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Help buying a new PC


formyhunny

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Any PC experts out there? I'm looking to buy a new PC from Tigerdirect.ca in the summer and I want a gaming PC because I like to play games like NBA 2k11 and such. Is this a good PC?

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I'm also looking to assemble it myself.

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Depends on how much gaming you plan on doing and what types of games you're gonna be playing. I don't do PC gaming and haven't since The Sims 1, but as far as PC's go that's a lot of power and the one thing to consider is the wattage of the power supply. For some reason, the PSU wattage isn't listed unless I'm missing it. I'd contact support and ask about the PSU and it's wattage. You're probably going to need at least a 500W PSU to run that much RAM with an I7 chip on a Sabertooth system board.

I'm not necessarily a fan of EVGA video cards, especially since ATI generally offers better graphics depending on whether your monitor is HD or not. I personally can't take advantage of my HD-capable VGA card without connecting my PC to my TV, but even still, I only game on consoles so I can't speak for my graphics. Bluray-quality movies look great from my PC, but that's also a product of my 40" 1080p Aquos TV. That's also a lot of wood, and if you don't plan on playing any real high res games with ridiculous frame rates you could probably get by on 8GB RAM and a smaller HDD to save yourself a couple hundred bucks. Hell, if you knew someone who could build a PC for you, you could probably hop on Newegg and get yourself a case and all the necessary hardware, including a better VGA card, for around 600 bucks.

I personally have a prebuilt HP with an ATI Radeon 1GB HDMI VGA card, but with a smaller HDD and 6GB DDR2 RAM which is expandable to 12GB, an I7 920 2.67GHz CPU with 8MB shared L3 cache, so the processor you'd have is essentially the next generation of the I7 with a faster clock speed. I'm also rocking Win7, which is something else you need to consider. Which OS do you plan to run?. You could probably do better in some areas parts wise, and I'm not sure how you'd connect to much of anything using mini-HDMI if you're planning to use an HD monitor. My VGA card has the standard HDMI output, which is much easier to connect to a wider range of monitors and obviously to any HDTV. Also, for that price, it should definitely come with a BluRay drive.

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Depends on how much gaming you plan on doing and what types of games you're gonna be playing. I don't do PC gaming and haven't since The Sims 1, but as far as PC's go that's a lot of power and the one thing to consider is the wattage of the power supply. For some reason, the PSU wattage isn't listed unless I'm missing it. I'd contact support and ask about the PSU and it's wattage. You're probably going to need at least a 500W PSU to run that much RAM with an I7 chip on a Sabertooth system board.

I'm not necessarily a fan of EVGA video cards, especially since ATI generally offers better graphics depending on whether your monitor is HD or not. I personally can't take advantage of my HD-capable VGA card without connecting my PC to my TV, but even still, I only game on consoles so I can't speak for my graphics. Bluray-quality movies look great from my PC, but that's also a product of my 40" 1080p Aquos TV. That's also a lot of wood, and if you don't plan on playing any real high res games with ridiculous frame rates you could probably get by on 8GB RAM and a smaller HDD to save yourself a couple hundred bucks. Hell, if you knew someone who could build a PC for you, you could probably hop on Newegg and get yourself a case and all the necessary hardware, including a better VGA card, for around 600 bucks.

I personally have a prebuilt HP with an ATI Radeon 1GB HDMI VGA card, but with a smaller HDD and 6GB DDR2 RAM which is expandable to 12GB, an I7 920 2.67GHz CPU with 8MB shared L3 cache, so the processor you'd have is essentially the next generation of the I7 with a faster clock speed. I'm also rocking Win7, which is something else you need to consider. Which OS do you plan to run?. You could probably do better in some areas parts wise, and I'm not sure how you'd connect to much of anything using mini-HDMI if you're planning to use an HD monitor. My VGA card has the standard HDMI output, which is much easier to connect to a wider range of monitors and obviously to any HDTV. Also, for that price, it should definitely come with a BluRay drive.

