Yourself?

A new computer should come with Windows installed already, just make sure you have some drive bays free and plug 'em in. You might have some problems if you have the same OS installed on two harddrives, though. Might. >_>

1. Name those games, I'll make sure to check it out. Crysis for example doesn't utilize more than 2 cores. Witcher didn't even use 2 properly before the patch. Any popular game benchmarks will show that slower quad performs worse than faster dual core. Maybe there are some exception I don't know about.
2. There are applications, usually specialized like 3D Studio Max, that make use of 4 cores, but I thought we're into gaming machines here.
3. Quads are not more underclocked than dual cores. They overclock about the same as duals from the same line. Statistically, a bit less since it will run as fast as the slowest core is able to and because it generates more heat.
4. You're talking about quads like everything uses many cores. It's just not the case yet.
5. I've never choked my system enough that 2 cores couldn't handle it easily.
6. Actually, the newest Intel line is Penryn (Wolfdale/Yorkfield) and it seems to have temperature troubles - people run into ~80dC when running them over 4GHz. I am not sure though if it's not just wrong BIOS readings (though it repeats on many boards). It's still too new to be sure, mass quantities are just hitting shelves about now I think.
7. That's what I'm saying too - buy a computer that will run all current games well, not the very expensive high-end for the future (that includes quads). That's why I'm about to buy used core2 duo select that is enough for any game (for 1/3 of the cost of the cheapest quad), which will actually give me better performance in current games than that 'cheap' quad (seriously, look at benchmarks).
8. I don't think this year's games will fully utilize 4 cores. Look for how long dual cores are around and only in 2007 some games started to use them. Transition to 3,4,8 or any number may be faster because they should just start developing software for 'many' cores. We'll see, but remember that games which will come out this year started being developed at least a year ago.

I currently have X2 running 2.2GHz (which we all know is crap compared to Core2 Duo), 2GB RAM, GF 8600GT 512MB OC'd
Gears of War, ProStreet
Both run smoothly in high detail in 1680x1050.
The Witcher
Slows down when looking around in open areas like the swamp - I suspect CPU in this case, though can't be sure. Besides that, runs well in 1680x1050 in highest details.
Bioshock
Had to lower the res to 1280x800 (or something like that) to play in high details, but it's clearly GPU's fault.
Crysis
No go (not even in medium details), but if I had 8800GT it would run pretty well.

Btw, I'm not saying you shouldn't buy quads, all I'm saying is that their price/performance ratio is NOT better than for Core2 Due - it's worse.

For $300 tops you could purchase a 1TB drive.

Make your computer. Buy two 1TB drives, and load up your desktop with as much RAM as possible.

You shouldn't settle for less than 512gig for each RAM, but if you can get 2gig, go for it. That'll cost you about $20 - $30 a stick of RAM, if you're aiming for the 1gig ones.

You could get a 2gig processor for about $300, if you look in the right places.

And a motherboard... oi. A good one will run you anywhere from $75 - $200.

A case shouldn't be more than perhaps $100 or so.

DVD+RW drives are like $100 most a pop. Get like two of those.

So, let's assume the worst.

$300x2 = $600
$30x3 = $90
$300x1 = $300
$200x1 = $200
$100x1 = $100
$100x2 = $200

600+90+300+200+100+200 = $1490.

I might be a little off. But that should be your worst case scenario.

Remember they all need to be compatible with each other.

putting your own hd's in isn't hard, just use common sense.. turn power off, unplug, touch metal BEFORE your hd's, so you don't hit them with static. plug the cables in the back, mount them inthe frame, and it's done, more or less

there ARE boxes you can put internal hd's in, and make them external, dunno where to find a good one, though

I currently have 4 laptops, (I use all of them atleast once during the week) so I've finally been able to figure out what makes one laptop better than another.

Currently, my favorite laptop for web browsing, online banking and other such things is a mac laptop. The reason for this is simple, It opens up in seconds, and takes maybe 15 seconds for the network to reconnect, and its Super light. However, if I want to watch TV on the internet, I use my Vista laptop instead. (I'm willing to wait the extra 4 minutes for that one to boot up from hibernate/need a restart) Cost me $850 (bought it used)

The other factor is size. I have a 17" toshiba laptop. I might as well bought a portable desktop. (like a lan gaming machine) I can't run it on my lap without my stomach hurting after 2 hours, from the weight and heat. The only time I use it is when I put it at the end of my bed to watch Internet TV, or when I know I'm going somehwere for a few hours where I would otherwise be bored. (its used the least of my computers, though it has the most power. 4gb ram etc) Cost me about $1700

The computer I use the most for non internet activity is an old Dell which has 3 hour battery life, weighs under 4 lbs and has a semi decent video card. (I play civ3, and other simple graphics games) Cost my parents over $2K at the time.

My ideal laptop therefore would be light (15" screen, under 4 lbs), be well constructed so that it can handle Windows Hibernate/sleep (the old dell computer is like a mac in that regard) and would likely cost around $1800. I think those extra $500 are well worth the smaller size and lighter weight. And if the machine boots up as quickly as the mac, it would be a bargain.

With that all said, because of boot up times from hibernate (which is a hardware configuration issue) I would not buy a laptop online, and would test the machine before you take it home. The way you test is, this. Open it up, boot it up. Time it. Run a program with lots of graphics, and while its playing, shut the laptop shut. Wait 5 minutes, and hten open it up again, and time it till what you were watching comes back on.

