New PC Help




Posted by Alastor

I'm planning to order a new PC from Dell, so I'll finally have one of my own. Trouble is, I'm not that great when it comes to specs other than the simple stuff like RAM and hard drive capacity, so I thought I'd ask for some help here.

I have little to no budget for this. I have absolutely no income right now. My parents owe me $120, my friend's mom owes me $25, and that's it. My birthday's coming in July, and I may have a summer job before then. So keep in mind that I need this as cheap as possible, but still meeting my requirements.

My requirements are pretty low, really. I've already got everything worked out that I need, I think. I just need to do stuff like play games (graphic-light games like Gunbound, not World of Warcraft), music, and web-surf without much/any lag caused by the PC itself.

Specs.

Processor - Dimension E310 Intel




Posted by Hyper

Why would you want Windows Media Center Edition? Get XP Home, and get maybe a Nvidia GEForce 5500 FX graphics card, it's kinda outdated but it should handle those games, its what I have.




Posted by Alastor

Alright, changed it up a little. Faster processor, smaller hard drive, got rid of the floppy drive, and switched the OS.

Processor - Dimension E310 Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 w/HT Technology (3.2GHz,800FSB)
Operating System - Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition
Memory - 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz -2DIMMs
Keyboard and Mouse Bundles - Dell USB Keyboard and Dell Optical USB Mouse
Monitor - Free Upgrade!! 17 inch E176FP Analog Flat Panel
Video Card - Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 900
Hard Drive - 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Mouse - Mouse included with Keyboard purchase
Network Interface - Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
Modem - 56K PCI Data Fax Modem
Adobe Software - Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
CD or DVD Drive - Single Drive: 48x CD-RW / DVD-ROM Combo Drive
Sound - Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD Audio
Speakers - Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer

Total is now $694. Still looking for a graphics solution. I can't switch from the integrated one on the website, so I'm thinking of looking for one at [url=www.newegg.com]Newegg[/url]. Would I be able to replace the integrated one, or do I need some kind of free slot?



EDIT: Narrowed some selections at Newegg. These are two price ranges, and all of the graphics cards should be 256MB if I did it right. There's alot here, and I honestly don't know the difference between half of them. If someone could look through these and pick out a few or the best, that'd be great.

[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010380048+4025+1068309611&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48]List 1: $25 - $50[/url]
[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010380048+4026+1068309611&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=48]List 2: $50 - $75[/url]




Posted by Klarth

DON'T GET XP HOME. It's terrible - you're much better off with XP Professional or 2000. In fact, just buy a computer without an OS and download XP Pro on the one you were using previously (might involve a long wait considering you're on dial-up though.)

If your budget suddenly soars, get one of those fancy 1gb graphics chipsets fron Nvidia. If not, a 256er should do you fine.




Posted by Alastor

What's wrong with Home? I don't like the idea of paying $150 more for Professional. The only differences between the two that I'm even aware of are just software that comes with the OS.




Posted by Klarth

Home is a hideously broken OS in general. Professional was rewritten for "professionals" (lawl) who don't want to use an OS that starts cutting itself after about a week of use. Seriously, Home was written to self-deteriorate.




Posted by Philsdad

You're going to have to find out if the motherboard on there has an AGP slot. If it's a Dell with all those integrated parts, chances are it doesn't. If it does have an AGP port, the next thing you'll have to find out is how strong your power supply is. Dell tends to put really inadequate power supplies in their machines, and sometimes they can't handle upgrades. The problem is that their power supplies are proprietary, and they can be a pain to upgrade themselves.

As for the video cards on Newegg, all those Radeon 9250s are all the same card, as are all the Geforce FX550s, etc. That is they have the same chipset, just different printed circuit boards, and distributed by different companies. So there really isn't any difference between half of them. I also noticed that there are several PCI versions of some of these cards. If this is the case, you won't need an AGP port for the card, but keep in mind PCI has about half the bandwidth of AGP. Still, it would probably be better than "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator" no matter what. I'm not too familiar with Gunbound, but from what you said, any of these cards sound more than adequate.

