- Apr 4, 2013
- 16
- 0
- 10,510
Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: Next 2-4 weeks.
Budget Range: (e.g.: 300-400) $400-500, can push $550 if absolutely necessary
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, everything else. I play largely older PC games, no FPS at all, and I'm not at all graphics obsessed. I'm more likely to lower game settings to experience a minor performance boost than to set the game higher for eye candy. I do want this machine to be able to run Starcraft 2 and Diablo III at high settings if at all possible. But the games I play on a more regular basis are far older with far less requirements.
Are you buying a monitor: No
Parts to Upgrade:
Need Mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU, case, cooler. Would like a 64-100 gb SSD for boot drive, but I can reuse an old harddrive if necessary to save costs.
Would like a recommendation on good cheap speakers, cause my old ones are of dubious reliability at this point. This need not be counted toward budget, and I probably won't buy them with the rest of the machine.
Basically everything but keyboard, mouse, monitor, optical drive and maybe hard drive.
Do you need to buy OS: Yes. Always was able to buy student versions in the past, no longer an option, so I'd need pointers on where to find Windows. Assuming the no mobo transfer is the only thing relevant to me about buying OEM, I'm okay with that.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg preferred for everything cause I've used them and I don't get charged tax. I have no issues with using Amazon, but I do get charged sales tax from them (8%), so I have to consider that. I'm under the impression most big electronics sites like tigerdirect won't charge me tax either, so if that's the case, I don't mind them, but never actually bought from anywhere but Newegg and Amazon for computer parts.
Location: City, State/Region, Country - Houston, TX USA. I do have a Microcenter within driving distance.
Parts Preferences: For my price range, probably AMD only. I can't imagine I could afford a decent intel quad core, and I'd much rather have an AMD quad then an intel duo. I'd prefer Radeon to NVidea simply because I like the idea having them with an AMD CPU, but I suppose that doesn't actually matter does it?
Overclocking: No. I'd like to have the option, but do not want to assume I will.
SLI or Crossfire: No.
Your Monitor Resolution: I would really like to be able to get to 1920x1200 if at all possible in my budget. Nothing under 1440x900, the higher the better.
Additional Comments: I am obsessively cheap in life. I don't mind paying extra for something if I can get value for it, but being cheap is a religion for me.
I generally run two computers at all times. My older machine was ten years old, a part finally blew up, and given its age, fixing it would just be throwing money into a lost cause. So I'm replacing the entire machine. The more current system I have is a old, 17" notebook running a Core 2 Duo @1.8g w/ a GeForce 8600GT I believe. By today's standards, its a junk computer, but it can run both SC2 and D3 flawlessly at low settings, which I'm fine with.
That being said, I want a machine that can run both of those very smoothly at high end settings, for as cheap as humanly possible.
If possible, I'd like it to be able to triple monitor, so I can not use my notebook at all. If not, I'm perfectly okay with two monitors and using my notebook to run my third monitor.
I want a quiet and low power machine if at all possible. I live in a terribly hot location, with brutal summer heat, so this is relatively important to me.
Longevity matters also to me. As you can see from my past, I'll use a machine until it dies on me and not before for the sake of upgrading. I've no problems upgrading as necessary or if I can get the value for the money, but I'm much too cheap to do it regularly.
I do have some questions if anyone would be so kind as to enlighten me. The parts I've been looking at currently are CPUs. I see AMD Phenom II x4 965 Deneb endlessly recommended. However, I almost never see things like AMD FX-4100 Zambezi recommended even though it is similarly priced, uses less power, and has TurboCore. Is there something particularly different about the FX line that makes it less suitable for gaming than the Phenom II x4 line? From the few benchmarks I've seen they appear to perform similarly so I'm confused as to why the 965 is so loved that people go out of their way to recommend it over other processors.
Given my penchant for playing older games, most of which can't possibly be written for multi-core technology, I imagine TurboCore would be something I'd want.
Also, regarding APUs, I know most people around "gaming build' discussions never acknowledge them, but is there any particular problem with them? I know they'll never compete with dedicated graphics cards, but are are the AMD A10s strong enough to run SC2 or D3 at high settings? The benchmarks I've seen on the CPU portion seems like for the price, they match fairly well against the 965 Deneb. The GPU portion falls far short, but is it enough for my purposes?
