New Computer for old man

[bwchaney]

My topic title about says it all. I am a one game gamer. I have been waiting for SH4 ever since it was announced. I am 57 years old and do not know if I want to spend $1600.00 at Bestbuy buying a super gamer computer for just one game. I now have a P4 2.4gig, 1 and 1/2 G memory and a 256mb Ati X800 pro video card. I think to be able to appreciate the beauty of this game I need to upgrade the above mentioned items. Right now I play on medium graphics with no check marked boxes and no AA. My monitor will support the higher resolutions so that is not a problem. I thought updating just my memory and processor speed would do but not according to BB. My video card is AGP and will not fit in the Acer 1500; which contain 2 gig of 5300 DDR memory and a dual core Athlom amd 4400 processor. Therefore they suggested a geforce Nvidia 256mg card the 7800 to go with this Acer unit. By the time their geek squad and sales tax and 2 year warranty is added on I am up to $1400, The other $200.00 goes to 2 gig more memory totalling out to 4 gig total. I need the opinion of you fine folks here as that will determine if I am a crazy old fool or not. Any bad or good criticism would be useful. Thanks in advance Bw Chaney:know:

[Reaves]

I wouldn't go for a 256mb video card.

You'll want at least 512mb to make the whole purchase worthwhile.

Seems pretty pricey but at the end of the day if your going to spend $1300 on a PC why not add a few hundred and make it significantly better.

Can't advise you on a better place to shop as I'm not on your continent :) but I find that once you know the names of the parts you want for a PC, you can go to smaller shops and they will do it cheaper.

Also, if you know someone who will put it together for you, you save a lot of money.

[Chock]

If you are intelligent enough to play Silent Hunter and work out a firing solution, then building your own PC will not be a problem, and I daresay you could do it for a lot less than the figure you are being quoted there if you bought all the components yourself and put them together.

You already have the necessary tools to find out all you need to know in order to build a machine (i.e. a bit of a search on the internet to determine which components are compatible with which other ones). But if you've not contemplated doing this before, I can recommend the following book as a good source of information (see link), and it should give you the confidence to build something from scratch.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Upgrading-Repairing-Guides/dp/0028642392/ref=sr_1_4/102-1481805-6372159?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176865208&sr=8-4

The title won't do much for your ego, but it is a very good book.

Putting more RAM or another AGP graphics card in your current PC will probably turn out to be false economy, in that the AGP format is rapidly giving way to PCI, which means that you'd need a PCI-compatible motherboard if you want performance. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as a more modern motherboard will support faster bus speeds, thus enabling you to put more efficient RAM in.

If you do decide to build a PC from scratch, there will be several components you could salvage from your current PC and incorporate (most likely the case, the hard drives, although probably not the power supply as a faster graphics card will probably draw more power - don't forget you might need to stick a better cooling fan in too). However, even having to do that will make it somewhat cheaper than going for a pre-built new PC, as you won't be buying components you already have.

On the other hand, if building something is not for you, I would suggest doing a wider search on the web for something. It always pays to shop around. One advantage to buying a ready-made system would of course be that you could go for something with Microsoft's new Vista operating system pre-installed, as this is generally the cheapest way to buy an operating system, given that new-build PCs usually get hold of Vista for a pittance. Doing this would go some way towards future-proofing your PC a little bit (which is always a good thing when you bear in mind that the Silent Hunter series tends to have a long life and be the subject of many graphics-hungry mods from people).

[Factor]

i would not buy any kind of computer from bestbuy, or any factory produced computer in the first place. if you want a computer for playing games at max detail, look at websites, such as this one www.cyberpowerpc.com , and have a custom built computer, built just for you, for the same price, but twice the computer. you can build the computer at your finger tips, have it shipped to you in proberly about two weeks from purchase! you will not be dissapointed. plus, my computer i purchased from the website above, came w/ a 3 warranty! if you buy from bestbuy, or any factory produced computer for that matter, you will be dissapointed in time, believe me, ive been there.

do not buy a "factory built pc" such as HP, compaq, sony, etc. for gaming.

i really hope you "shop around" before commiting to the above!

good luck!

Factor

[swash]

I have a 2.8Ghz P4 HP PC that I made sure had upgradable slots. Only to find out the powersupply isn't so upgradable. I tried a generic 430W PS and it wouldn't boot:damn:

I've put in 2 gigs of PC3200 ram and a nVidia 7600 GS 512 MB video card, plus a second hard drive and in spec'n it out, the 250W HP powersupply should be frying by now, but it's holding steady (crossing fingers).

