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Need some advice

onlytill2016

By onlytill2016
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onlytill2016

onlytill2016

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Hey guys, I wanted to ask if there are any decent desktop computers that you've seen that might be a good deal to check out (under $1,000). This comptuer is gettin' to be kinda old and being 15 means that I don't really have as much dough as I would like. Hope you guys can help, I look forward for your answers.

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AdvancedSetup

AdvancedSetup

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Just about any computer you buy in the $800 range would be pretty good. If you're up to possibly building one then you might be able to get a little more bang for your buck but not as much as you used to.

But the computer you have listed in your specs should not be a dog either. Perhaps a little maintenance is in order?

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nosirrah

nosirrah

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In your sig you have a laptop mentioned but in your question you mention a desktop. Just to confirm you are not looking for another laptop, correct?

But the computer you have listed in your specs should not be a dog either. Perhaps a little maintenance is in order?

I agree with this as well. Looking at data sheet for this laptop I see that it can be upgraded to 8 gigs of ram (less than 100$) and the SSD that it comes with is less than optimal. Lenovo ships these systems with a SATA II drive even though the chipset is SATA III. Between switching from SATA II to SATA III and going from a generic SSD to a current gen top tier SSD you could see as much as 3 times more performance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231472

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

For less than $400 you can make this system much faster and when combined with a fresh windows install the system will feel no different than a new system, potentially even faster due to the high end SSD.

**CRITICAL NOTE**

Your current system is NOT 100% compatible with all 2.5 inch drives. Many drives have a height of 9.5 mm and these will NOT fit in your current system. You need a 7 mm drive (like the one I mentioned above).

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screen317

screen317

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Problem is most likely the graphics cards for the "performance" he's talking about. Any similar computer you get wont be able to play games on higher detail levels without a decent graphics card. I got a GTX 660TI recently and it's been flying. :)

Then again I could be wrong. What's wrong with your current computer?

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onlytill2016

onlytill2016

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Besides some malware research, watchin' reviews on YouTube, chillin' at forums, the thing I most love to do on my machine is game. Unfortunately, when I bought this computer, I didn't remember this and this computer overheats when I try to play some of my favorite games (Halo, COD, Minecraft, TF2, etc.) I originally bought this computer for school-work because this convertible tablet PC has a stylus which makes it easy to hand-write in Microsoft OneNote (it looks sick :). I thought that maybe I could also play some games on it, but it doesn't really work.

Just about any computer you buy in the $800 range would be pretty good. If you're up to possibly building one then you might be able to get a little more bang for your buck but not as much as you used to.

But the computer you have listed in your specs should not be a dog either. Perhaps a little maintenance is in order?

Yeah, you're right, but I'm not thinking about just any old rig (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung), I'm talking about custom gaming desktops, like iBUYPOWER, CyberPowerPC, CyberTronPC, OriginPC, and DigitalStormPC. This computer is fabulous for school-work, but not really for much else :( I do defrags, and I use CCleaner. Any other suggestions for making this computer faster would be appreciated :)

In your sig you have a laptop mentioned but in your question you mention a desktop. Just to confirm you are not looking for another laptop, correct?

I agree with this as well. Looking at data sheet for this laptop I see that it can be upgraded to 8 gigs of ram (less than 100$) and the SSD that it comes with is less than optimal. Lenovo ships these systems with a SATA II drive even though the chipset is SATA III. Between switching from SATA II to SATA III and going from a generic SSD to a current gen top tier SSD you could see as much as 3 times more performance.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820231472

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820147193

For less than $400 you can make this system much faster and when combined with a fresh windows install the system will feel no different than a new system, potentially even faster due to the high end SSD.

**CRITICAL NOTE**

Your current system is NOT 100% compatible with all 2.5 inch drives. Many drives have a height of 9.5 mm and these will NOT fit in your current system. You need a 7 mm drive (like the one I mentioned above).

Correct, I am using a laptop at the moment but looking for a gaming desktop. As you've mentioned, I could upgrade, but I'm really looking for a custom gaming rig, if you've seen any that meet the criteria, I'd be most grateful :)

Are you looking for something that's good for games?

Hello, I didn't know you were on this forum :) I've seen you on the Emsisoft forums, you're the Support/Quality Assurance guy. Nice seeing you here :D . By the way, you're correct, I do plan to do tons of gaming. I mean, what else is a kid my age gonna do? :P

Problem is most likely the graphics cards for the "performance" he's talking about. Any similar computer you get wont be able to play games on higher detail levels without a decent graphics card. I got a GTX 660TI recently and it's been flying. :)

Then again I could be wrong. What's wrong with your current computer?

