Bunch of rigs need help :(

I wouldn't touch any of them myself, if you are that unsure why not buy from a reputable dealer? That way you would at least have some form of legal recourse should things go wrong.

From what other people have told me my price range at a normal store won't get you anything premade worth it's weight in trash, and I don't have the time before his birthday to wait for shipping + actually learn how to build one.

I mean if you HAD to choose one for gaming at gunpoint.

I'd rather eat lead, sorry.

Guess I'll find another forum to ask then sorry to bother you I guess

The first and fourth one are the same machine, first of all, just posted a few days apart.

I would ignore the Pentium D machine (the last one); it's by far the worst.

The remaining three are all in the same ballpark ... they have CPUs that are OK but at the low end for gaming, but they're all compatible with the more modern AMD quad-core chips, so the CPU could be replaced easily for a significant upgrade. They all could use a new video card -- two of them because onboard video pretty much sucks for serious gaming, and the other one because an HD 4650 is outdated if you want to do serious gaming.

Basically any of the three AMD machines are the framework of a gaming system, but they'll all need about $200 in upgrades to make a GOOD gaming machine.

Also, after looking at it again, I would get rid of the first machine because the motherboard is older than the others and offers less potential to upgrade.

Basically, yeah, I agree, you could do a lot better than any of these, even if you bought a premade one from a regular store.

I'd agree with mousemonkey ! - after reading the descriptions they all seem to be listed by the same person and with him saying they come with Ubuntu or he can put win7 on them I'd doubt the Win7 would be a legitimate version !! - they are all overpriced for what they are and would require a few hundred dollars be spent to actually be useful for games - not to mention the ones using Rosewill PSU's may blow up and take the rest of the system with them !

If there's a premade for sub 500 that will beat these please point me in that direction I'll love you forever lmao

Depends -- are you hot?


but seriously:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

It'll need a better graphics card to be a decent gaming machine, but then again, so will all the other machines you pointed out. Difference is, those machines will all suck ass unless you put at least $200 into them; this one is passable as-is. And an upgraded graphics card (e.g. the Radeon HD 4850) can make it into a pretty good gaming machine for about $100.

edit: oh ... duh. You will probably also need a new power supply to handle a good graphics card in that machine. Maybe a new case, too, but those are both pretty cheap. If you can go into the $550 range, this one is probably a better all-around machine:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

If you are resourceful, you could check out the "Homebuilt systems" section on this forum. They might be able to help you order the right parts to make a reasonable system. The only catch is that you'll have to put it together yourself. Which isn't very hard to do really. You could probably find some videos online to help you through that process too.

If I bought him that premade and then bought him a nice graphics card later could he just screw open the case and switch them? Would it need to be another "NVIDIA" card?

Once I grab him a graphics card upgrade should the system be good for awhile? Or is there something else that screams UPGRADE?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=E...

Yes, that's essentially correct. He'd need to adjust a few settings as well (mainly to disable the old graphics adapter) but it's pretty easy to accomplish.

The "card" that comes with it is not actually a physical card that you would switch out -- it's a graphics chip built into the motherboard. So instead of switching anything, he'll just turn off the built-in chip using the system's BIOS and plug the new card in. It's essentially the same idea.



No, any brand of add-on card will work as long as it fits a PCIe x16 slot (just about all video cards are PCIe x16 these days).



The rest of that system should be fine, although in order to upgrade the graphics card he'll probably need a bigger power supply at the same time or it won't have enough wattage to power the system. Don't worry -- in this situation, he could probably get an acceptable power supply for under $50.

Depending on which machine you get him, you MAY want to look into getting a bigger computer case. I can't tell from the pictures, but the Athlon II X3 machine that I first recommended MIGHT come in a case that's too small to add a good card into. Although it might be a regular-sized case and it just looks funny in the picture. But cases are not that expensive either, unless you get some top-end luxury model.