If you could find out the exact name and model of that computer, or at least some information such as the motherboard chipset and PSU model, I'd be able to help you out more.

As for the OS, I would do what Klarth said and don't buy one at all. I'd recommend going with XP Pro. You can PM me if you'd like an alternative way to get it.

Looks like some nice specs other than that..But I'm not sure if you're really going to need an entire gig of ram. Maybe if you went with about 768 MB or so, you could get some more hard drive space instead? You can never have too much hard drive space.




Posted by Klarth

[quote=Philsdad]I'm not too familiar with Gunbound, but from what you said, any of these cards sound more than adequate.
Almost-entirely 2D game with some basic vector effects, sprite rotation etc. It runs fine on a low-end machine with a 8MB graphics chipset and 32 MB of ram.

A gig seems to be the way to go these days. It's nice occasionally having access to a box with 8gb of SDRAM, though.




Posted by Alastor

I've had no trouble with Home, and you didn't name one actual difference between the two. -_-

I have limited options at the Dell site when choosing specs. RAM comes in 256, 512, or 1 GB. I cut back on hard drive space, since I'm convinced it'll take me a while to use up 80 GB by myself. When that time comes, I'll have a job probably, so I can just buy an external one.

As for your offer on the... alternative Windows XP Pro method, I'm a bit skeptical about that. I have to choose an OS, anyways, but I'm kind of interested on how that alternative would actually work out. But, like I said, I've never had any problems with Home. I just use my computer currently for gaming, music, videos, and normal web surfing. I don't need any hardcore shit, especially not when it'd cost me $150. If the only difference is that it comes with some type of Office suite, which is the only difference I'm currently aware of, then that's fucking insane. :cookie:


Edit: Here's the computer before any customization.
[url=http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/featured_dotw_dimen?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs]Here.[/url]

You might have to have a Dell account to customize, I'm not sure. it's the Dimension E310.




Posted by Klarth

[quote=Alastor]
I've had no trouble with Home, and you didn't name one actual difference between the two. -_-
Home and Pro are both programmed in such a way that they **** themselves up over time until you reinstall the OS - Pro less so.

[quote]As for your offer on the... alternative Windows XP Pro method, I'm a bit skeptical about that.
No need to be. Just get a slipstreamed XP install ISO off bittorrent or a newsgroup - Worked fine for me.

[quote]If the only difference is that it comes with some type of Office suite, which is the only difference I'm currently aware of, then that's ****ing insane.
Again, nope, but ftr OpenOffice >>>>>> Microsoft Office. By a long shot.




Posted by Alastor

...once again, you haven't named any concrete differences besides some Office crap that I'll never use. I get by with Wordpad.




Posted by Philsdad

Things you can do on XP Pro that you can't do on Home: Remote Desktop, a file encryption system, it's a lot better for networking among other things. No reason to be skeptical about anything like Klarth said.. If you don't want to look yourself, there are other ways, as I said. Same goes for MS office, or whatever else you need.

It sounds like you're using your computer for some pretty basic things, there is no need to buy a powerhouse, especially if it isn't in your budget. I'd even say 512 MB of ram would be fine. I use my computer for the same things pretty much.. web surfing, music, etc. I have 512 MB of PC2100 and my system works just fine.




Posted by Alastor

I could probably get by with 512. Like I've said, I'd be using it for light gaming and multitasking, that's about it. I'll be lucky to get the computer at all. I don't see myself spending a bunch of money on games. The games I need to be able to play would be [url=http://www.silkroadonline.net/guide/sy_setinfo.asp]SilkRoad[/url] and [url=http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/Products/PC/starwars_jediacademy/]JKA[/url]. Any other games are alot less demanding, and can be handled easily if those two can.