Geek Squad!

Ok I haven't been into computers as much as I used to but I need help deciding for a good gaming PC.

My PC is turning to ***after my last upgrade in the video card and I figured I'll just get a better one since this one is older and games are becomming more advanced.

Sooo I need help finding a PC that is less than $1100 that can handle gaming with a decent amount of memory etc. Doesn't have to have a HD in it and it doesn't have to have a OS system since I have OS Cd's. I don't have time to build a new pc.

any ideas?

Last time I got a pre-made custom desktop I went thru Ibuypower.com. They have decent prices, or at least had prices much lower than any "Name Brand" PC at the time and I got it 'pretty much' as I ordered it. I just had to hook up the USB on the front and change the settings on the HDD... At which point they refunded like $200 b/c they screwed up. But other than that, I haven't had any problems with it since I got it.

Edit:
iBuyPower's basic AMD X2 system starts at $376 and has:
AMD X2 5000+
Standard ASUS MB
2GB 800MHZ DDR2
256MB Radeon HD3450 PCI Express
320GB SATA2 HDD
20X DL DVDRW
2.1 Speakers

Not too shabby for under $400.

How long could it possibly take to build your own PC? I can usually get through it in a couple hours, give or take how long it takes to install, update the OS and device drivers. Say a solid afternoon to have the thing completely up and running and configured.

Reason I ask, is that you will be hard pressed to find an off the shelf PC that doesn't include those things that you don't need, and it would be cheaper for you to get the parts you DO need, and you would probably make it with a better system to boot. (Memory is DIRTY CHEAP right now, DDR2 is going for like 50 bucks for 2 gigs...)

You're gonna have a hard time finding a pre-built computer that excludes a hard drive and doesn't come with redundant packages, warranties and other useless expensive ***that does nothing but rape and ravish your hard drive with spam and useless programs.

Alot of companies also make their own parts and add idiot proof devices that prevent you from exchanging or replacing any internal parts, and opening up the case would void the warranty anyways.

I strongly recommend building a custom for the sake of getting exactly what you want and dodging any "excess" other places thrive on. If you're interested i'll put together a wishlist on newegg and see what you think. Otherwise try and find a local computer joint that would put it together fairly cheaply for the parts you get yourself.

Well is because I have work, school, a daughter to take care of and I'm hardly home enough to even relax, daughter has classes also, and with a crazy chihuahua always running around when I'm trying to do something, I just don't have enough time to sit and work on a PC before I became a grown up lol.

Sooo If yea I could get the parts etc. and time to do it I would.

It can be half built and I can finish it. Just don't really know any reliable sites or brands. It's been a long time.

I need a vacation

>.> Everyone ignored my post. /cry

Well i didn't ignore it but when you said they screwed up on your pc and had to refund you 200 bux it kinda made me not wanna go to that site lol

It's not that they screwed it up. :P Just didn't have the jumper set to maximum space on the HDD and didn't hook up the USB in the front. But like I said.. They apologized profusely for it and refunded me $200 without question on a machine that only cost me like $600 to begin with. Just spec'd out iBuyPower's basic system with a couple add-ons that Dell doesn't go below on that take the iBuyPower's specs actually above the Dell's.. And it costs $475 at iBuyPower compared to $1050 at Dell.

And you had said that you know a fair amount about computers, so figured if something minor like that wasn't right with it, you'd be able to plug in the cable. =)

Built several PC's, always got parts from newegg.com

Asus Motherboards
Intel CPUs
Min 4GB RAM
Nvidia Video Card, get the best bang for buck... I usually spend around $200
RAID a couple drives if you want, HD's are getting cheap

Might call it cookie-cutter, so what

Tbest:
hmmm but the specs you gave look like for just a multimedia pc imo, I could be wrong.

Hmm I'll look at that site, I could just upgrade what I have since I did build it. New Motherboard I know I'll need. I recently got a Nvidia Geforce 1700 (or 1800 not sure I forget) sent about 200 on it but think its more powerful than my motherboard so I think it can be just the motherboard being HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE with the video card.