I have a bud that buys his PC's from a local shop and tells them what he needs and they build it. If it crashes, he takes it back and they get it running again. Overall price, he gets more for his buck than buying off the shelf, plus the face to face contact when something goes wrong.

I'm slowly trying to build my own 3.4ghz P4 and gut this HP, but money and life is always an obsticle:shifty:

[FIREWALL]

Tigerdirect.com for best price.And thy have a picture tutorial on how to put it together and great support.:up:

[swash]

Tigerdirect.com for best price.And thy have a picture tutorial on how to put it together and great support.:up:

that's where I'm buying all my parts for the new PC:rock: :rock:

[Aimbot]

Whenever I read these threads I always wonder if any of the contributors are viral marketers. :-?

That said, whatever you do, bwchaney make sure you buy a SABRENT Black 1.44MB 3.5" External USB Floppy Drive Model SBT-UFDB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821118001)! Only Sabrrent provides the power and affordability a one game gamer really needs! Such a magnificent and stylish floppy drive can be convieniently shipped to your old man! Buy one today! And tommorow! Next Wednesday would also be a great time to buy a SABRENT Black 1.44MB 3.5" External USB Floppy Drive Model SBT-UFDB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16821118001)! Be sure to check out Sabrent's other fine products!

On a related note, does anyone have a sugestion on how to spend the 150$ I just made?

[Factor]

i had a bar tab the other nite that was about 150 bux! the next day.......uh, i didnt feel so good.

on a side note, i dont see the harm in trying to point someone in a direction that would save him alot of money, and gain him alot of hardware.

im just trying to help a fellow gamer.

[Aimbot]

Guilty concience, eh? :p


On a serious note, I use Newegg (www.newegg.com) and have no complaints. I bought Nvidia, but you should probably go ATI so you can have AA and HDR.

[pocatellodave]

I'm sixty three and about to retire.Built my own puter,and if I can do it,anyone can!You will save a lot of money,and the savings will allow you to build a faster puter.Runnining a AMD dual core +5000,Gigabyte SLI board,four gigs Corsair ram,two evga 7950's for video,and a Sound Blaster Audigy for sound.Most my parts came from Newegg.I used Tigerdirect for some parts,but had a problem with one of their supervisors,and he closed my account.Beware of Tigerdirect!Again build your own.Make sure you research all your parts so that they will work togather,memory etc.
Pocatellodave

[Partsking]

Another ping for newegg.com. I've bought all my stuff from them over the years and haven't had a single concern or problem. :up:

[Quillan]

I buy all my parts from Newegg, also, and have nothing but praise for them.

[NefariousKoel]

Newegg for my personal parts.

I build systems at work for people, amongst other things. Newegg generally has their pc parts priced cheaper than our wholesalers do.:doh:

If you buy the parts yourself, you can easily get a dual core AMD budget gaming machine for less than $800 and still have quality parts. You can still buy Windows XP OEMs for it too if you don't want to mess with Vista yet.

Do Not buy a prefab for gaming unless you get a real sweat deal on an AMD machine. Since Intel, for obvious reasons, doesn't make motherboards for AMD - the manufacturers are forced to get halfway decent boards such as an Asus I saw recently in someone's new HP Vista system. Cheap Intel boards..:damn::down:

If you're uncomfortable messing with the stuff, you can check out custom build sites such as the one mentioned above or even check your area for Computer shops and do the same face-to-face.

[Sailor Steve]

My topic title about says it all.
I can't give any computer advice; I'm just responding to complain about your topic title. I just turned 57 myself and I'm just a kid!:p

So watch who yer callin' "old man"!:rotfl:

[XanderF]

FWIW, if buying a whole computer from scratch it too daunting (of you just want a smaller case), you may want to consider Shuttle 'barebones' systems. They are so-called "XPCs", which are much smaller than regular PCs - toaster size, basically. That's always been a huge selling point for me, but I live in a rather tiny condo in the city.

Anyway, I'll vote for Newegg, too, great customer service (better than Best Buy by a long shot), and great prices. Ships FAST, too.

And they carry XPCs. :know: That will get you the case, cooling, power supply, and mobo. All you need is a CPU, ram, video card, and disk drives.

