- Jan 2, 2010
- 37
- 0
- 18,530
Hey guys,
Just got a call from my dad; my brother hasn't had an upgrade to his computer since I built it years ago, and is looking to do so. All on his own my brother found this Gateway for $629 that looks pretty good.........
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5664113&csid=ITD&body=MAIN
I don't think I could build a real competitive system from the ground up for that price. However, the issue of price has reared its ugly head, and I've been tasked with checking into an upgrade to present system for around $400. My brother plays games a lot, but he has been doing so on that junky Athlon 3700+ with a Radeon 9600XT for years now, so anything is an improvement.
Country: USA
Parts Needed: Motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM
Optional Parts (if budget allows): HDD, DVD drive
To get full value out of the upgrade, I'm considering just recommending he leave the IDE HDD he has intact to save money, as well as the IDE optical drive; if there's money left over at the end, I'll get him a new SATA HDD. Since he's used to that junkbox running like crap anyway, I've been toying around with just an i3 processor or a similar AMD, any input? I also need a graphics card recommendation, if you have any. I haven't built a computer on this sort of budget in such a long time that I don't know what to recommend anymore. I did see an article here recently about the i3 not limiting performance much on a lot of gaming rigs, so it may be the way to go since games is most of what this computer is used for. Forgot to mention, he is also still using an old CRT monitor that came from a Pentium 3 computer we bought in the mid to late 90s.......I'm not really sure how much longer it will last, but on the other hand a $200 gpu may not be warranted for a 4:3 monitor that probably won't look as nice as a new LCD anyway. thanks in advance!
Just got a call from my dad; my brother hasn't had an upgrade to his computer since I built it years ago, and is looking to do so. All on his own my brother found this Gateway for $629 that looks pretty good.........
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5664113&csid=ITD&body=MAIN
I don't think I could build a real competitive system from the ground up for that price. However, the issue of price has reared its ugly head, and I've been tasked with checking into an upgrade to present system for around $400. My brother plays games a lot, but he has been doing so on that junky Athlon 3700+ with a Radeon 9600XT for years now, so anything is an improvement.
Country: USA
Parts Needed: Motherboard, CPU, GPU, RAM
Optional Parts (if budget allows): HDD, DVD drive
To get full value out of the upgrade, I'm considering just recommending he leave the IDE HDD he has intact to save money, as well as the IDE optical drive; if there's money left over at the end, I'll get him a new SATA HDD. Since he's used to that junkbox running like crap anyway, I've been toying around with just an i3 processor or a similar AMD, any input? I also need a graphics card recommendation, if you have any. I haven't built a computer on this sort of budget in such a long time that I don't know what to recommend anymore. I did see an article here recently about the i3 not limiting performance much on a lot of gaming rigs, so it may be the way to go since games is most of what this computer is used for. Forgot to mention, he is also still using an old CRT monitor that came from a Pentium 3 computer we bought in the mid to late 90s.......I'm not really sure how much longer it will last, but on the other hand a $200 gpu may not be warranted for a 4:3 monitor that probably won't look as nice as a new LCD anyway. thanks in advance!
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