Well. My desktop computer is about 3-4 years old.. and was never designed to handle any kind of gaming. So I decided I would build a new system to ensure that it is up to snuff on being able to play it. With 6 months to go.. I figure I will buy a few components every other month to space out the burden of the cost.
I just ordered a new case, power supply, and DVD burner. $200 or so.. I guess it is a start!
In the end.. I hope to have an HTPC system with an AMD 64 x2 Processor.. or if I can afford it.. one of those new fangled Phenom Processors. I’ll need a new motherboard.. which is fine because I am still stuck in AGP and IDE land. I have a 500gb and 320gb Hard Drive.. but I think I will try to add two fresh 500GB SATA harddrives at some point.
I don’t know what to do for a Video Card. I have two 20" WideScreen monitors.. and would like to keep using them both. Do I need two video cards? Right now I have a ATI radeon dual monitor card (that I just bought a few months ago! DOH).
I ordered one 20x DVD Burning drive.. but in the future.. I want to get a Blu-Ray / HD DVD drive.. that also burns regular DVDs. (You know.. in order to watch the new GB Blu-Ray!) But I suspect that prices will fall through the floor by then for drives.
I think if I space everything out I can afford something nice that won’t be out dated.
Like I said.. right now I just ordered the case and power supply. I am going to move all my stuff into that one.. and then eventually upgrade everything in a good squence.
Def. Keep an eye on newegg.com and slickdeals.net for good prices on computer stuff. Also Tigerdirect.com is a good place to get decent priced stuff for computers.
I’m getting mine for the Wii. I remember one time I got a friend’s computer and tried to juice it up. There was a loose cable hanging, so I plugged it where I thought it should go (two prongs, two holes on the cable). Well, it caught fire, and the fan blew smoke all over the apartment before I yanked the power cord. Fried the cable, but the PC was fine. My wife was sleeping, pregnant, and not amused. : P Make sure the video processor is compatable. I ran into that a few times…(ugh!)
The most important thing you can select when you build a new computer is the motherboard. If you pick the right one, you can get a reasonably-priced CPU now, and then in a couple of years, buy whatever the highest-end CPU the motherboard will support.
So make sure to get a mobo that supports the top-end multi-core CPU of your choice (Intel or AMD) even if you can’t afford it now.
Then you’ll be able to upgrade the CPU and the video card and keep on playing for years. My current machine is one I built in 2003 but I dropped in a new AGP video card last December and I can play Bioshock, Medal of Honor: Airborne and Call of Duty 4!
Also, these days it’s not too hard to make your machine both powerful AND pretty quiet. Check out http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for tons of info on what components to pick.
I cheaped out on the Motherboard of my current computer.. and now I am paying for it with Ram problems, and random blue screens of death. For my new Motherboard.. I’m gonna go with something with PCI-e and SLI.. all that jazz.. and then with the right chipset and socket type.. I can upgrade the processor later if I choose to do so.
So I got my new Case, Power Supply and DVD Burner in the mail on Friday.
For some reason now my Hard Drive has failed (or has become corrupted). :angryvigo: I will need to get another one.. and hopefully I can use some kind of recovery program to get the data off of it. Here’s hoping.. because I had a TON of GBFans content on there that I had scanned in but not yet put up on the site.
EDIT:
I just took the plunge and ordered a new motherboard (ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe), Processor (AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+), Memory (4GB DDR2 800), & Video Card (Geforce 8800GTS).
Came out to about $500.. way more than I wanted to spend right away.
I won’t be done upgrading though.
At some point I will add another Video Card linked together in SLI.. and another 4GB of memory for a max of 8GB. I also just ordered Vista Ultimate. (My school provides a copy of it for $12!!!). Adding that new 500GB HD tomorrow, for a total of 1 TB (plus the 300GB harddrive that went bad.).. I also need the Blu-Ray drive… but I won’t get that until October when Ghostbusters is released.. because I know they will be cheaper then..
Agh! That’s terrible! An artist friend of mine got a Dell laptop less than three months ago, and he was working on projects. He forgot to back up his stuff, and lost almost 2 months of work!! : ( I had a Dell years ago, and my HD failed after a month (I didn’t lose much). That’s ridiculous! HD’s are supposed to last 5 yrs. My friend is sending his HD to the local community college to be recovered.
I never had one die on any of my Macs, but I have replaced them long before the 5yrs.Macs get left in the cold for gaming. : ( We have the Wii though, so that’s ok. My wife and son are playing Lego Star Wars right now on the Wii. It’s a LOT of fun!!
Mastercard
Nintendo Wii: $250
controllers: $150
Lego Star Wars game: $50
Being able to kill Jar Jar constantly: Priceless : )
I purchased an Alienware about 6 months ago. Couldn’t be happier with it. The specs for mine are:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS - 320MB Ram
Intel(R) Core™2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7170A ATA Device
1 Terabite HD
I purchased my speakers seperatly. I bought Logitech 7.1 surround sound speakers for $70.00. So if you ever wanted to buy a pc and not build, Alienware is the way to go in my opinion.
How do you like that video card? It is the same one I got.. and I want to get another and connect them in parallel.
I don’t think I’ll have a problem recovering the data on the drive.. it is physically good.. but the record just got messed up. I just ran a quick little scan with some software I downloaded.. and I saw a few Proton Pack pictures pop up..
I love the vid card I have. As luck would have it though, about a month after I purchased my pc, they have one better than the one I have. kinda makes me want to go upgrade lol.
I am a little ■■■■■■ about my ■■■ harddrive. I let the system scan it for 60 hours.. and just as it was rebuilding the drive index. Boom. The computer crashed.
I assembled my new computer and installed Vista Ultimate. It is now scanning the drive using some different software.. we’ll see how it turns out. So far I am loving it. The thing boots up and shuts down in seconds.. I’ve never seen a computer that quick. I am having second thoughts about the dual SLI video cards though. I just don’t think there will be enough room for it.
The dual SLI vid cards are nice, but, you can always find a great alternative on the market. Before I bought my machine that I have now, I had an ati video card in my other machine. I bought it so I could play world of warcraft and it worked great. Here are some great ati products I came across:
You can always search more sources to find better prices/deals, this was just to see what was out there. With most of these, you will have the space for them in your tower and very easy to install.
My new Harddrive just failed. Back to square one again. I think it has a 3-5 year warrenty.. but I am gonna go back to the store I bought it from and demand a replacement there.
No data was lost as that was all on a different drive. Just my OS installs / programs.. and multimedia files on a different partition on that drive.