[colecampbell666]

I am bugging my parents to get a new PC, and was wondering if this one is worth the price.

Case - 100$
Motherboard - 140$
CPU - 320$
Video Card - 240$
Hard Drive - 80$
DVD/CD Burner - 45$
RAM - 270$
Memory Fan - 25$
CPU Fan - 25$
The case has two fans and temperature gauges built in.

Total price with shipping and tax - 1236.85$ Canadian.

The speakers and monitor are too heavy and jack up the shipping and I can get better ones at Costco.
I have a copy of XP and don't want Vista.

Would this be worth getting? Have I missed anything?

[Scuddie]

God awful motherboard, god awful CPU (OEM, quad), god awful heat sink.  There are too many reasons to go into detail.

Memory is good, but your OS won't be able to see beyond 3072 MB, so a whole gig is virtually wasted.  There are workarounds, but they aren't pretty.

The hard drive is not nearly big enough for practical application.

I would recommend a Thermaltake ArmorX case, they are very proficient with cooling and durability.  You will also need a good PSU for it.  I would recommend Enermax.

Other than that, it looks good.

[colecampbell666]

God awful motherboard, god awful CPU (OEM, quad), god awful heat sink.  There are too many reasons to go into detail.

What's OEM again? What's wrong with the motherboard?

Memory is good, but your OS won't be able to see beyond 3072 MB, so a whole gig is virtually wasted.  There are workarounds, but they aren't pretty.

Max Dual Channel Memory: 8Gb

The hard drive is not nearly big enough for practical application.

That's all that I'll need.

I would recommend a Thermaltake ArmorX case, they are very proficient with cooling and durability.  You will also need a good PSU for it.  I would recommend Enermax.

PSU= Power Supply?

Other than that, it looks good.

What's wrong with the case I chose? Or are you just suggesting what you like?

[Scuddie]

Nothing is wrong with the case, per se, but I can guarantee the quality of the ArmorX is much higher.  I see a lot of cases that are 'cool looking' and have their own PSU (yes, power supply) ending up to be substandard.  If an attractive case is a high priority for you, I say why not get the best?

The motherboard you chose is just a reference board for a G33e chipset, which is primarily for entry-level PCs.  Very low scope of options there, especially OCing.  The Asus P5B (P965) is a very good board, The Asus P5K(P35) is even better...  but has some maturity problems.  If you care about capability, one of the two I suggested will be what you want.

There are two things wrong with that CPU.  First, it's a core2 quad, which saturates your FSB quite easily, and has lower tolerance for failure.  Add on top of that some 20% of OEM (original equipment manufacturer, a misnomer in the computer industry) CPUs are DOA.  If a quad core is important to you (it's not, unless you have a rendering farm), then at least go with retail.  I think an E6600 would be a much better value.  They're pretty cheap.

Just because the board can use 8 gigs of memory doesn't mean your OS can see it.  If Windows XP can see 3072 MB, no amount of hardware can change this.  XP64 can use the full amount of memory, but that's a terrible hackjob OS.

[haloboy100]

The hard drive is not nearly big enough for practical application.

200GB??? are you serious!? thats way TOO big if you ask me!

[Davros]

200GB??? are you serious!? thats way TOO big if you ask me!

too big hell no, i have a 250gig and it only holds 176 games
most of these are a few years old and take up less than 1gig hdd space if i just had brand new games it would hold a lot less
games today are taking up in excess of 4 gig each some take up double that

[haloboy100]

200GB??? are you serious!? thats way TOO big if you ask me!

too big hell no, i have a 250gig and it only holds 176 games

ONLY 176???? god damn, i only have 10 or so games on my drive. I probably have 200 games not on my drive that i havn't played in year. Seriously be honest here, do you even play all of those games regularly? i barely play one or 2 of mine. damn, and people say I'M addicted to gaming...

Alright, i'll calm down. It just came as a huge shock when you said ONLY 176 games....

[Hades]

  Only 176?Dude you have problems.Come on Regular peoples computer ony holds like 9 major games at the most.

[haloboy100]

Only 176?Dude you have problems.Come on Regular peoples computer ony holds like 9 major games at the most.

Tone down on the flames a bit there...

