General Discussion

Hello,

I'm not very tech savvy, so I'm willing to pay 'a' premium for pre-built. 

Here's the pre-built PC I was looking at: Dell XPS 420

With an upgraded processor, memory, and video card, I'm looking at $1,350.  Important specs are:

• Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Processor Q9450 (12MB Cache,2.66GHz,1333FSB)
• Memory: 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 DIMMs
• Video card: ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB GDDR4
• Hard drive: 320GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache (Don't need a big HD)
  

My question is, could I build an equal/superior PC for under $1,050?  I'm willing to spend ~$300 more for a pre-built.

There are a lot of pre-built vendors out there. It all depends on what you are looking for. If you're looking at a rig just for gaming, Velocity Micro or Puget Systems both have good things said about them, though I have not dealt with either personally. Otherwise, you could get a basic computer from Dell, Gateway, HP, Sony, etc. that would be both cheap and suit your needs.

Many many thousands of NO's to vista.i made the mistake not realizing how inept all the graphic manufacturer's are at making drivers for vista.You play anything older and it will play like crap with vista.There isn't anything new either that makes use of anything modern.Quad chips/duo chips/8800 vid cards all a waste of money.Your better off with a XP system using those top end xp nvidia cards,i think they were 7600's/7900's???? can't remember been so long.The very small performance increase you will get from anything modern is just wasting your money.The problem of course is 4 mb ram is great ,however i don't think you can get xp to recognize that?or can you,won't matter anyhow with xp you only need 2mb.

just make sure that you get a very new mobo with a newer bios ,so you don't have to mess around with bios upgrades.I honestly don't know if the game developers will ever make full use of dx10/vista and duo/ quad chips and SLI.There is still far too many players with older machines that they would alienate.Making a game fully benefit both platforms would take a lot of time and resources,i doubt developers are willing to go that extra mile.

My gut feeling tells me that square enix will be the first to fully implement a game that utilizes all modern hardware,nothing announced ,so that's about 2 years away.

This is another option dell offers, is actually cheaper than the quad core.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor E8500 (6MB L2 Cache,3.16GHz,1333FSB)

Its always cheaper to build, its really not all that hard to build but for a first timer, find a friend and just watch what he does or walk through it.

If you ask me that PC seems a bit expensive for what its giving you if you ask me.

I would suggest looking at some of the nonmainstream Pre builts, ones that usualy advertise in PC gamer or something like that, it helps close the gap but all in all building yourself.

I mean my new PC will be a grand in total and il be getting more then that. Have my 700W power supply (Was super cheap thanks to black friday last year)

A thermaltake Armor series 8003W

9850 Black edition quad core

Zulamn 110mm Fan

HD 4870

As for the ram and motherboard im still waiting for the new 750 southbridges to come out and see what ram they need, cause i plan on overclocking my processor like hell.

Like the Above poster stated.  I too believe in building the rig yourself for a couple of reasons.  I do mean to bad mouth any computer companies.  However the mainstream computer companies are required by their partners/sponsor suppliers to add certain "spam/junk programs" to the computer for advertisement.  Believe it or not even if you remove them they still big you down just how they format their hard drives.  You are limited to what they have in stock / who get supplied from (There for upping your final purchase price when not even intended).

When you build your own rig, you can choose by both price and quality.  Some people stick to certain manufacturers for their main components.  I myself am a fan of XFX products so I like to peak around at their mid range priced Motherboards/Graphics Cards and such.  And if your a new comer to the market, again as the above posters stated, just ask a tech savvy friend to show you what's hot/good/value-able.  You'd be surprised at how much you can save over a 5 to 10 year period just by building your own machines.  As it stands I recently built my own quad core machine for around 1600 or so USD which would have ran me easily about 2000-2500 USD from a PC manufacturer.

Do note however, the big downside to building your own rig is also that there is no warranty, other than the parts failing (As long as you don't overclock you shouldn't have to worry about that).  But when certain programs or network problems arise you will be forced to be the "Do-it-yourself" type of person, which in the end is actually neat because after you while you become tech savvy yourself just by staying on the lookout on what's happening and fixing this and that.

Also regarding vista and such, it's not as bad as people make it.  And just to be frank, Microsoft is turning turning off the support line for XP, which means drivers and such for X64 based XP systems will be scarce.  I use Vista Ultimate 64bit on my system and I love it as well as many others, the only hitch is that you do need to dig around on the internet for the correct drivers, it wasn't long though until I found the right drivers for my old sound blaster audigy 2 card.  Don't be afraid to try it at least, it's well worth it, especially if you plan on playing DX10 Games which do require Vista.

Originally posted by NeokiNaomi

Like the Above poster stated.  I too believe in building the rig yourself for a couple of reasons.  I do mean to bad mouth any computer companies.  However the mainstream computer companies are required by their partners/sponsor suppliers to add certain "spam/junk programs" to the computer for advertisement.  Believe it or not even if you remove them they still big you down just how they format their hard drives.  You are limited to what they have in stock / who get supplied from (There for upping your final purchase price when not even intended).

