GT 1gb. Which is based on the 8800GT architecture, but vastly improved. Faster than the 8800GTX Ultra Super-Duper 768mb (or whatever it's called), but not quite as good. For the price (which is near enough the same as the 8800GT price), it's a no-brainer.
- 7.1 Surround
- I've got my eye on a beautiful 24" WS monitor: 1080p, HDMI. It's a Hyundai.

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What's your price range?

Well, I'd love to keep it under $1,000 .. and that would be if I could finance it.

Depending on what they'd lend me I suppose. I would guestimate around $800-$1200. We'll see, I'll post the specs of something i'd love in a bit.