But yeah, he has a point.

[BloodEagle]

Meh, I don't like their limited selections, but here goes. Keep in mind that any system or part listed below is going to be better (imho) than what was previously listed.

AMD:
Motherboard - $120.00
Processor - $217.00

----

Intel:
Motherboard - $90.00
Processor - $270.00

-----

Nondenominational (joke):
Case - $50.00
Cheap Power Supply - $40.00
Power Supply - $80.00
Expensive Power Supply - $226.00
Hard Disk - $100.00
Cheap Video Card - $150.00
Video Card - $270.00
Expensive Video Card - $580.00

DVD/CD Burner - 45$
RAM* - 270$
Memory Fan - 25$

----

Non-D = $680.00**-$840.00-$1296.00***

----

AMD = $337.00

Total cheap = $1017.00
Total not-so-cheap = $1172.00
Total expensive = $1633.00

-----

Intel = $360.00

Total cheap = $1040.00
Total not-so-cheap = $1195.00
Total expensive = $1656.00
----


*I don't like the RAM you chose.
**I would get this one.
***You'll burn forever if you spend that much.

[Mefustae]

YOU ARE DIFFERENT FROM I AM! YOU HAVE PROBLEMS! RAWR!

Douchebag.

I totally agree we Scud and Davros here, 200gig ain't going to hold up for too long. Invest in something considerably larger, and it'll definitely be worth it. Honestly, I can't tell you how many times i've cursed my lack of space, all after thinking "who could possibly fill up a HDD this big" back when I first assembled my comp.

[haloboy100]

YOU ARE DIFFERENT FROM I AM! YOU HAVE PROBLEMS! RAWR!

Douchebag.

I totally agree we Scud and Davros here, 200gig ain't going to hold up for too long. Invest in something considerably larger, and it'll definitely be worth it. Honestly, I can't tell you how many times i've cursed my lack of space, all after thinking "who could possibly fill up a HDD this big" back when I first assembled my comp.

Lets be reasonable here, a person like me, who never plays more then a few games regularly, will not need a big hard drive. My 71 gigs has lasted me for maybe 2-3 years, up until now, where i just barely reached the cap, and thats form downloading useless junk that I'm going to delete soon anyway. A really heavy gamer, or one that doesn't delete stuff regularly, will need those 200 gigs. so the perfect hard drive for cole will be the one that suits his preferences.

[Mars]

I have an 80gb hard drive... and it's running quite nicely

I have:

421 tracks (used to be 1,056 but I deleted all the stuff that was, in my own oppinion ****... Barenaked Ladies and the like)

Ubuntu Linux
Microsoft Windows (stripped down)
Open Office
Every document I've ever written
Bunch of other misc things (some pictures, some large videos, some random applications

Linux games:

Nexuiz                                     -Play every day if I can
Tremulous                               -Play on weekends
Urban Terror                           -Weekends
Quake 4                                  -On breaks
Warzone 2100                         -When I'm bored
Open Arena, Warsow, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, more (about 10 games)     -Hardly ever (deleted)

Windows games:

Descent 3                                 -Long breaks
Doom 3 (demo only)                 -Late at night

That's 8 games and 2 OS's on 80 gigs with a lot of extra space

The trick is that if you never use something (a game or an application) you should remove it.

[haloboy100]

The trick is that if you never use something (a game or an application) you should remove it.

Yeah, i check for unused stuff weekly.

[Mars]

Actually I should mention, I'm a gamer... not a hard-core I don't spend my money on computers. I like cooking, I buy kitchen hardware, I'm a student, I buy textbooks, I'm saving for college.

My computer is low end for a gamer, let's start with my mouse, I have a Logitech LX5


It costs about $30... a lot of people on Nexuiz use this mouse... the logitech G7 yours for the low low price of $100


For me that would be a waste of money.

The same goes for my entire system... I could get a fancy NVidia 8900... but my ATI X1300 works for the games I play... I could get 4gb of low latency memory, but my 1 gig hasn't given me problems.