When you build your own rig, you can choose by both price and quality.  Some people stick to certain manufacturers for their main components.  I myself am a fan of XFX products so I like to peak around at their mid range priced Motherboards/Graphics Cards and such.  And if your a new comer to the market, again as the above posters stated, just ask a tech savvy friend to show you what's hot/good/value-able.  You'd be surprised at how much you can save over a 5 to 10 year period just by building your own machines.  As it stands I recently built my own quad core machine for around 1600 or so USD which would have ran me easily about 2000-2500 USD from a PC manufacturer.

Do note however, the big downside to building your own rig is also that there is no warranty, other than the parts failing (As long as you don't overclock you shouldn't have to worry about that).  But when certain programs or network problems arise you will be forced to be the "Do-it-yourself" type of person, which in the end is actually neat because after you while you become tech savvy yourself just by staying on the lookout on what's happening and fixing this and that.

Also regarding vista and such, it's not as bad as people make it.  And just to be frank, Microsoft is turning turning off the support line for XP, which means drivers and such for X64 based XP systems will be scarce.  I use Vista Ultimate 64bit on my system and I love it as well as many others, the only hitch is that you do need to dig around on the internet for the correct drivers, it wasn't long though until I found the right drivers for my old sound blaster audigy 2 card.  Don't be afraid to try it at least, it's well worth it, especially if you plan on playing DX10 Games which do require Vista.

 

No games require DX10 as of yet though. Also Ive talked with someone who knows a crap load of stuff on this stuff. Right now the 8 series tech is top of the line. You may say well what about the 2 new ones. Well they didn't really do anything to make them stand out. DX10 was the last big step for graphics. Now they just add to the power no true upgrade.

But yeah heres the thing. Vista sucks at managing memory. Thats why you need at least 2gb. So if memory is a big issue a 7 series with 4gb of ram on a xp will run very well.

Originally posted by Arndur

Originally posted by NeokiNaomi

Like the Above poster stated.  I too believe in building the rig yourself for a couple of reasons.  I do mean to bad mouth any computer companies.  However the mainstream computer companies are required by their partners/sponsor suppliers to add certain "spam/junk programs" to the computer for advertisement.  Believe it or not even if you remove them they still big you down just how they format their hard drives.  You are limited to what they have in stock / who get supplied from (There for upping your final purchase price when not even intended).

When you build your own rig, you can choose by both price and quality.  Some people stick to certain manufacturers for their main components.  I myself am a fan of XFX products so I like to peak around at their mid range priced Motherboards/Graphics Cards and such.  And if your a new comer to the market, again as the above posters stated, just ask a tech savvy friend to show you what's hot/good/value-able.  You'd be surprised at how much you can save over a 5 to 10 year period just by building your own machines.  As it stands I recently built my own quad core machine for around 1600 or so USD which would have ran me easily about 2000-2500 USD from a PC manufacturer.

Do note however, the big downside to building your own rig is also that there is no warranty, other than the parts failing (As long as you don't overclock you shouldn't have to worry about that).  But when certain programs or network problems arise you will be forced to be the "Do-it-yourself" type of person, which in the end is actually neat because after you while you become tech savvy yourself just by staying on the lookout on what's happening and fixing this and that.

Also regarding vista and such, it's not as bad as people make it.  And just to be frank, Microsoft is turning turning off the support line for XP, which means drivers and such for X64 based XP systems will be scarce.  I use Vista Ultimate 64bit on my system and I love it as well as many others, the only hitch is that you do need to dig around on the internet for the correct drivers, it wasn't long though until I found the right drivers for my old sound blaster audigy 2 card.  Don't be afraid to try it at least, it's well worth it, especially if you plan on playing DX10 Games which do require Vista.

 

 

No games require DX10 as of yet though. Also Ive talked with someone who knows a crap load of stuff on this stuff. Right now the 8 series tech is top of the line. You may say well what about the 2 new ones. Well they didn't really do anything to make them stand out (Not sure what you meant here I didn't say anything in regards to anything similiar). DX10 was the last big step for graphics. Now they just add to the power no true upgrade.

But yeah heres the thing. Vista sucks at managing memory. Thats why you need at least 2gb. So if memory is a big issue a 7 series with 4gb of ram on a xp will run very well.

Require? No but optionize? Yes.  And as a matter of fact Unreal Tournament 3 looks about twice as good in DX10 than it does DX9.  I currently run a 8800GT and don't plan on upgrading anytime soon, and yes Vista is a memory hog and i have 4gb of ram myself I see no issues or leaks in the 6 months that I've used it on this machine. The real Vista downer comes from people using Vista Home Premium or worse yet Vista Home Basic and running only 512mb of ram (Asking for big trouble).  And I'm not calling myself a computer expert but formerly being a Computer Repair Tech I do try to stay updated because it's fun to see the 6 month trends of outdatage pass. 

This year does appear to be going slower though in terms of software progression and yes majority of games still do not support DX10, but why live in the past when you can live in the future in terms of hardware for mearly the same price and performance? That's what I do not understand.  But then again change is something lots of people cannot accept.