Help me buy a new computer

[AstralFire]

My five year old frankenstein is pretty much croaked. And though I am comfortable enough with installation of new parts to do it when necessary, I really do not want to deal with the hassle unless I have to.

So: http://ecollegepc.com/
I'm hitting this spot. If you have another place to recommend getting a mostly pre-built computer on the cheap, I'm open to ideas.

So anyone care to help me build a decent low-but-not-superlow budget compy? Something that can, say, play games released in 2006-2007 without crying but also not superawesomely. I really don't know what's what for benchmarks of performance. I may ask for something cheaper if my eyes explode. Something that can run two monitors, if at all possible, but that's not a -big- deal.

Room for improvement necessary. My biggest problem that I found on the last one was that I bought the absolute best computer possible using a Slot A motherboard, at the time Slot A was dying. That has made upgrades a pain and I don't want to replay that.

Thankfully, my two monitors are still going great.

Alternatively, a link to someplace where I could get the Cliff Notes versions of what benchmarks I should be trying to hit for what I want to do would be great, I can hit Newegg for part reviews.

[Crispy Dave]

well if you build it yourself or have a freind who can do it do it you get get one for about $300 on newegg

[AstralFire]

Okay, apparently there are 'tool-less cases' that are less of a PITA to put together, and it turns out that the CD-ROM drive I was recommended earlier was from a bad company (guess you can't trust all newegg reviews? The drive itself was starred) so I'm feeling a little less freaked about my ability to put something together. So, from parts:

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=8793212

Is there anything that I'm missing on that list that needs to be addressed? Any easy ways to cut a corner for cash without losing much performance and longevity quality? Etc.

[Crispy Dave]

dont think your missing anything you may save a few bucks by swiching to a amd motherboard and processor.

I also recomend not going with vista and get xp instead or if your realy cool windows 95(best os ever)

[Crispy Dave]

o and one more thing this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119138) case might make you happier in the longrun it is a little more pricey and you would have to buy a power supply as well but it is a amazing case

[RandomLogic]

Your part list looks pretty good. Building it yourself can save you quite a bit of cash and you'll get a better price to performance ratio out of it.

Vista is fine as long as you have a) a decent computer and b) at least cursory computer knowledge.

You've selected a case with a good PSU, but be wary a good PSU is very important to a build, crappy ones tend to die and take out the entire computer with it. If you go with a different case, any PSU <500W will be fine, I'd recommend Corsair and Antec as PSU brands.

I'd vote going for this cooler though Xigmatek (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233003) not only is it a larger cooler, it will run quieter and allow you for some overclocking if you want. (Best way to improve performance).

I'd also try to shoot for a 9800GTX+ or 4850. They shouldn't be that much more expensive (especially from newegg) and are far superior to the 8800GT.

[The Valiant Turtle]

On the whole everything looks pretty decent. I'm going to build a new one myself soon so I've been looking into some options. I've got a 500GB SATA drive already and will be hoping to re-use an IDE Optical drive from my existing computer, which you might be able to do as well.

I would personally try to get a Core 2 Duo 8xxx series CPU. The FSB speed increase and double the L2 cache are worthwhile improvements. The E8200 is $163 at newegg, the 8400 is $169. It's a bit of a price jump, but your CPU isn't easy to upgrade later on.

I would pick up a single stick of 2GB RAM for now, newegg has plenty of decent choices for under $40.

Case choice is a very personal one, but you can get good bang for your buck from an Antek NSK4480. It's got a high-quality 380W power supply that should be just fine for what you've got. I'd like to get something nicer like the Antec 900 of 1200, but it will probably be a 4480 for me. I may go even lower end and get an In-Win C589T, which was the recommendation for Ars Technica's most recent Budget Box.

I typically keep my video on a slightly lower end than what you are looking at, so I can't comment too much on that. I may actually get a motherboard with integrated video and upgrade the video later myself, but that probably won't work for you.

[RandomLogic]

I would personally try to get a Core 2 Duo 8xxx series CPU. The FSB speed increase and double the L2 cache are worthwhile improvements. The E8200 is $163 at newegg, the 8400 is $169. It's a bit of a price jump, but your CPU isn't easy to upgrade later on.

Just a note, the E8400 is a far better cpu out of the box. But! (!) you can get quite a bit of performance out of the E7200 if you aren't afraid of a little overclocking, which is actually quite easy. The cache increase will not be noticeable in many applications, but rather synthetic benchmarks.

If you are curious, hit up ocforums.com for some more info, or type overclocking into google and see what happens.

[AstralFire]

How 'little' is 'little'? Are we talking 'does not generate significant heat' here?

[The Valiant Turtle]

I've done my fair share of overclocking in the past. I actually spent an hour or so lapping the heat sink in my current rig, but that was 5 years ago. I don't really have time or inclination for that type of tweaking anymore, so I haven't been following the overclocking potential of current chips. I believe I have read that the Core CPUs are overclocking better than AMDs current lines though, but that's about the extent of my current knowledge.

With most CPUs it's entirely possible to get a slight overclock even with the heatsink that comes with the retail processor if you have good airflow in your case. It might be worth it to look at a mid-range heatsink & fan and see what you can get, but you might want to add an extra case fan or two as well (but at that point, just buying a better processor might be more sensible financially). Just be careful and read up on what you're doing. A good motherboard and BIOS will generally protect you from damaging things too much as long as you don't get too aggressive with it, but it's still possible to fry your whole rig if your unlucky.

[tyckspoon]

How 'little' is 'little'? Are we talking 'does not generate significant heat' here?

Usually. Intel's manufacturing process has gotten pretty solid; that means they get a high yield of chips that can meet the quality tests to be sold as high-end CPUs. But there isn't that much demand for the very high end, so what they will do is disable a few bits of the chip and retail it as a cheaper and less powerful unit. The important part from an overclocker's perspective is that the chip still has all the potential of the high-end chips- which are tested to run well on stock cooling. The upshot is that you can probably push the clock speed of an E7200 to meet that of at least the middle E8x00 processor without much trouble; in the current market, they're likely the same chip. You may need more advanced cooling to get beyond those markers, but the stock fans should suffice to get around the normal clock speeds of Intel's other retail chips.

[Crispy Dave]

I've done my fair share of overclocking in the past. I actually spent an hour or so lapping the heat sink in my current rig, but that was 5 years ago. I don't really have time or inclination for that type of tweaking anymore, so I haven't been following the overclocking potential of current chips. I believe I have read that the Core CPUs are overclocking better than AMDs current lines though, but that's about the extent of my current knowledge.

With most CPUs it's entirely possible to get a slight overclock even with the heatsink that comes with the retail processor if you have good airflow in your case. It might be worth it to look at a mid-range heatsink & fan and see what you can get, but you might want to add an extra case fan or two as well (but at that point, just buying a better processor might be more sensible financially). Just be careful and read up on what you're doing. A good motherboard and BIOS will generally protect you from damaging things too much as long as you don't get too aggressive with it, but it's still possible to fry your whole rig if your unlucky.

this is true but from what he said he didn't have that much computer knowledge and he probably wouldn't want to do that.