I agree, Newegg.com is awesome, been using them for years now and have never had an issue, their customer service is top notch as well...I've personally never had to RMA anything, but friends that have all said the turnaround is pretty damn fast.

Alyria, I realize you're busy...do you have a geek friend that could build it for you? I know in my circle we do ***like that for each other all the time, for the low low price of some pizza and beer...same fee we charge for helping someone move. Actually, now that I think about it, same fee we charge each other to do ANY damn thing lol

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, I've sold computers for years, and anytime someone buys one off the shelf a piece of me dies inside lol...

well lol not anymore, my ex bf was my geek partner and he messed it up last year being a jerk lol but anyways, no I don't know anyone. only know ppl for cars lol

I will try that site out for a motherboard. But what is a good motherboard out there that can handle for gaming?

I got a motherboard+CPU that was DoA from newegg. After sending them back they sent replacements nearly hassle free. It's likely only one of them was malfunctioning but I was unable to properly diagnose the problem so I sent both back. The point is though, Newegg came through for me on that.

I tend to stick with Asus boards myself, they've done me well the last few builds.

Everyone beat me to the punch but I'll say it anyways to reinforce the fact. Newegg is top tier for overall price, service and reliability. As far as reliable brand names go I'd go with:

CPU: Intel
Motherboard: Asus or MSI
RAM: Corsair or Crucial
Video: Nvidia
Sound: Creative or Turtle Beach
Cooling: Thermaltake
Hard Drives: Western Digital or Seagate

Just to interject, DON'T EVER BUY MAXTOR HARD DRIVES! Maybe they're better now, but every Maxtor drive I've ever had has been the biggest, steamiest pile of crap I've ever experienced and failed ridiculously fast.

((And btw... I do like NewEgg and have both ordered from them and had friends order from them with no hassle.))

Well, I just spec'd out a bit better PC for you to give you a comparison vs. NewEgg's prices for the same stuff. Now granted, you may have different opinions and preferences for the brands / specific components.... But here it is:

Before shipping prices: (I think iBuyPower shipping is ~$40 or so.
iBuyPower's Price: $1000
NewEgg Price: $~900-950

Standard case w/ window, light, etc.
800W Power Supply (SLI-Ready)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz w/ 4MB Cache and 1333 MHz FSB
SLI-Ready ASUS PSN-D nForce 750i Chipset 7.51 Sound, GB LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, IEEE-1394, Dual PCI-E
4 GB PC6400 800MHz DDR2 RAM
2x Nvidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB in SLI
500GB HDD
16x DVD
20x DVDRW Dual-Layer
2.1 Speakers
Liquid Cooling

Now granted... You don't need all of that... So you can cut out $50 for the cooling and $65 for the HDD.

But that's a little closer to what you 'want' I think and within your price range.

I was looking at some of the motherboards on newegg.com, but question, some are priced low some higher but the reviews on the low ones are better than the higher? so get a cheap motherboard??

And I'm all about speed, my pc currently is at 3.2 ghz

Some are AMD, LGA, Intel, AM2, etc. which is better for graphics and running games?

(I realized my video card is a nvidia geforce 7200 agp not 1700 that was my old one i upgraded from.)

I'd make sure you get a PCI-E MB, preferably one that you can add in a second video card to run in SLI with. The MB listed above is $135 on NewEgg and the CPU is $170. Obviously you wouldn't be able to use your AGP video card with the new PCI-E MB though.

I'm generally an AMD/ATI fanboy... But lately Pentium and Nvidia have been kicking ***. And you really can't beat the performance/price of a Quad-Core. The speed isn't such a huge factor and that 3.2GHz is probably a single-core dinosaur. It's much better to get a Dual or Quad core that runs slower on each core than a single core that runs faster imo.

well the pc at home is a intel pentium 4, 3.2ghz, 2gb, 160gb hd, nvidia geforce 7200 agp, but its never slow on anything.

Just recently it started messing up, its freezing my pc after i had to reformat my hd and reinstalling the video card and all the games. It works for a few minutes and then shuts off, freezes, the graphics are broken now on games. I just bought the video card a few months ago so i know it must be the motherboard since I sometimes here it beep if it shuts my pc off or when i restart the pc.

