LB's in the market for a new rig...

[Lifesbane]

anybody know good places to shop for computers online? im looking for good value...i dont care much about brand names and crap like that. i maneged to work it so im only paying for 1/3 of it (having devorced parents at christmas time owns, lol , but even so im probably looking more in the low to mid range systems....anyways, thanks for any help

edit: needless to say this rig will be for gaming...so any tips on things to get or things to avoid  would also be appreciated

(Edited by Lifesbane at 3:25 pm on Dec. 12, 2002)

[Noreen]

i hear zut's selling his old video card cheap

[Rosslyn]

There are about a zillion places that will sell you a PC, but one place if you want to look at different components, buying a barebones system to assemble yourself, etc., is www.internetishop.com

They've got decent prices, a fair variety, and for what it's worth if you are going to order something from them let me know and I'll give you a code that will get you 3% off.  Yeah, I know 3% isn't a whole lot but it's better than a stick in the eye.  Or grouping w/ Kirin for hours on end.  

Speaking of Kirin, here's a CANADIAN company that does a pretty good job building excellent gaming rigs:

www.voodoopc.com

warning:  your parents had better both win the lottery before you buy one of their high-end systems.  

[Axecleaver]

Building your own is best. But if you want to buy a complete system, I like falcon northwest for gaming rigs. www.falcon-nw.com

[Caohmin]

Hmm...Stick in the eye or group with Kirin?
Stick in the eye or group with Kirin?
Stick in the eye or group with Kirin?

Could I have one 'kick in the teeth' instead of a 'group with Kirin?' It would make choosing the lesser of two evils so much more easier.

As far as the new computer: CPU speed, type and amount of ram and a good video card are probably the most important things to be concerned about. You'll also want a large hard drive that's relatively quick (7200 rpm at least).

Just purchased a cpu/mboard for a user at work today. 1.3 ghz AMD Athlon was 50 bucks. That's on the bottom end of CPUs. Recommend something that's 2 ghz or more, if that's in your budget, with 512 MB DDR memory as  minimum.

As far as video cards: I just purchased a GeForce4 Ti4600, online for $240. Nvidia is just about to release (or may have just released) their new card, so expect GF4 card's price to drop even more. ATI's top end Radeons (9700) are supposed to be just a good, if not better; don't have any experience with them myself, but I've heard a lot of good things about them. I'm pretty happy with my GF4.

Operating system is another important consideration. Shy away from the consumer versions of windows ('98, ME) and get one of the NT based OS's (Win2K or XP). I haven't had any issues playing any games on Win2K. XP I've heard has some problems with older games, but others swear by it. XP has just had it's first service pack released which contains a lot of bug fixes. Win2k released it's service pack #3 in August of this year.

Crap, my boss is coming down the hall, gotta go! Reply back if you have more questions!

[Amberryl]

If you look in the SI box, theres a flyer for www.alienware.com
I'm sure you can get good stuff there

[Lifesbane]

so far i've found a couple things, but here's one:

eMachine's T2200SE:
Processor:  AMD Athlon™ XP processor 2200+ (1.80 GHz) with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
Memory: 512 MB DDR (PC2100)
Hard Drive: 100 GB
Chipset: Via KM266
Optical Drive: 40x12x48x Max. CD-RW Drive, 16x Max. DVD Drive, 3.5" 1.44MB FDD
Video: ATI® RADEON™ 9700 PRO Video Card
Sound: AC `97 Audio
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

Price: $999.99

...that seems like a real good deal to me considering the graphics card alone goes for like $399 new (according to gamespot). but somehow the deal seems a little too good especially with the processor, 512mb ram and a 100gb hard drive...if anyone has any insight on that it'd be helpful.

also, how much know-how/skill does it take to build your own rig? ...i'd be willing to give it a try, but if its the the kind of thing that requires a lot of prior experience i should probably pass on that

anyways, ill check out all the sights you guys listed, thanks for the help

[Amberryl]

ATI RADEON is good, you should prolly stick to Gforce 3 or 4 thoguh, just cause Mythic has a thang for nVIDIA.
mkae sure they are Ti and not MX

[zaius]

In my experiance, eMachines = teh suq. It does sound like a good price, but not all Athlon systems are created equal. In reviews I've seen eMachines boxes are consistantly the worst performing, even with similar hardware.

Sharkyextreme has guides every month or two in value, high end, and extreme gaming box categories. Here's the last value guide. Pretty good start, if you want to build it yourself.

[Sodom]

Of course, if you're going to build it yourself from scratch, you'll want to take your component list to www.pricewatch.com to find the cheapest prices. The trick is finding vendors that have good prices on more than one item you need, otherwise you lose all the money you're saving ordering online by blowing it on shipping. Less # of orders, the better.

[Caohmin]

I'll second that Z; I've heard the same things. See if you can find a similar machine from a different vendor.

If you are savvy enough yourself or have a friend to help you, you may want to build it yourself. Personally, I usually just go to a small mom and pop computer store for parts or a whole system. Many times they will assemble it for nothing and you can customize it completely the way you want. Plus it pumps money into the local economy, but that's just a personal thing.

You could also compare prices at pricewatch.com and see how much it would cost to build from scratch, as was suggested. I found the vendor for my video card there. I looked for a cheap one where the vendor was in California and the shipping was only a couple bucks.

As far as the components on the list itself: The onboard sound is the only thing I would change. Get a decent soundcard and disable the onboard sound. To me, sound plays a big part in my enjoyment of games, so I don't mind spending extra money on a good soundcard/speaker system.

If it's not in the budget right now, it would probably be one of the first upgrades I would do on it.