Getting a new computer. Need advice.

[MrRubix]

I haven't bought a new computer in so long, so I have no idea what's good anymore. No more than a few grand in terms of price, though. I'd want a PC.

I just want something that is going to be beastly fast, hardcore, and will play video games like a dream.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[fido123]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Are you comfortable assembling the parts yourself?

[MrGiggles]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

No more than a few grand

Never ever ever ever ever ever pay more than 1.5k for a self-assembled computer.

Also, you should always self-assemble (I mean, unless you want a Mac, but then gaming would be trickier) because it's way cheaper and computers go together like legos, and there's only 5-6 lego pieces.

[Bluearrowll]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

If you're going to buy a PC, from my personal experience HP makes the best, the last one I had was a Dell and it lasted an amazing 9 years but it got slow after about 6 months. I have an HP now (Slimline) and it's worked just fine so far. I've had it for alittle under a year.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Are you comfortable assembling the parts yourself?

I am fine with buying individual components, sure -- I am embarrassed to admit that I've never put together my own computer together before, but I figure it can't be too hard. If I can still get a monster computer by just buying a premade one, I might prefer that instead.

This is all going to be a gift from my mother to me for graduation. She wants to get me a new computer because my current one is falling apart hardcore.

[MrGiggles]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

I am fine with buying individual components, sure -- I am embarrassed to admit that I've never put together my own computer together before, but I figure it can't be too hard. If I can still get a monster computer by just buying a premade one, I might prefer that instead.

This is all going to be a gift from my mother to me for graduation. She wants to get me a new computer because my current one is falling apart hardcore.

You CAN buy a powerful premade, but you'll bleed money out the asshole for it.

Building your own computer is really easy. I can't even stress that enough. It took me the better part of 6 hours to get mine running the first time I built one, and that was using the insanely vague P-182 manual.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

What components are good for a hardcore comp nowadays?

[Artic_counter]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

I remember my friend (who's an hardcore gamer) bought an AlienWare PC which is just amazing by what he told me but I never owned one so you might want to ask the others about that one before buying it. You might know this already but get yourself plenty of RAM so it reduce the lag and make your computer run smoothly (I have 3G of RAM and it's amazingly smooth (even though I wanted 4G xD)).

If you want to run software on high quality like crisis or things like that I think what you need is a godly Video Card

So that's where my computer knowledge stop I don't know a things about components.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Yeah I basically want to be able to run something like Crysis on its uber high settings without breaking a sweat

[Prime8]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

My friend just purchased a beastly Alienware with a 2.86 GhZ Quad Core, 4 GB Ram, nVidia GTX 295 Graphics Card for less than $2500. Granted, he probably could have done it for around $2000 if he bought it premade from like TigerDirect or some other place, or maybe even cheaper than that if he built it himself (neither I or him have any knowledge with this, so he decided to just buy one).

It may be a somewhat large sum of cash to dish out, but so far, this computer delivers. It can easily run Crysis on maximum settings, even with a bunch of other crap running in the background.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Is all that stuff top of the line?

What's the best video card out there? The best processors? The most memory? Are we still in quad cores? lmao.

I'm a hardware noob.

[chidori!]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Do Not get a laptop and an Intel graphics card. Unless you want your computer to crash if it blinks five times.

[Wineandbread]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

I hear Alienware is rather overpriced. They sure do look nice though.

Imo it's not worth buying a super high-end computer... you could probably settle for something like this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...gfXE0Xg&gid=45 (+ peripherals he got as a gift earlier and like a Acer 23" widescreen)
It's a build one of my friends followed. I've seen him play some intensive games on some high settings, and it runs pretty smoothly.

Wish I had the money to upgrade my computer. =/

[Edit] I think this chart is still pretty accurate for GPU tiers: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rd,2118-7.html

[Prime8]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Is all that stuff top of the line?

What's the best video card out there? The best processors? The most memory? Are we still in quad cores? lmao.

I'm a hardware noob.

Quad core is the "in" thing for processors right now. We haven't necessarily made software that would actually warrant the use of all 4 cores yet, but it certainly secures you for the future when we may have more advanced software. "Quad core" is Intel's thing, and I don't know too much about AMD. They seem to flip flop back in forth about who has the better processor. I think AMD has some Phenom thing that is similar to Intel's Quad Core. Now that I think of it, my friend does have an AMD Phenom processor.

The nVidia GTX 295 is (I believe) the best mainstream graphics card you can purchase from nVidia. You can look at ATI Radeon, but I am not so familiar with them. I'm sure they have something near the level of the 295 though. One thing you'll want to look into is having graphics cards running in SLI (or Crossfire if they are ATI cards). Simply put, you can have multiple graphics cards running simultaneously. I would recommend getting two graphics cards that are slightly worse than the 295 that are SLI Enabled and run them together. The only thing is, obviously, you're purchasing two graphics cards as opposed to one, so price does become an issue, especially since the performance edge may not warrant the extra couple hundred bucks. For a safe bet, I would stick with what my friend did and get a single GTX 295. It's a pretty expensive card, but I can tell you from experience that it is DEFINITELY worth it. If you have more cash to dispense, look into SLI/Crossfire stuff to see which cards running in either outperform the 295. Just a FYI, you have to have the exact same cards to run them simultaneously.

4 GB of Ram is decent, but 6 GB is preferred. If you can actually afford it, go to 8. I don't think you'll really need anything above that. I don't have any experience with anything above 8, so I can't tell you if it's uber amazing, or if it's just a burnt hole in your wallet.

I don't know too terribly much about all this stuff, so don't take my word as holy. I had to try to learn up on this mumbo jumbo because my friend wanted my help getting a badass PC a few weeks ago, and he thought I already knew this stuff lol.

[MrRubix]

Re: Getting a new computer. Need advice.

Yeah I was looking at getting nVidia -- I've used ATI for a few years now and it hasn't really been up to snuff.