As to "buy ATI for HDR+AA"...first off, I'm an ATI guy. I like ATI cards. That said, the brand-spankin-new GeForce 8600GTS (released literally YESTERDAY) has better price-to-performance than ATI's offerings at the moment. And the 8-series GeForce cards can also do HDR+AA.

If I were building a system today (wish I was, but I'm not), it would like something like this:

$270 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101015) Shuttle SD32G2
$139 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115013) Intel Core 2 E4300
$154 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227078) 2gb OCZ PC2 5400 ram
$200 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130084) eVGA GeForce 8600GTS
$75 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148144) Seagate Barracuda 250gb SATA hdd
$26 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135095) Silver CDRW/DVD drive
$90 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116056) Windows XP SP2 OEM (still too many problems with Vista for my taste)
----
$954

And that's everything - whole new system. EASY to assemble, and the Shuttle kit comes with a fold-out full color flyer with all the steps needed. Only caveat is that I can't speak to the color of the CD drive matching the case. Shuttle USED to make a silver CDRW/DVD driver that perfectly matched their cases colors, but...can't seem to find one, now.

[fredbass]

Sounds like you may want to go the route of a new PC.

I ended up researching my various hardware options at places like Newegg while viewing their customer reviews and pricing. That gave me lots of ideas. Then I talked to someone at a local computer repair shop. After a few discussions and return trips to Newegg, I finally decided on what I wanted and had the local shop build me a custom computer.

So my advice... Whether you do it yourself or have someone do it for you, make it custom to your preference, and use a big case with plenty of room to breath and grow. :up:

[jerryt]

ZipZoomFly is also a good place to buy components, and free shipping to boot. I bought all my last build from there without any problems.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Home.jsp

[Caltone]

NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, and MWave are all good resellers. As a starting point, I recommend taking a look here before you buy anything online:

http://resellerratings.com

I

[CaptainHaplo]

Mate, I am running SH4 on a AMD 1800 (thats 1.5Ghz) and a ati 9800 Pro - and it runs fine. And I have less than a gig of memory! However, like you I will be upgrading soon. The question is - how much horsepower do you need?

For instance - my next rig is going to be a mid level machine - Intel dual core 2.13 running 2gigs of ram with a X1650 vid card. Dual HD's, a DL dvd burner, required floppy, motherboard, case, additional fans and power supply - everything I need to build the box. I already have a licensed copy of XP so I dont need another.
Cost of parts - all from Newegg - last I checked was 797 plus 36 for shipping and such. Its not a monster rig - but more than capable of running SH4 maxed out.

Dont spend $2k - if you dont want to do it yourself then get a local PC outfit to do it - or heck - I'll put the thing together for you if your willing to pay the shipping.

Going with an off the shelf product does have its advantages - its warrantied and you can take it to the store if it breaks - but if your going to go that route - I suggest Dell. They will send a tech to you if your system breaks under warranty. But if your going to drop that kind of cash into a system - either build your own screamer - or get it from a company that is going to provide uber-support - and dont allow them to put all the gunk on it - tell em you want it WITHOUT an OS instaled. Otherwise shelf companies add in all kinds of crud that sucks up performance.

Its a tough choice - you will get alot more bang for the buck if you do it yourself. Either way - enjoy!

Good Hunting!
Captain Haplo

[NefariousKoel]

I, personally, can't recommend Dell too much.

I've been repairing PCs for years and their Hitachi hard drives crash or most often develop severe sector problems. They die regularly enough within a year or two, comparitively. Laptops and Desktops both.

Last week I had a customer with that exact problem. Dell told her that it was a software issue. After checking it out.. it was a faulty hard drive. I charged her a pretty moderate price for this info and after that, admittedly, they didn't give her any problems sending her a new hard drive. However, she had to pay yet more for me to clone her old hard drive to the new working one. They did not send a tech out to fix the issue. They just expected her to start fresh. She ended up spending about $145 getting it back to where it used to be. I won't mention how many tries it took me to clone the stinkin' thing without failure before I finally got it. She's lucky everything made it.. very close call.

Dude, don't buy a Dell.;)

[THE_MASK]

A new case , motherboard , power , 2 gigs of 800mhz ram , 8800 series graphics card , and core 2 duo e6600 cpu should be about $1500 .