I built my own:

Asus P5k Deluxe mobo
2gb ram
Intel 3.0ghz duo core
8800gt Nvidia card
500gb HDD
Antec case P182
Antec Earthwatt 650watt powersupply

cost me around $850 (got the case and mobo from a friend for 200)
But the big deal is looking around for deals to find it cheap.

I would say get the motherboard that best fits your needs, allows for the highest speed memory you can afford, and supports SLI (even if you aren't going to go with dual GPU now, it's nice to have that option in the future).

For processor, I was an AMD man myself for a long time, but my new build is going to be an Intel Quad Core Q6600 (as soon as I can scrape together the cash for the rest of the parts I need). My current proc (an AMD) is overclocked faster, but it's only single core, my understanding is that speed isn't AS MUCH of an issue with multiple cores to spread the load around. The reviews I've read on my new proc said it handled most tasks (to include gaming) pretty well, but unfortunately I haven't had a chance to play around with it yet...

Yeah, but the Pentium 4's are all single-core. Sure, they run faster with one core, but imo, Dual or Quad are far superior in my opinion.

Just like with Video Cards, the PCI-E is superior to the AGP. PCI-E is 16x where the AGP is 8x as far as I know.

And didn't you say it was turning to ***? :P

lol yea i did, I edited my last post:

Just recently it started messing up, its freezing my pc after i had to reformat my hd and reinstalling the video card and all the games. It works for a few minutes and then shuts off, freezes, the graphics are broken now on games. I just bought the video card a few months ago so i know it must be the motherboard since I sometimes here it beep if it shuts my pc off or when i restart the pc.


so yes its turning to ***now.

TBH, every P4 that I've had the opportunity to play around with has kinda sucked. My sister-in-laws got a couple year old Sony Vaio with a P4 3.2 GHz proc in it, with 2 Gigs of DDR2 533 (the max her mobo supports lol) memory and the thing just chugs. My current PC running a slower AMD proc and slower ram beats hers in benchmark scores, which is pretty damn sad considering her PC was like $2500 retail and I spent like a third of that on mine...



Sounds like it could be an overheating issue, too. Doesn't matter since you're building a new one, but I would check your fans to make sure you don't need to purchase some new fans as well (they're dirt cheap so not a big deal)

*Nods.* Well, as far as MB/Proc go, I'd go with those couple I listed above. The Processor is really up to you, just make sure that you get the right socket type to be compatible with the MB. And you can get any of the various GeForce PCI-E. I wouldn't get a MoBo to try and re-use the AGP. Maybe you can sell it to someone that has an AGP MB and a slower card than that one is.

Edit: I didn't mean that it 'performed' faster. >.> Just that its core is clocked faster. I disliked Pentium until the "Core 2 Duo" and "Core 2 Quad" processors.

Those stats other then the ram and HDD sounds pretty good for most of your gaming needs if you can upgrade to 4gb ram (xp will only recognize 3gb but vista will register 3.5gb but uses a % of memory[so more memory better performance] unless you upgrade to 64bit which will read up to 8gb) unless you wanna upgrade to a quad but most of those will run you around $300-600 for the cpu alone if you check newegg you may can find a bundle deal but if your using your same case i would take measurements to make sure the new Motherboard will fit. If you still want to just upgrade your processor just for about the same speed single application wise a dual core will more then likely not surpass your P4 by much if any since multi core tech is more based for multi application speed rather then single. Hope this helps
P.S. try to find a motherboard with DDR2 800MHZ compatible

Yeah, but who among us only does one task at a time on their computer? It's pretty commonplace to be running a half-dozen applications and have more than one monitor going at once even when playing a full-screen game. And with FF, you have windowed mode which tempts the user even more into running multiple applications at once. That scenario is where the multiple cores shine. In my opinion, the single-core outlived its usefulness years ago.

actually lol the only thing I would run if I was playing ffxi on the pc is:

zonealarm
ffxi
thats it. lol I use my laptop to browse on the internet