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Hi all!

We are looking to buy a new desktop. I have a beastly laptop so this will be mainly my husband's with some family use. He wants to be able to play games and use it for his volunteer work.

What processor and video card would you recommend without spending a mortgage payment?

Also, what extras would be needed if any? I'm usually good at negotiating a few freebies.

Thanks

Are you moving from an older desktop, or is this going to be your first?

--Patrick

We have an old dead desktop and a laptop that he uses now that's a lemon.

You might be able to scavange the hard drives from the desktop and the laptop, as well as the cd rom drives if you want one.

The_Khan said:

You might be able to scavange the hard drives from the desktop and the laptop, as well as the cd rom drives if you want one.

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If they're that old, I'd recommend new hdd's, as those may be ready to fail.

Ravenpoe said:

If they're that old, I'd recommend new hdd's, as those may be ready to fail.

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Agreed.

I'll start with my first question every time one of these threads come up. What are you willing/budgeting to spend?

Ravenpoe said:

If they're that old, I'd recommend new hdd's, as those may be ready to fail.

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Not to mention that depending on their age, they might not even be SATA.

Intel quad core, nvidia card is what you want. Their price ranges go from cheap to bankbreaking. These days, AMD is for fools and masochists.

If you want a decent gaming rig, expect to spend at least 800 dollars.

$800 is reasonable. My laptop has a pretty decent intel quad core chip and a Radeon card and I've been really happy with it. In the time since I bought it, I'm sure even better things are available in the price range.

Any brands that you would suggest avoiding?

Shamelessly ripped off from Techreport's "back to school" system guide, with the video card and power supply swapped up -

Grand total of just over 800 bucks.

Processor Intel Core i3-2120 3.3GHz $124.99
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-H77-DS3H $99.99
Memory Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 $38.99
Graphics MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power Edition $309.99
Storage Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB $89.99
Asus DRW-24B1ST $18.99
Audio Integrated $0
Enclosure Antec Three Hundred $54.99
Power supply Seasonic M12II 520W $79.99

That's not a bad setup at all, though, I'm not a fan of Gigabyte boards. I've had issues with the bios overwriting itself physically and fusing switches for no discernible reason.

Though, for that card, is a 520W power supply going to be enough?

Bowielee said:

That's not a bad setup at all, though, I'm not a fan of Gigabyte boards. I've had issues with the bios overwriting itself physically and fusing switches for no discernible reason.

Though, for that card, is a 520W power supply going to be enough?

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You know I thought 520W was a little on the light side myself, but Techreport has yet to steer me wrong. Maybe worth spending a little extra to go 800W.

Bowielee said:

That's not a bad setup at all, though, I'm not a fan of Gigabyte boards. I've had issues with the bios overwriting itself physically and fusing switches for no discernible reason.

Though, for that card, is a 520W power supply going to be enough?

Click to expand...

GasBandit said:

Not to mention that depending on their age, they might not even be SATA.

Intel quad core, nvidia card is what you want. Their price ranges go from cheap to bankbreaking. These days, AMD is for fools and masochists.

If you want a decent gaming rig, expect to spend at least 800 dollars.

Click to expand...

eh, that's what I get for essentially getting a new computer every year.

Agree for the most part with what I've skimmed above. These days, if you aren't willing (or able) to wait until mid-2013* to replace your current unit, make sure whatever you buy:
...has a quad-core Ivy Bridge processor of some sort
...uses the Z77 chipset if you are a tweaker, or the H77 chipset if you aren't
...is using one of the NVIDIA 6xx series graphics cards (650 or higher for best results)
...is running at least Win7 64-bit
...can hold and use at least 8/16GB RAM (assuming 2/4 RAM slots, respectively)
...has a power supply rated for at least 30% more power than your system actually requires (for later expansion)
...has gigabit Ethernet
...is USB 3.0 capable
...has at least 3 SATA ports (or at least 2 if you don't care about DVD/CD/BluRay)

--Patrick
*Which you totally should do, if you are willing and able.

Gas, up-to-date system guide: TR's Current System Guide
Yes it's a special link that's always to their latest. Right now it's the 30th of October. Probably not that different though from what you linked.

