Acadia opened this issue on Jan 15, 2007 · 79 posts
pjz99 posted Tue, 16 January 2007 at 12:07 AM
Bang for buck, you will always do much, much better with a desktop PC than you will with a laptop. Desktops are always much, much cheaper and easier to repair if you ever have a hardware problem.
If I can make a few recommendations:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131006R
$62 ASUS Motherboard, pretty good quality, up to 4GB of memory in 4 slots, Socket 775 processor socket
I've owned many ASUS motherboards, always rock solid
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115003
$317 Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, an extremely popular and well-loved dual-core processor - I skipped this generation and went to the quad core version of the same series but I've read many, many positive things said about this particular chip
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145530
$56 each, this is two 512MB memory SIMMs, for 1GB per box. Suggest two for $112.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130048
$220 EVGA Nvidia 7800GTX (I've owned this card, good stable compatible card, very fast)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140
$95, a good 250GB Seagate hard disk (I've owned several of this model, well behaved)
Some case and power supply; be aware that for high powered graphics cards and processors, you REALLY want to stick to 600 watts or higher. I can't really recommend a case+power supply combo, because nearly always, the power supply is something you will end up throwing away; twice now I've gone with too-small power supplies and had serious stability problems (machine crashes) because there simply wasn't enough juice coming out of the power supply. Choice of case is largely a question of your aesthetic preference, in a mechanical sense they are all pretty much the same. A decent case will generally be about $60 and will come with a power supply you can use to hold loose papers down on windy days. A large collection can be viewed here:
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=7&name=ATX-Computer-Cases
$60 or thereabouts.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817702003
$120, 650 watt power supply by BFG Tech (I've owned several BFG Tech products, made to pretty good standards and low price).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827131015
$25 DVD-RW drive by Sony (I've owned this one)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16821103116
$8 floppy disk drive by Sony (duh it's a floppy, you still need one :tt2: )
Grand total:
$963 with 1GB, 1015 with 2GB. It's pretty unilikely you will find a package deal of comparable part quality at this price; if you do, it is likely some corners were cut that I personally would not cut, myself. Mouse and keyboard I did not include, as I presume you can probably keep using the ones you currently have, or whatever.
O, your budget is $1500 US? Hmm, then you have enough for a monitor after all, don't you?
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Category=19&name=Monitors
For your browsing pleasure...
PS: "some assembly required."