You're absolutely right, this computer doesn't have a good graphics card. I do like playing my games on at least medium settings (high is preferred of course) and this card just doesn't cut it. Heck, the whole computer doesn't either because it's not meant to game, it's fantastic for school-work though. I should have thought of that before I got it, *sigh*

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GT500

GT500

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Besides some malware research, watchin' reviews on YouTube, chillin' at forums, the thing I most love to do on my machine is game. Unfortunately, when I bought this computer, I didn't remember this and this computer overheats when I try to play some of my favorite games (Halo, COD, Minecraft, TF2, etc.) I originally bought this computer for school-work because this convertible tablet PC has a stylus which makes it easy to hand-write in Microsoft OneNote (it looks sick :). I thought that maybe I could also play some games on it, but it doesn't really work.

Laptops overheating is an unfortunately common phenomenon. There are a few tricks you can use to reduce the heat buildup such as those notebook coolers (pads with fans in them that plug into the USB and the laptop sit on top so that the hot air can be pulled out from under the laptop and cooler air can flow in and facilitate cooling). The other major way to reduce heat buildup in a laptop is to remove the heatsink from the CPU, clean off all of the thermal compound applied by the manufacturer, and use ArcticSilver 5 thermal compound to increase heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink, which is an unfortunately dangerous thing to do and I don't really recommend it unless you don't mind destroying your laptop.

As for a PC, I always build my own, so it's difficult for me to make recommendations on PC manufacturers.

I do defrags, and I use CCleaner. Any other suggestions for making this computer faster would be appreciated :)

With OEM computers, my favorite way is simply to do a clean install of the OS, and then just install the drivers for the hardware and my favorite programs. This is rather difficult these days, since most computers don't come with a Windows install disk, but instead just use a "recovery partition" that restores the OEM software setup that the computer came with.

Of course, when it comes to laptops, I always just install Fedora Linux on them, and leave Windows for my desktop. Not to say that Linux is perfect, but the filesystems for Linux are so much better than NTFS, and you don't have performance degradation over time with Linux like you do with Windows.

Hello, I didn't know you were on this forum :) I've seen you on the Emsisoft forums, you're the Support/Quality Assurance guy. Nice seeing you here :D .

Oh no, I've been found out! :ph34r:

By the way, you're correct, I do plan to do tons of gaming. I mean, what else is a kid my age gonna do? :P

Most kids your age seem to like those Xbox things, or that oversized chunk of blackened soap from Sony.

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CWB

CWB

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"By the way, you're correct, I do plan to do tons of gaming. I mean, what else is a kid my age gonna do?"

ohhhh , i could think of a vast number of things ... there is always "something else" to do ...

it is a matter of finding it . ;)

(many other of us "more mature" types here will attest to this)

my opinion of those "high-dollar" named outfits (that will only be more than glad to thin out your wallet) is that they do not use any parts that would not be available elsewhere .

build your own machine ...

it is one thing to go down a dealership or car lot and buy a car ...

it is quite another to actually work on a car and know how to actually repair and drive it .

it is money well invested .

a fancy $300 case contributes virtually nothing to the running of the machine , it is what's inside that counts .

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AdvancedSetup

AdvancedSetup

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Here was a post I made for someone for an ultra cheap system. Certainly not a Game killing machine but not bad for the price.

Here is an older post for a more high-end system.

Quite expensive but not over-the-top 10K type high-end that some people buy or make.

One could certainly make all types of different tweaks to add/change/remove from a build like this.

But pouring money into a computer to stay on top is a losing battle for someone that is strapped for cash.

Playing on an XBox would probably be more realistic. The PC hardware requirements change too quickly to keep up unless you have deep pockets.

Case: 54.99

COOLER MASTER HAF 912 RC-912-KKN1 Black SECC/ ABS Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

ASUS Motherboard: $429.99

ASUS Rampage IV Extreme LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard

CPU: $499.99

Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor BX80619i73930K

CPU Cooler: $114.99

CORSAIR Hydro Series H100i Water Cooler

Memory 64GB: $699.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory Model F3-19200CL10Q2-64GBZHD

Adobe After Effects CS6 loves to eat memory. You can also setup memory cache drives that are orders of magnitude faster than an SSD drive.

Power Supply 1200W $299.99

CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX1200 (CMPSU-1200AX) 1200W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply

RAIDED - SSD Hard Drives: 2 @ $159.99 ea

OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-256G 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Hard Drive 4TB: $479.99

Western Digital RE WD4000FYYZ 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Video Card (2GB, PCI 3.0, 1536 CUDA Cores): $469.99

EVGA 02G-P4-2680-KR GeForce GTX 680 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

If using a program that takes advantage of CUDA cores then the GTX 690 has 3072 CUDA cores at about $1,000

Blu-ray 3D Burner: $109.99

LITE-ON 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner with 3D Playback iHBS212-08 LightScribe Support

Windows 7 OS DVD: $139.99

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM

System Total: $3,619.88

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nosirrah

nosirrah

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Looking around newegg, this is where I'd start if I was building a upper middle/lower high end gaming rig (going higher is pointless unless you are willing to spend $1000 + on your monitor(s)).

