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Need a new computer, , ,on the cheap.
SanguisAstra
Member Posts: 19
in Hardware
So, its that time, my computer of 9 years, through out all the upgrades ive done over the years has finally become so outdated that I can no long play the new mmos that are out there.
it was a Pentium 4 1.9 ghz,
120gb hd space 580 mb graphics card
some other cool stuff I dont remember,
but Alas, my old old motherboard can be upgraded no more so I need a new computer.
Thing is, I have been so out of the loop that I dont even know where to begin to build my own, so I just want to buy a new one that is good for the new mmos for $400 or less, and something that can be upgradable in the future.
Can someone help me with this?
Comments
AMD Quad Core, DDR2, Hard Drive, Case, Motherboard, Power Supply, Build it if you want cheap as possible.
So vague. It depends on what mmos you want to play and on what settings, and what you can recycle from your old computer. Sounds like the impossible. Maybe you can do it with a 790GX board and AMD processor.
450 Dollar Budget Gaming
Quick rig I threw together for you, only thing you'll need to use from your old system is your hard drive. (Which once you have the money you can upgrade that as well)
Plenty of space for more ram, later once you have some cash you can get a better graphics card. It's a solid budget MMO gaming rig IMO.
It's a little more than your designated budget, but I think some things are worth spending more on when building a system especially when its a system you're going to be using for years to come. So for now, do without all the bells and whistles, then once you get some money up maybe add some more ram, a newer hard drive, aftermarket heatsink, more powerful graphics card and you'll be good to go.
Forgot to add a dvd player for installing games. A great build though and Im personally using that ram now
damn, maybe he can salvage the one out his current pc? lol
That CPU and graphic card are unbalanced - poor VGA with expensive CPU. Take something from CPU and put into VGA, e.g.
AMD Athlon II X3 435 Rana 2.9GHz 75$ (just perfect for the price and enough for gaming)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103724
POWERCOLOR AX4850 512MD3-PH Radeon HD 4850 512MB 100$ (cheapes not bad VGA to go with >> 4670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131162&cm_re=radeon_4850-_-14-131-162-_-Product
More expensive alternatives:
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz 91$ (only dualcore though)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103680
XFX HD-485X-ZDFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB 125$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82
Obviously my opinion. Just keep in mind that Radeon 4850 and triple core AMD are at price/performance sweet spots.
You really need two things to get going with most MMOs today. A good graphics card, and tons of RAM.
Invest in that, and you'll find most PC games working fine even with everything else a little older.
8 Gigs of RAM is relatively cheap now. Just upgraded mine for $130 or so.
TheKartel.com be me home. Booty be my game.
I am pretty confident that 8GB is overkill with most games being 32-bit and therefore 2GB limited. For smooth run of today's games and OS 3GB are sufficient, 4GB if one want to have dual-channeled configuration. 8GB is waste of money for now and should not be considered for budget PC.
Sure but he's looking for most bang for buck. Yes, the graphic card bottlenecks the CPU, that's not important. However, what is important is that it runs all current games just fine at lowered settings. For all you know, he could be using a 17" CRT monitor in which case a 4670 will rock out on. Most MMO's run pretty effeciently and he will have no problems playing any MMO's out atm or near future with this graphics card. I know this is a entry level gaming card today, but do realize there's always the option down the road for this guy to upgrade to the next best thing (Which is what he's specifically asking for).
www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2008/09/11/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4670-512mb/8
Benchmarks speak for themselves. Great performing card beating out the 9600GT.
You're not going to get a Grade A gaming rig out of 400 bucks, you're going to have a bottleneck somewhere. In this case, the bottleneck is the GPU which is easily upgradable but I don't see a problem with the 4670 as of the moment. I still recommend this card to budget gamers.
2GB of ram will last him for another year easily. I have 2GB in my system and play all the latest games maxed out and I've never ran into any problems, more ram than 2GB is more of a want than a need. Here's another part of his request, he wanted there upgrade room in this case there's room to add tons of ram later if need be (Up to 16GB).
A good cpu IMO is the most important thing in a build, especially when the requesting party is looking for a build that will last the test of time. I put together this build with upgrade potential in mind, and I didn't want the CPU to be part of that equation for awhile. Quad core CPU's are where it's at and this is a respectable budget quad processor with overclock potential.
I think I gave him exactly what he asked for.
That CPU and graphic card are unbalanced - poor VGA with expensive CPU. Take something from CPU and put into VGA, e.g.
AMD Athlon II X3 435 Rana 2.9GHz 75$ (just perfect for the price and enough for gaming)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103724
POWERCOLOR AX4850 512MD3-PH Radeon HD 4850 512MB 100$ (cheapes not bad VGA to go with >> 4670
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131162&cm_re=radeon_4850-_-14-131-162-_-Product
More expensive alternatives:
AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz 91$ (only dualcore though)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103680
XFX HD-485X-ZDFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB 125$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82
Obviously my opinion. Just keep in mind that Radeon 4850 and triple core AMD are at price/performance sweet spots.
For the Callisto, if you get the right Gigabyte board and go to a non American (Gigabyte USA has removed them) site for the bios, you can unlock the other two cores. I'm an Intel guy but that proc is really nice for the $ and for that aspect alone.