It's about a page too late, but I would strongly discourage buying Alienware. It's a fusion of some of the worst qualities of Apple and Dell without the good customer service of either. You get a pretty box, customization options, and slightly better than average pricing, but it ends there. Dell's customer service and I spent probably 30 hours working on my poor laptop and sent me replacement parts through the mail so that I was never without my computer. Got an intelligent, English-speaking native each time. Apple's customer service is what makes Apple Apple. Working with Alienware when my aunt's computer was acting up was annoying at best. The only perk of Alienware I can think of is that you don't void the warranty by opening the case, but you're not masochistic enough to try to upgrade a laptop's hardware.

I don't mind getting a desktop, by the way, since it seems to be cheaper than a laptop, for what I want it to do. I'm going to keep my current laptop and probably just replace the battery.

I need a computer system that won't break warranty if I add said harddrives in.




I've put in a second hard drive once, so I feel like I can do it again, but that's not the issue. I -think- my mobo is dying, or -something- is. I don't know what. -Probably- not the hard drive (only probably), but beyond that I'm clueless. Suffice to say, I'm fine with getting a new computer, I just don't want to break the warranty if I add these extra hard drives myself. Of course, I'd prefer it be done right by someone who has a clue what they're doing, but...

>_>

As a side note, I'm wondering if it might not be a bad idea to build my own computer from scratch. I hear they're often better and, ultimately cheaper... I'm just a n00b, sooo... Any advice?

Advice: When it comes to building computers, don't buy a book, look at a website. A free one.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/build-a-computer.htm

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Build_A_Computer

http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Computer

http://www.ehow.com/how_2028579_build-computer.html?ref=fuel


Those are just a few. Simple enough, no?

Kashim: SupCom, for one, does. However I guess I've been mislead by "OMG QUAD CORE!!!" fever when seeing stuff personally, because most tests on the internet are saying that quads have very few gameplay enhancing qualities. Maybe I should buy an E8400.

Myrkr: No offense, but your part names, suggestions, and prices make you sound pretty clueless. Especially because you forgot (among other things) the most important part, the graphics card(s).

Richter: Tell us explicitly what you're looking for in your new PC (not just "I want to play Crysiiis" and "quads are sexay" ). Gimme a day or two and I'll PM you a list of the best newegg parts that should work together for less than $1500. Once you see the parts, putting them together and making them work is pretty self-explanatory, and you could always ask if when things don't work right the first time.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
Gigabyte P35-DS3L
2GB Kingston DDR2 800
500GB Samsung Spinpoint T166 HD501LJ
LG GSA-H62N 18x SATA DVDRW
512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT
Onboard sound motherboard
Cooler Master Centurion 5 CAC-T05
620W Corsair CMPSU-620HX
Cooling Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

That comes in at under $1250 australian, so it should be significantly cheaper for the rest of you guys.

Work with those as the basic stats, then upgrade depending on what you are doing with the computer, with the main upgrade points being cpu (possibly to quad core), ram (4gig if going to Vista), sound card, hdd space or power supply. Oh and of course an LCD screen (Chi Mei are excellent quality for their price), good quality mouse (logitech/razer) and keyboard (probably the Logitech G15 here) too.

A thing to keep in mind is perhaps Richter doesn't want to build a computer. I wouldn't have minded building a computer in my early twenties. However, now I don't really want to bother setting everything up from scratch and would rather pay some extra money for that service.

I feel old. I don't what half those numbers mean, andthe other half I don't know if they are good or not.

You stop paying attention for just 5 years, and they change all the standards on you

A lot of the numbers are just model numbers, not standards

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 is the current fastest dual-core x86-64 processor by Intel.
P35-DS3L is a model of the latest and greatest Intel-accepted motherboard.
Kingston is the Ram SIMMs, 2 GB at 800Mhz
The Hard Drive is 500MB, running at 7200RPM.
The DVD-RW drive runs at 18x standard speed when writing.
That nVidia is the most powerful gamer-oriented graphics card from that vendor.
Sound cards are usually not needed anymore, part of the motherboard.
The rest is the Case, Power Supply (620W), and cooling system.

Unless things are wildly different overseas than here, you can still order in the parts you want and get the store to build the PC for you and it should only cost a little bit extra.

And Daganev - all the parts that I mentioned were good.

The main differences between the machine I posted and one that costs $500 more (in Australia) is the CPU changes to the Quad Core 6600, the ram gets upped to 4GB, the video card changes to an 8800GTX and you get a slightly snazzier looking case.

Unless you are building a system for DDR3 ram (and at this stage it still isn't needed) then the P35-DS3L motherboard is amazing for its price - it completely stomps over ASUS' offerings - actually its the only board I would recommend to be used in pretty much any Intel system that gets made (from the budget to the $2000+ ones). The Kingston ram is fairly generic, if you've got the extra cash I would splurge on some Corsair XMS memory - either 2 GB or 4GB of it. The video card I wouldn't bother upgrading - the 8800GT has plenty of performance and the extra you are paying for the GTX is just wasted cash unless you are absolutely fixated on running everything at super ultra mega high quality settings - you even get decent settings from Crysis out of it. I wouldn't upgrade the PSU at this stage any further - unless you were planning on running in SLI because the 620w can run the quad core with 8800gtx system fine. Oh and I wouldn't upgrade the CPU - the e8400 performs very nicely, and unless you do a lot of multi-threaded heavy-cpu usage tasks (like transcoding dvd's or the like - with the right program) then 2 cores will be more than enough power to run everything. The only games out at the moment that really utilise more than one core are Crysis, The Witcher and Supreme Commander - and even then their implementation isn't always the best.

It's certainly not the most powerful 8800, and I don't know what the vendor has to do with it.

I wonder where does your love for that particular mobo come from. It's in no way outstanding even in its price range.

I was going to say something similar. It's not a bad mobo, but if you want a pretty good machine running on the P35 chipset, I would spend a little bit more and go for an IP35 instead - the pro seems to be especially good if you want to overclock it.