CPU

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) <- set turbo multiplier to 4.2

RAM

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB <- Some games like higher speed ram and lower latency so you might as well spend $10 more and get this over higher latency DDR3 1600.

MOBO

ASRock Z77 Extreme3 <- Cheapest board I could find that I would trust and that comes with PCIe 3.0. With Ivy Bridge and PCIe 3.0 you will be good for 1 or 2 GPU upgrades with no need to change anything else.

GPU

EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 660 <- I factored in PCIe 3.0, 192 bit memory bus, 2 gigs of vid memory and then went for highest clock to price ratio on a solid brand, this is a great price for what you are getting.

This leaves you with $370 for all the rest, should be doable.

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onlytill2016

onlytill2016

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@GT500

Yeah, I don't want to do anything dangerous to my computer. It is my school computer and I don't think my parents would understand me if I told them that I cleaned the thermal compound. They'll just think that I wanted to break it to get another one. Unfortunately, my computer didn't come with a recovery disk, so I can't really recover it (also, all of my school stuff is on it, I don't want to lose it). Haha, don't worry, I won't tell anyone, your secret is safe with me :ph34r: (Emsisoft). You're partly right, kids my age like XBOX and PS3 but a lot of us like PC gaming more. It's just a personal choice. By the way, I like the PS3 too (as well as XBOX), it's not an oversized chunk of blackened soap! ;)

@CWB

You can't get more mature than me lol. Haha, just kidding.

@AdvancedSetup

Thanks a lot for the PC parts and the places to get them! I think I'll just build my own PC. I found this series on YouTube teaching you how to build your own gaming PC, is this how I should build it using the parts that you've provided above:

Part 1:

(There is a Part 2 and 3)

Of course I'll be using different parts, but just following this guide should work, right?

I can't afford the ~$3,600 one so I guess I'll have to settle for the ~$400 one. It'll still be a improvement over what I have now. Thanks again!! :D

@nosirrah

Yeah, I'm probably gonna build my own, using the videos linked above. Thanks for the info

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AdvancedSetup

AdvancedSetup

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Well nosirrah actually appears to have spent time looking into something a bit more appropriate to your price range. Mine was for a completely different user that wanted to go with AMD (not my preference for CPU)

I really like the EVGA brand video card and I hope to get a new one myself soon. My needs are different and I actually want more CUDA cores than that so that my Adobe software should hopefully take advantage of.

Between forums and videos now days it's reasonably easy to build a computer or get help if you do get stuck. Just have gentle hands and take care and along the way you'll lean quite a bit and will have more pride with something you've taken the time to build yourself.

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CWB

CWB

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as long as we're "naming names" , these items are for a comp i just built :

MB : N82E16813157265 $140.00

CPU : N82E16819116521 $90.00

RAM : 2 EA : N82E16820104166 (2x2 gig stick packs/total 8 gigs) @ 28.50 ea.) $57.00

V card : N82E16814130680 ($10.00 rebate available) $50.00

case : N82E16811147023 (-$5 promo code EMCJHHN64 / $10.00 rebate available) $45.00

psu : N82E16817182075 $45.00

cd/dvd drive : N82E16827106289 $18.00

fans : 2 EA : N82E16835200021 (@ $10.00 ea.) 20.00

hdd : N82E16822136769 (sata 3.0) $65.00

os : N82E16832116986 (W7 home premium) $100.00

total : $630.00

nothing super-fancy ... no gaming but some rendering/number crunching .

the machine has to simultaneously run MSO and a couple of CAD programs (all opened , split screened/between two monitors and/or minimized) .

much of the data is stashed/retrieved/updated locally on the HDD and on a local server .

a SSD for the OS and programs is in the works a couple of months from now (the data files and program temp working folders will be on the HDD) .

what is not mentioned at newegg is that the MB can use a dual core processor (check the manufacturer's site for this info and what processors/ram are compatible) ,

it can run two pcie3.0 Vcards in the SLI bridged mode .

the Vcard i chose was a pcie 2.xx type (good price/quality for the job at hand) ... it can be plugged in on either the 2.xx slot or the 3.0 slots (compatibility is ok) .

while not a gaming machine (although it could be with the addition of a better Vcard) , it will serve the purpose for which it was designed at an affordable price .

it will be installed in a couple of days ; go ahead , do yer worst ... lean on it hard ... let's see if the horse can pull the wagon .

(and that last sentence is why "rollin' yer own" has a satisfaction to it that no off-the-shelf comp can have)

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GT500

GT500

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I have a GTX560 (manufactured by ASUS, and I would believe stock overclocked) and it can handle just about any game I try to play at a decent framerate with a 1920x1080 (1080p) resolution and most of the quality settings in a game maxed out.

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