My 2 year 4 month old HP pavilion laptop died last night and the problem is neither the power cord or the battery. So I plan to buy the parts to build a desktop, as to not pay retail markup for a prebuilt computer (and not be forced to buy an OS with it). I don't need something particularily powerful.

 

Video card: needs to be capable of rendering runescape in highest detail and must have good multi-monitor support. I plan to use 3 monitors, unsure of their size, but they'll be the same. HDMI port would be nice.

CPU: The most demand I'll be putting on it is probably playing runescape while running a screen recorder, streaming music, and have some programs running. I don't play any high resource games.

Power supply and case: Doesn't seem like there would be much variation in these, anything I should know?

Keyboard: Something with programmable keys.

 

Any suggestions for purchases? Brands to avoid? Good sites to purchase parts? General advice? I'm tech savvy so don't worry about confusing me.

Also, are there any disatvantages to using an open-source OS? I am planning on running Ubuntu.

Do you want a list?

Otherwise i guess something like an athlon, 5570, 400w psu and 4gb ram.

Don't skimp on the psu, saving money on it is no use, it's better to have a certain quality than something which might blow up.

Edit: ah, did only now did i see "suggestions"... I'll give some suggestions soon!

My suggestion for a PC that will work for quite some years:

 

Intel Core I7 920

Nvidia 480 graphics card

Any motherboard with USB 3.0

6 or 8 GB ram, depending on ram slots on your selected motherboard.

Intel x25 80GB SSD

Any 1 TB 7200rpm Harddrive

700W Powersupply, modulated is the best.

^Lol.

 

case http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119115

cd/dvd http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106333

hd http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073

cpu http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103903

mobo http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128454

ram http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820144262

gpu http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125309

psu http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151094

=502 canadian dollars.

 

A couple of notes:

Hd - I don't know if you wanted a 750 or 1tb, so i just picked a standard.

Cpu - Can change to quad if you want.

Gpu: This took a bit of time actually, can't say 3 monitors is something i've had to taken into consideration often. This card is a gaming card, but the cheapest to your request as it does support 3 monitors right from it's outputs. You could buy 2 lower end cards to utilize 3 outputs, but would then need two pci-e lanes on the mobo, so i imagine that in the end it would still end up about the same price as the lone graphics card. You'll have search your self for dvi and hdmi combinations, don't have time to do that, and see if it gets any cheaper.

Psu is taken due to my gpu.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231190&cm_re=DDR3_4gb-_-20-231-190-_-Product

Alternate RAM, as the other is sold out. This stuff is also faster, and a more reliable brand. It is $6 more though.

 

Id also get a Caviar Blue 1tb drive, only $15 more, if you are planning to make videos.

 

 

If you plan to use Linux, be aware many games won't work with it. I believe RS does though. Anything using DirectX won't run on Linux

.

Interesting, wasn't aware you could do that.