Budget Range: (e.g.: 300-400) $400-500, can push $550 if absolutely necessary
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, everything else. I play largely older PC games, no FPS at all, and I'm not at all graphics obsessed. I'm more likely to lower game settings to experience a minor performance boost than to set the game higher for eye candy. I do want this machine to be able to run Starcraft 2 and Diablo III at high settings if at all possible. But the games I play on a more regular basis are far older with far less requirements.
Are you buying a monitor: No
Parts to Upgrade:
Need Mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU, case, cooler. Would like a 64-100 gb SSD for boot drive, but I can reuse an old harddrive if necessary to save costs.
Would like a recommendation on good cheap speakers, cause my old ones are of dubious reliability at this point. This need not be counted toward budget, and I probably won't buy them with the rest of the machine.
Basically everything but keyboard, mouse, monitor, optical drive and maybe hard drive.
Do you need to buy OS: Yes. Always was able to buy student versions in the past, no longer an option, so I'd need pointers on where to find Windows. Assuming the no mobo transfer is the only thing relevant to me about buying OEM, I'm okay with that.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Newegg preferred for everything cause I've used them and I don't get charged tax. I have no issues with using Amazon, but I do get charged sales tax from them (8%), so I have to consider that. I'm under the impression most big electronics sites like tigerdirect won't charge me tax either, so if that's the case, I don't mind them, but never actually bought from anywhere but Newegg and Amazon for computer parts.
Location: City, State/Region, Country - Houston, TX USA. I do have a Microcenter within driving distance.
Parts Preferences: For my price range, probably AMD only. I can't imagine I could afford a decent intel quad core, and I'd much rather have an AMD quad then an intel duo. I'd prefer Radeon to NVidea simply because I like the idea having them with an AMD CPU, but I suppose that doesn't actually matter does it?
Overclocking: No. I'd like to have the option, but do not want to assume I will.
SLI or Crossfire: No.
Your Monitor Resolution: I would really like to be able to get to 1920x1200 if at all possible in my budget. Nothing under 1440x900, the higher the better.
Additional Comments: I am obsessively cheap in life. I don't mind paying extra for something if I can get value for it, but being cheap is a religion for me.
I generally run two computers at all times. My older machine was ten years old, a part finally blew up, and given its age, fixing it would just be throwing money into a lost cause. So I'm replacing the entire machine. The more current system I have is a old, 17" notebook running a Core 2 Duo @1.8g w/ a GeForce 8600GT I believe. By today's standards, its a junk computer, but it can run both SC2 and D3 flawlessly at low settings, which I'm fine with.
That being said, I want a machine that can run both of those very smoothly at high end settings, for as cheap as humanly possible.
If possible, I'd like it to be able to triple monitor, so I can not use my notebook at all. If not, I'm perfectly okay with two monitors and using my notebook to run my third monitor.
I want a quiet and low power machine if at all possible. I live in a terribly hot location, with brutal summer heat, so this is relatively important to me.
Longevity matters also to me. As you can see from my past, I'll use a machine until it dies on me and not before for the sake of upgrading. I've no problems upgrading as necessary or if I can get the value for the money, but I'm much too cheap to do it regularly.
I do have some questions if anyone would be so kind as to enlighten me. The parts I've been looking at currently are CPUs. I see AMD Phenom II x4 965 Deneb endlessly recommended. However, I almost never see things like AMD FX-4100 Zambezi recommended even though it is similarly priced, uses less power, and has TurboCore. Is there something particularly different about the FX line that makes it less suitable for gaming than the Phenom II x4 line? From the few benchmarks I've seen they appear to perform similarly so I'm confused as to why the 965 is so loved that people go out of their way to recommend it over other processors.
Given my penchant for playing older games, most of which can't possibly be written for multi-core technology, I imagine TurboCore would be something I'd want.
Also, regarding APUs, I know most people around "gaming build' discussions never acknowledge them, but is there any particular problem with them? I know they'll never compete with dedicated graphics cards, but are are the AMD A10s strong enough to run SC2 or D3 at high settings? The benchmarks I've seen on the CPU portion seems like for the price, they match fairly well against the 965 Deneb. The GPU portion falls far short, but is it enough for my purposes?
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