Eriol said:

Gas, up-to-date system guide: TR's Current System Guide
Yes it's a special link that's always to their latest. Right now it's the 30th of October. Probably not that different though from what you linked.

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That's the windows 8 system guide. I didn't want to encourage Squidley to get windows 8.

GasBandit said:

I didn't want to encourage Squidley to get windows 8.

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Seconded (for now).
Biggest caveat is that MSFT has all but stated that DX11.1 will not now nor ever be available for Win7, it will forever be limited to DX11.0 instead. They might change their mind, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

--Patrick

Given that there are a grand total of 3 games I've deemed worth playing that I couldn't play on XP (DX 9, and those being Just Cause 2, Xcom and Game of Dwarves), I'm not sure 11.1 exclusivity is panic mode just yet. Frankly, I'm hoping they come to their senses and windows 9 is a whole lot less fuckified, and we can all just skip to it in a few years.

Just download this (http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/), and stop panicking. There's really no difference between 7 and 8 other than good things once that's installed and you can ignore the metro apps because of it. Start menu is all nice and familiar and capable, and you have some good enhancements to windows explorer and the task manager (the latter two aren't because of the download. I mean 8 has some good enhancements there).

Eriol said:

Just download this (http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/), and stop panicking. There's really no difference between 7 and 8 other than good things once that's installed and you can ignore the metro apps because of it. Start menu is all nice and familiar and capable, and you have some good enhancements to windows explorer and the task manager (the latter two aren't because of the download. I mean 8 has some good enhancements there).

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I don't believe in financially supporting (or recommending to others) software the designer designed to kick people square in the dick, even if a third party made a patch to stop all the dick kicking.

I think we'll have to see how the tablet revolution plays out for a few more years before we start to see major development in a non fuckified direction for Windows 9. There are too many talking heads right now that are declaring that the end is seriously fucking nigh for standard PCs, desktop or laptop, due to the tablet industry taking over. Our best hope right now is that the new Windows boss realizes that it's time for another Enterprise solution OS (like NT, or Win2kPro) and that either that OS will be able to handle all of the consumer marketplace software that gamers want, or that once they see the success of that OS and there's enough consumer demand, they'll put out a consumer version of the same backbone.

This is all pure speculation and personal opinion on my part, though. I have no inside sources for these conjectures.

Gared said:

There are too many talking heads right now that are declaring that the end is seriously fucking nigh for standard PCs, desktop or laptop, due to the tablet industry taking over.

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Right now, I seriously see a future where my "computer" is an iPad-style (or PADD-style) device which functions merely as the hand-held interface for "my" computer. And I put "my" in quotes because there is no guarantee that the computer itself will be a physical device which belongs to me or a slice of some cloud-related processing power. For that matter, I may not even own the interface itself, they may just be available everywhere (sort of like magazines in waiting rooms) and I make mine "mine" by logging into the nearest one when I need access, and logging out when I am done (assuming it does not already somehow recognize me). Geography will mean nothing, I will be able to access my stuff wherever I am, no matter what I am doing. I will do work, watch movies, communicate, socialize, shop, and otherwise go about my business on my handheld thingamabob and not worry about whether "my" computer will ever become obsolete, because it will automatically keep pace with technology since it will be upgraded independent of my handheld thingamabob. I will never have to worry about my graphics card or my installed RAM because all of that will be on the back end, and as long as the results will fit on my handheld screenie thing, that is all that will matter.

The established players will do everything in their power to prevent this from happening, of course (it will "disrupt their respective business models" or some junk), but I see that future as pretty much inevitable.

--Patrick

Oh, I don't dispute that point in the least. It's the "Seriously fucking nigh" part that I'm up in the air about. Because the established players will do everything in their power to prevent the inevitable, and because they have so much control over things, they can and will very likely manage to slow down the eventuality greatly.

There's going to have to be something revolutionary, and I mean like on the order of control-by-brain-waves revolutionary, for me to relinquish the mouse and keyboard as the pinnacle of human interface devices. Touchscreens just do not do the trick.

don't trust microsoft/ apple/ google with your files but still want to have the convenience of cloud services?

hey! look at that http://owncloud.org/ open source cloud services for the rest of us.

But I agree with you pat, it's the inevitable future that could have been here a while ago.