What are you planning on doing with this rig of yours? If you are going to have 500 games, all the p0rn on the internet, and 20,000 lossless music tracks on it, by all means get yourself a 1TB monster, if you're going midrange, get a 200 GB hd, and if you're like me get an 80 gb

[Flipside]

I'm annoyed at Microsoft, my old MS Optical Mouse worked like a charm for years, if there was one thing by MS you could rely on it was their mice, but the next generation seems about as robust as custard house, already the buttons are losing responsiveness and the Wheel seems to have two speeds, i.e. Full Stop or Mega-fast.

[IceFire]

Wow some of you folks just flame away without much cause.  Try and help the guy out.

First off...cool looking case but you may want to do some research on the case front.  The case is a somewhat important variable in your purchase process but more importantly is the PSU (power supply).  The PSU is extremely important in that if you get a cheap one it will A) never produce the power its rated to put out B) may fail at a quicker rate or with more disastrous consequences.  Even the good PSU's can be a problem after a long time of abuse and they can fail...sometimes spectacularly by taking the whole computer with them.  Don't cheap out on that.

As far as motherboard...I'd try for a Asus P5K.  Good board...good price...not entry level and definitely with performance levels to make it worthwhile.  The CPU is a good bargin these days and everything else looks fine to me.

Also I should mention that Tiger Direct is opening a series of stores in the Golden Horseshoe area so if you're living near somewhat near Toronto you may want to see if you can skip the shipping altogether and visit one of their factory stores.

[Flipside]

As far as HD Space is concerned, get what you need and a bit more.

I can't really talk, I have over a Terabyte of storage, but then, I have nearly 60 Gigs of Sample-synth instruments.

Games never stay on my drive for all that long, I'll keep the saves, but remove the main content once I stop playing them frequently, the only exception being games where I'm not certain the disks are up to a re-install.

I'd say, as a general rule, get the best you can afford, in 5 years time, regardless of whether you get a 4800 or a 8800 or anything in between, it will all be much of a muchness, so your main view should be towards reliability, storage and flexiblity, not speed.

[CP5670]

I am bugging my parents to get a new PC, and was wondering if this one is worth the price.

Case - 100$
Motherboard - 140$
CPU - 320$
Video Card - 240$
Hard Drive - 80$
DVD/CD Burner - 45$
RAM - 270$
Memory Fan - 25$
CPU Fan - 25$
The case has two fans and temperature gauges built in.

Total price with shipping and tax - 1236.85$ Canadian.

The speakers and monitor are too heavy and jack up the shipping and I can get better ones at Costco.
I have a copy of XP and don't want Vista.

Would this be worth getting? Have I missed anything?

A lot of FUD going around in this thread. For one thing, look at www.ncix.com instead of Tigerdirect. It has a larger selection and seems to be popular among Canadian buyers.

That case only has a 80mm fan port in the front, and Aspire cases generally use fairly thin and low quality steel. Get something with at least two 120mm fan ports, which is standard these days.

The Intel board is great if you're not overclocking at all, but useless if you are. The IP35-E seems to be the best clocker for the money right now, usually capable of getting 500mhz FSB speeds.

Unless you're planning to do a lot of 3D rendering, ditch the quad core and spend more on the video card. The quad core will do nothing for the vast majority of programs. An E4400 and 8800GTS for the same price will be incomparably faster in games.

For the hard drive, 200GB is fine as far as the size goes, even if you rarely uninstall anything. I had a very similar drive until two weeks ago and I only got something else for speed reasons. The problem with that drive is that it's fairly old and somewhat slower than modern drives. I would also avoid getting ATA drives of any kind at this point, as that interface is increasingly started be phased out. Most modern motherboards come with only one ATA channel. Look at the Seagate 7200.10 320GB drive instead, which is fairly fast and still cheap.

I don't think it's worth getting 4GB of memory right now, especially given how cheap the 2GB packs are. Vista 64's driver support is still fairly poor and it won't become mainstream for a while. It can be useful depending on what programs you use though. I hear that some image editing programs eat up memory very fast.

If you're going to buy a cooler separately, the stock Intel one should not be considered at all. I think the AC Freezer 7 Pro is still a good budget cooler. As for the other thing, it's not a memory fan. It fits in a PCI slot and is pretty useless in most case setups.

[Ashrak]

i highly recomment gigabyte motherboards DQ6 sli series is very good.