Help my family find the best prebuilt.

[x5iriu5x]

I have been lurking on tom's hardware for some time but I just recently made an account so that my family could get some help in the area of computer replacement. We have been in need of a new computer since our last one died ohh, 6 odd months ago. It only had a pentium 4 single core clocked at 1.8 ghz so it's actually a blessing that it died . Anyways, I'm here to find the best pre-built system for $500. No I can not build my own although I would love to. My parents are not to confident in by building abilities, I have high school, and I do not have the space to do this. In this time I have seen many computers for less than or around $500, but they all seemed to be powered by chipmunks. Recently I have come across the Amd fusion chips, more specifically the llano desktop a6 and a8 series. I loved the a8 3850 because I could squeeze in some gaming (minecraft, terraria, star wars: the old republic, nintendo ds emulators, etc.) but not break the bank. I am aware that these chips do not perform as well as the sandy bridge chips on basic tasks, but the 3d benchmarks vs intergrated sandy bridge blew me away. The only pc makers that use these chips atm though are avadirect and cyberpower (to my knowledge). I am wondering if I can trust these companies though. Advice in this area would be very helpful. To some up this wall of text, my family is looking for a prebuilt computer for $500 dollars. It does not matter if it is amd or intel, all we (and i specifically) want is a computer that won't be doa. I would like to get some gaming out of it (nothing like crysis lol, just something to tied me over) which is why I found llano so great. Sorry for this LONG post , but I could really use your help guys.

1. $500 maximum
2. must work (i.e. cant have a lose power supply when it gets here, although I know shipping could do this to)
3.good build quality
4.(not needed, just appreciated) Some gaming ability
5. Basically the best prebuilt for the money performence wise.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end, even if your eyes did start to bleed

 

[johnners2981]

You sure you won't build it? It sactually very easy to do and will only take an hour or two to put it together, all you'll need is a screwdriver.

Plus you'll get a lot more value for your money

Practice taking your old computer apart and putting it back together to convince your parents it's simple to do.

Sorry have no idea of prebuilts in case you're determined to go down that road

 

[cadder]

You can get a pretty good pre-built machine for that budget as long as you don't need to do high performance gaming.

I recently looked into perbuilts for my father to use in his small business. I found that the mass market retailers such as BestBuy sell a lot of low priced machines, starting about $300 for the box, but they are bare bones boxes built just to sell to people with low budgets. However at about $400 you can get a machine with more resources, such as 3+ GB of ram and a faster processor. At $500 you could do even better. If you buy from someone like BestBuy at least if the machine doesn't work right out of the box you can take it back and put it in their face. BestBuy has several Lenovo models within your price range and that brand is a bit more trustworthy than others that you would find at the bottom price ranges.

It is hard to buy the parts and build a machine for similar prices at this low price point, but not impossible. One big issue is that the manufacturers pay a lot less for Windows than you will. If you already have a copy of Windows then that helps. However if you build a machine yourself you have the chance to buy better parts than the bottom line PC manufacturer would use.

 

[johnners2981]

Hopefully you can see this shopping cart from newegg. Comes to $423 or $523 if you need windows 7 operating system which I'm guessing you might, and all you have to do is put it together

http://secure.newegg.com/Shopping/ShoppingCart.aspx?Submit=view

 

[x5iriu5x]

Thanks for all the replies guys. To johnners2981: I actually can't see in the cart . Sorry if you spent some time putting it together. I talked over building with my father, and he said that he doesn't want to risk the chance of breaking anything even though it looks interesting and rather easy. So building is out of the question (until I get some money from a part time job so I can make my own pc).
To cadder: I have been checking out best buy lately and have seen some interesting deals. As you mentioned there are the 300 dollar chipmunk machines every where. I have found 2 computers for under $500 at best buy, but I wasn't to sure of them.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Dell+-+Inspiron+Desktop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i3+Processor+/+4GB+Memory/2677251.p?id=1218343867413&skuId=2677251#tabbed-cu

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Gateway+-+Desktop+/+Intel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153%3B+i3+Processor+/+6GB+Memory+/+1TB+Hard+Drive/2632034.p?id=1218341069310&skuId=2632034

I'm still wondering if cyberpower and avadirect can be trusted. Any help with those is greatly appreciated since I really do love the llano cpu. If anybody else knows of a good pc maker that uses llano please show me .

http://www.avadirect.com/AMD-Fusion-Desktop-PC

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/first-desktops-equipped-with-amd-llano-apus-start-shipping-from-avadirect-cyberpower/6340