What is the best choice for a new PC

[Ghost]

Hello Harrison,

After reading the arguements you and the others have made it seems it would be for the best that I waited a while longer before the purchase which is a bit frustrating for me, I just have paid for the upcoming Bioshock (Collector's Edition BTW) and I had hoped that I could finally run it together with Halo 2 and STALKER.

But I do not want to run into all kinds of mess which a lot of PC users complain about on the moment.
Perhaps I can ask you all for more suggestions for what kind of computer components I should look out for.

Right now I plan to spend a 1000 Euros on a complete new PC, but that might become more.

[Harrison]

OK, the spec you should aim for once you do purchase a new PC is as a minimum the following (these are based on a self build):

Dual Core CPU - Essential as this next year will see a lot more games taking advantage of the two cores. Quad core isn't needed for gaming so not worth the additional expense. At the moment Intel Core 2 Duo is ahead of AMD.

2GB of ram - Vista is memory hungry so I highly recommend 2GB as the minimum. But for gaming you will need to stick to the 32bit version of Vista, so the maximum is also 3GB. Yes, 4GB is meant to be the maximum addressable memory by 32bit Windows, but I've been reading that it won't show up beyond 3GB in Vista at the moment, so it pointless spending money on more. Don't buy budget ram, it's a false ecconemy and never costs that much less that decent brand ram.

500GB HD - This should be the minimum size of HD to aim for. Always get the largest HD you can when building a new PC as you can never have enough space. Especially as many current games require a few GB each to install, so they will quickly eat into the space. 500GB drives are currently the cheapest drives per GB so at the moment the best option is to buy two for 1TB of space, and stick with SATA drives these days.

DVD Drive - NEC SATA DVD-RW is what I recommend. Just get whatever the current model is at the time you buy the PC. And try to get an SATA one, rather than the older IDE type. Blu-Ray is still too expensive to even consider.

Motherboard - I always buy Asus motherboards. You might pay a bit more for them compared to some other makes such as MSI, but you do get what you pay for. Asus boards are always of very high quality and come with a lot of features and extras.

Soundcard - Unless you have money to burn just stick with the motherboard's built in sound. You won't ever notice any difference between that and a dedicated sound card these days. But as I mentioned in the previous post this is one of the current issues with Vista so hopefully the driver makers will work out a solution soon.

Graphics card - At the moment nVidia 8800 series Direct X 10 cards are the only ones to go for for gaming. Don't touch the lower budget cards as they are designed just to display the desktop of Vista nicely and struggle in games. There are rumours of some new, faster models due out soon. The GTS looks like a good choice at the moment, but things change quickly with graphics cards so in two months it could be very different. Also get a graphics card with a minimum of 512MB of ram. You will need this to run the current games well.

Case - This is personal preference. But do make sure you get a case that has plenty of space within the case for air to flow and pick one with 12cm fans at the front and rear of the case as they shift a lot more air than the smaller 8cm fans and are much quieter. I highly recommend the Thermaltake Tsunami and Saprano cases. I have systems built around both, as well as using both to built other peoples systems.

Monitor - Get the largest screen you can, but a good quality make. There are a lot of larger 20-24" LCDs now becoming very affordable. Samsung is a good make to look at. And use a DVI cable to connect it to the graphics card. It makes a huge difference compared to VGA.

I think that is everything. Keyboard and mouse are personal preference. I always like Microsoft Intellimouse Explorers but you might like something different.

I hope that helps.

[FOL]

ASUS Mobo?

Damn you have been lucky then, every ASUS mobo i had gave me nothing but trouble. I would personally recommend, either ASROCK, or my favorite MSI.

[Harrison]

I used to always buy MSI motherboards and most have been good with quite a lot of features and extras included. And I actually still have three PCs with MSI motherboards in that are working nicely. One is my test server. I also always like the red pcb's they use. But I have had two MSI boards fail with the more recent ones I've purchased. One completely died and wouldn't even respond, but I got an identical replacement mobo on ebay for £10 and that is so far still working, and and the second had a combined IO and IDE controller failure which wasn't good. However I would still consider a motherboard from MSI if it had the right features and good reviews.

And I've used quite a few Asus boards over the years and never had any problems with them. I never buy the lower budget models though, always opting for the higher spec ones with as many features as possible. My current main system has a Asus A8N-SLI Premium (nearly bought the A8N32-SLI Deluxe at the time but the price was too much for the differences) which is the best motherboard I've ever encountered and it looks great with the dark blue PCB and heat pipes. And it has an amazing feature set with a ton of extras including a lot of backplate ports and SATA cables. I've also built three systems around an A8N-E motherboard, and I know at least one other here has used the same motherboard.

Did you know that ASRock is the budget brand of Asus?

[FOL]

Did you know that ASRock is the budget brand of Asus?

Nope, only got my current mobo, cause my brother bought 1 and said how good it was.

Maybe ASUS got their act sorted now, cause last mobo i had was 3 or 4 years ago.

[Ghost]

Hello all,

Well the matter regarding my mom's inheritance has finally been resolved so I now have some money available to purchase a new PC.

Its rather late here now but I would like to ask for suggestions and advice of you tomorrow.

[Tiago]

That's why I generally tend to stick to consoles for gaming.

It's also my opinion! I remeber same years ago, you could buy a very good video card for 75 £. Today to get a good video card .... not even with 150£ ....
not to mension the rest of the PC....

[Harrison]

Let us know a complete budget you are willing to pay for the new PC, and what sort of things you would like it to have? Also will the budget include a monitor?

[Demon Cleaner]

I also prefer playing on a console, which wasn't the case 10 years ago. As I'm only playing sport, racing or RPGames (mostly), I prefer playing them when lying on the couch instead of sitting on a chair just in front of the PC.

If you want to play RTS or FPS games, then of course the PC is the best choice. But if you equip your next gen console with a mouse and a keyboard, you can also enjoy those games on console.

[Ghost]

Dammit, I wanted to complain how sporadic I pop here once in a while only to discover that there has been a response to my post and question.

I am going to do this in reverse order as Harrison's response is the most relevant for my dilemma.


Hello Demon Cleaner,

While consoles have their good points and I do play with them I do not consider consoles to be the ultimate replacement to the PC.

Next to official releases there are also loads of mods a player can download for his or her favorite games, indie games and of course emulators which allows a gamer to play the classics of yesterday once more.

Often when those classics are released on a console you have to pay extra for them.

Regarding RPGs on consoles, IMO the line between them and action adventures is rather thin.
The player always has limited options to do something outside a rather forced path.


Hello Harrison,

I find it a little bit difficult in how to start with the response, this month is my birthday, last year's was rather crappy so I really want to make this one better by planning what kind of PC I am planning to get.

Unfortunate I am still rather illiterate on this subject so I really depend on suggestions of people like you what components I should go for, and what Operating System (I still have some concerns regarding Windows Vista).

Regarding the monitor, I am still using the Liyama MF-8617E/T Vision Master and I thought I could also use it for the new PC.
I would like to get some new equipment for the PC while I am at it, some of these still is years old.

Next to a new PC I would like to get;

- A new Keyboard
- A new Mouse
- New Speakers

Though I will probably use it for school too in time its primrary use on the moment is to run the internet and the latest games that have been released (Bioshock looks mockingly at me).
I guess that would be the best description of my expectations.