Well the PSU is 700W. The thing about Newegg is I don't know what parts to get. Also do the DIY kits have graphics cards?

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Well the PSU is 700W. The thing about Newegg is I don't know what parts to get. Also do the DIY kits have graphics cards?

Well I'm just now seeing that you're going to assemble it yourself. Choosing individual parts is tricky because you need a PSU that you can use with a particular case and system board without blowing something up. I can put one together myself if I wanted to, I just don't like the hassle of finding parts that work together so I buy prebuilts. The unit you're looking at is probably the easiest to assemble since it gives you everything you need and those parts should be compatible with each other if TD.com knows what they're selling.

I still think that's a bit much to pay for a desktop that you're building yourself, especially when considering that I'm not a big fan of EVGA video cards, but that's probably more due to the fact that I don't like NVIDIA chipsets, which is also more to do with me not being a PC gamer. Like I said, it all depends on the types of games you intend to play and what OS you'll be running. If you're planning to use Windows XP like most people still use, you're throwing away a lot of money unnecessarily because the OS won't be able to keep up with the processor speed, and your CPU is essentially going to underclock itself to get the most performance out of the OS. As far as the video card goes, the chipset falls into NVIDIA's mid-range gamer category as far as performance goes (and is the highest performer of the three they offer). If you're just going to play sports games, you'll be fine as much as I dislike NVIDIA. If you're a hardcore gamer and you plan on playing shooters and using your PC for HD movies, you'll want either the GTX 470 or GTX 480, or one of any of the video cards from ATI's 5000 series or AMD's 6000 series, found here:

http://www.amd.com/us/products/Pages/graphics.aspx

Again, it all depends on you and what you intend to use your PC for, as well as the type of monitor you're going to be connected to. If you're using an HD monitor or TV, you'll obviously want something with an HDMI output, and it probably wouldn't hurt to find a video card that also has a mini-HDMI output for the future when every HD display has a mini-HDMI input.

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Balls. This would probably be the closest to what you were looking at - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229244

2TB HDD, very similar (if not identical) I7 CPU, but you're sacrificing 6GB RAM for the larger HDD. That's the downside, the upside is you have 3 available memory slots so you can add RAM. You're also getting an ATI Radeon 5770 HD video card. You're also going to have integrated sound (something else I'm not a fan of - I always add an audio card) that supposedly supports 7.1 surround sound, along with 10 total USB 2.0 inputs and 2 USB 3.0 inputs, 6 total PCIe slots (3 x16 and 3 x1) along with one standard PCI slot to expand on either audio or video, or whatever else you might need. Also comes loaded with Win7, which I highly recommend. It's the most stable Windows OS to date (I'm in the minority - I absolutely despise XP, and I loved Vista when installed correctly. Problem with Vista was that it had a habit of corrupting itself on installation) and again, you're pretty much wasting the processor with anything less because of the clock speed. You'll probably need another 2GB of RAM to get the most out of the machine, but compared to build you were looking at, I feel like this one is better. Only problem I'd have buying this if it were me is that it includes a wired mouse and keyboard without the option to remove them to save money. Of course, that's without looking through 22 pages of desktop PCs.

I honestly don't think you'll find anything closer to what you were looking at without spending significantly more. If you look in the right places, you can add 2GB RAM for 50 bucks or less, even though you'll need DDR3 which is still fairly expensive. Look around newegg for 2GB DD3 RAM chips if you feel like you're going to need the extra memory, which I suspect you will based on the CPU and VGA card alone.

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Only problem I'd have buying this if it were me is that it includes a wired mouse and keyboard without the option to remove them to save money. Of course, that's without looking through 22 pages of desktop PCs.

Well I got my own wireless mouse and keyboard.

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Well I got my own wireless mouse and keyboard.

Exactly. I don't use wired keyboards and mice, but that's really the only package that would be close enough to what you're looking for without spending another 2-300 or more. Most likely they'll all include a keyboard and mouse. Unless you just want to wait for TD to get that build back in stock.

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