Getting too old for this $&17!
op !come play everquest(1)
by the way asus mobo also unlock x2 550
that being said the chance you fall on a good proc are almost nil!
i would play eq(1)if i was you at least till dx11 game become maibstream then you can buy a new oner ,but now its not the time we are in between for amd,intel ,hhd,memory game etc not worth it
unless you buy a netbook
Can your case and PSU, hard drive and dvd drive be recycled?
Good question, but considering it is 9 years old computer the answer is clear.
That is Awesome~! Thanks for the help!!
Yeah basically something upgradable is Ideal for my needs, I mean my current comp lasted me Nine years! through upgrades untill I couldnt upgrade it anymore (agp slot graphics card Motherboard, along with the sd ram slots) and I really didnt want to have to get a whole new motherboard, Id rather just get something different.
Anyway thanks!
Hi,
The components which you listed are well chosen and for this budget obviously one cannot choose the best in every direction. But you have chosen, as you said, as a bottleneck a graphics card. This is not a good choice for gaming PC, because this is actually the most important component these days. So if someone wants to play games today, it is better to spend more on graphic card (and basically it is only about 30$ more) and get decent one than buy cheap one and suffer while gaming. These days anything slower than Nvidia 9800GT should not be seriously considered by someone who wants to play games and not only very very old ones. Just my 2c.
Hi,
The components which you listed are well chosen and for this budget obviously one cannot choose the best in every direction. But you have chosen, as you said, as a bottleneck a graphics card. This is not a good choice for gaming PC, because this is actually the most important component these days. So if someone wants to play games today, it is better to spend more on graphic card (and basically it is only about 30$ more) and get decent one than buy cheap one and suffer while gaming. These days anything slower than Nvidia 9800GT should not be seriously considered by someone who wants to play games and not only very very old ones. Just my 2c.
Hey bud, I totally agree with you 100%. The graphics card is the most important thing in a gaming PC short-term wise. However, Decipher what the OP is looking for, he obviously has no problem doing upgrades as he's made his 9 year old computer last this entire time.
So, the last time this person has bought a PC was 9 years ago, apparently the only thing he's kept from the original PC are the CPU and the Motherboard so naturally I want to pick the best possible combination for those 2 parts that will give the computer a longer life span of playability. What happens when games start utilizing quad cores (which is already happening) and you've just recently purchased a dual core to get a SLIGHTLY better GPU? You end up hurting yourself in the longterm, which is not what this build is about.
Other components like RAM and GPU are easily exchangeable and are easy UPGRADES, like I said before it's what he's looking for.
This graphics card will run all of today's games on atleast medium settings (how many times do I have to say this?). Will it max them out? Probably not, it depends on the resolution but it will run all current games with more than necessary playability. I give this card another year of playability at the very least for new upcoming games. That's one year or more to purchase another card giving time for prices of the new ATI 5xxx series to come down hence he can then upgrade to a proper gaming graphics card.
Again, the 4670 is a decent entry level gaming card that can run all the latest games. Sure you're not going to have as many bells and whistles turned on but that's not what is important, he just wants to be able to play them period.
Np
im sorry to disapoint you but agp card brand new are still made from ati(pretty much same speed)
as for proc if its a p4 they made those puppy till 3.4
3.4 is same speed of taodays top proc so you wont be going faster with another proc
and those 3 gigaheartz p4 computer can be had for a song(100 top all included prob even with raid hdd and ton of ram
and those are very common i suggest you check around for a compatible thing
we are all stuck at the same speed as the fastest p4 went back then since those could be oced to 4 gig its no issue
and proc are rarelly used a lot by game its mainly graphic card.32 bit system isnt an issue almsot all game havent evolved to 64 bit yet so yes on paper we could be faster but in reality with my brand new sytem i would be hard pressed to go faster then yours where i edge in fron is on the graphic since in can put a ati 5770 on mine that when your comp begin to run out of air
but like i say i cant use it mmo online are limited everywhere ,i would try to find some old p4 i bet if you check a bit they ll be for 25 or they ll give them to you to make room lol.they are underrated because they are single core but not many program make use of 2 core yet in gaming most would rater use one core!
im sorry to disapoint you but agp card brand new are still made from ati(pretty much same speed)
as for proc if its a p4 they made those puppy till 3.4
3.4 is same speed of taodays top proc so you wont be going faster with another proc
and those 3 gigaheartz p4 computer can be had for a song(100 top all included prob even with raid hdd and ton of ram
and those are very common i suggest you check around for a compatible thing
we are all stuck at the same speed as the fastest p4 went back then since those could be oced to 4 gig its no issue
and proc are rarelly used a lot by game its mainly graphic card.32 bit system isnt an issue almsot all game havent evolved to 64 bit yet so yes on paper we could be faster but in reality with my brand new sytem i would be hard pressed to go faster then yours where i edge in fron is on the graphic since in can put a ati 5770 on mine that when your comp begin to run out of air
but like i say i cant use it mmo online are limited everywhere ,i would try to find some old p4 i bet if you check a bit they ll be for 25 or they ll give them to you to make room lol.they are underrated because they are single core but not many program make use of 2 core yet in gaming most would rater use one core!
The fastest AGP card on the market is the ATI HD 3850 and it pretty much bottlenecks any component that runs on an AGP board.
Good question, but considering it is 9 years old computer the answer is clear.
Well they did say they have upgraded it over the years so I was thinking maybe something can still be used.