Building My Own Computer

[Mr_Adam]

[hide]My Components

SYSTEM COLOR Piano Black

OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English

WARRANTY AND SERVICE 2 Year Basic Service Plan

MONITORS 20.0" Dell IN2010N HD Monitor with VGA cable

KEYBOARD Dell USB Entry Keyboard

MOUSE Dell USB Optical Mouse

 

My Accessories

DATASAFE ONLINE BACKUP Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year

 

ALSO INCLUDED WITH YOUR SYSTEM

PROCESSOR AMD Athlon™ II X4 Processor 630 (2.8GHz, 2M, 4C)

MEMORY 6GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 3 DIMMs

HARD DRIVE 1TB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™

VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3

SPEAKERS No Speaker Option

SOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Sidious 570MT Inspiron 570 Minitower w/ Black Bezel

Optical Drives 16X DVD+/-RW Drive

Wireless Dell 1525 WLAN PCIe card with11n mini-Card & external antenna

Modem No Modem Option

Network Card Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet

Floppy Drive Dell 19 in 1 Media Card Reader

Microsoft Works and Office Microsoft® Office Starter 2010

Adobe Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0 Multi-Language

Security Software McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months[/hide]

 

Sorry, a bit of a text wall.

Is this a good build? It's a slightly customized Dell, but this comes with a 20 inch monitor and some more recent things I don't have access to, such as Windows 7. I'm pretty sure every other spec is better than Joe's build besides the graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 5770 compared to 5450 in the Dell).

 

Total cost of this build is $774.19.

 

Will this still be able to do the things I want to do?

 

According to a review, the graphics card is lacking. Would it be wise to stick with it, or buy a different one and swap? I think it (again) would end up as cheaper with Joe's custom build.

Edited July 21, 2010 by insertmynamehere

[OldJoe]

The only better thing is the HD, which is 1gb. But i don't know which model nor brand.

CS with that gpu would be fine. But if you want to play any modern/future games on more than low settings, you need to change you graphics card.

My build, with os (and depending on what monitor), would come to about 850-900. I would say you'd need to add at least 120$ to that build for a decent card, but it'd still be less powerful.

[Jernlov]

Upgrading to 7 is probably more advisable on newer hardware, and especially if you're gaming.

 

Other than that, I like OldJoe's build. Might want to swap in an ASUS or MSi 5770 though. Those seem to have a pretty good repuation. Also, don't expect to max things at 1920x1080/1920x1200. You'd need a bit more power in the CPU/GPU department for it to be comfortable. If you're just going to be playing at lower/more common resolutions, then you shouldn't have too many issues.

More powerful hardware is out of his/her budget. It will easily play games at high settings, sure my monitor is only 1440x900, but even on my budget build, i can play on high settings without lag.

Asus is weird in customer service sometimes, and MSI - i don't know if they've changed to better components yet - but their components are/used-to-be of cheap quality.

Yeah. My Athlon X2 7750 and 8800GTS can still run most things on high at 1280x1024. It starts to struggle at about 1680x1050 (comfortable on medium) but anything above that needs to be set to a mixture of medium/low settings for it to run well and still look relatively alright. It's kind of amazing how older hardware is still good considering all the advances since I built this.

 

Yeah, with ASUS you're taking a bit of a gamble (as I've learned) but the coolers and performance figures are quite nice on them. The newer MSi cards are pretty good quality, and again, they have really nice coolers and performance. I've never dealt with HIS and the only dedicated ATi GPU brand I've used is Sapphire, again, fairly good but not really amazing.

 

Also, seconding Dell monitors being great. When this one gives up, I think I'll get a Dell one.

[Mr_Adam]

Ok, I'm bumping this thread back to the front page rather than make a new topic. My friend has another friend who's also good with computers, and is selling his old build. Here's the general specs:

 

CPU: AMD Phenom II 940 Processor (3.0GHz)

GPU: Dual SLI BFG GTX 260's (2GB GDDR total)

PSU: Kingwin 800w SLI ready

RAM: 5GB DDR2

Motherboard: XFX SLI ready 750a

HDD: 300GB

Disc Drive: DVD RW and CD Burner

Fan: Two 120mm fans

 

 

My friend is asking $900 (no monitor included, but he's also selling a Westernhouse 22" for another $200)

 

This was the info given to me. I'm not sure if it's worth it, or even if I need something that big, unless I can really get it for a steal. Help please and thanks!

[Sbrideau]

Ask him to lower it. You can have better for less, and I just went and checked the current prices on parts (except motherboard as it's unavailable now), and it went for less than what your friend is asking you. Try to deal with him to lower the price.

[Laura]

Without a monitor, I wouldn't pay that price.

[Mr_Adam]

How much do you think I could ask for it?

[Mr_Adam]

EDIT: I turned down the entire PC, but my friend is willing to sell in parts. Parts that stick out to me are the processor (AMD Phenom II 940 (compared to 925 suggested by OldJoe)) and maybe the motherboard, since the one suggested earlier (GIGABYTE something) seems to be out of stock on Newegg. I can't find the motherboard on Newegg though, it's a 750a XFX according to my friend.

 

I'm not sure how to discuss prices tbh, I'm thinking around $200 for both? Would being used make a difference?