New Computer for old man

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

[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-Idiot...6865208&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

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

[FIREWALL]

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

[swash]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

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

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

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by bwchaney

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. 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 Shuttle SD32G2
$139 Intel Core 2 E4300
$154 2gb OCZ PC2 5400 ram
$200 eVGA GeForce 8600GTS
$75 Seagate Barracuda 250gb SATA hdd
$26 Silver CDRW/DVD drive
$90 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.

[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

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