PC Reccomendations

[ourdoc]

With the technology advancing so fast, I have been thinking about buying a new desktop PC to replace my older one. If you had a max budget of $1200.00 to $1500.00, what system would you buy. Mainly for surfing and online gaming.. but definitely not a Wal-Mart PC Just looking for ideas..

[Bullwinkle]

I like these folks - seem to have all the newest stuff at good pricing - gives one an idea of a best price plus shipping option before setting off in search locally

http://www.frys.com/

front page - looks pretty cool and in your price range

http://www.frys.com/product/7649727?site...20Pod:Pod3

[Lee M-S]

I've bought electronics at Frys before, and returned most of it. Their paper works just fine, though.

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[ourdoc]

I should add, not looking for an all in one or touch monitor, I have dual monitors so it would have to support that. Just a tower desktop with USB 3 or 3.5 and graphics that support multi-monitor and DX11

[sputnut]

Buy a midrange computer (i7, 8+g high speed ram,500g HDD $7-900 range) not a Dell (Lenovo or HP like this one: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/id...index.html ), and get a really good video card.
or just get this: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/er...index.html

comin' your way soon!

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

I can't make a recommendation for a specific brand or model, but if you're not in a hurry you can watch this page:
http://slickdeals.net/
There is a tab near the top labeled "Computers."
The best deals I've found are listed here, usually with discount codes that are hard to find anywhere else. I've bought my last 3 computers watching this page, generally with a 30%-50% discount. Might take a few weeks of checking though to get something close to what you want. Lots of other great stuff too.
If you find something you like don't wait more than a day or two to buy, some deals only last that long.

[kalakoa]

Find a suitable Intel NUC on Amazon. These are based on laptop chipsets with a tiny power footprint (~20W TDP), so pay for themselves pretty fast given the price of electricity, more so if you're off-grid.

I'm waiting for the "faster" one (Haswell core, triple-head graphics, all ports USB3) due this month.

[terracore]

I got a six-core AMD based system from Amazon (free shipping) about two years ago and although I had to add a real graphics card, the speed still blows away most of the units out there. I can't remember what I paid but it was less than $600 including Windows 7 and a 1.5TB hard drive. No monitor or speakers etc but I already had all that. It came with 6GB of RAM but I was able to add two more gigs later for not much money.

If you're going to be gaming, look for a unit that has the GPU slot (or slots) you'll want for a video card upgrade and a big enough power supply to run those cards. Otherwise you'll be fighting heat problems, esp in Hawaii.

I've had nothing but problems with Gateway, so I would not recommend that brand. Most of the computer's I've owned I've built from scratch because I usually had most of the pieces I needed on hand but a few years ago they started locking the OS to the specific CPU to prevent people from upgrading their computers without buying a new OS. And once you buy a new OS it seems like it costs almost as much as buying a completely new system with a warranty.

Now that I'm older, IF I ever get seriously into gaming again, I would probably get a gaming console (x box or whatever) and use a cheap laptop with a docking station for everything else. After this desktop unit goes, I probably won't ever own another desk top again. All signs point towards the future being towards cloud computing, 99% of the horsepower at your desk is wasted anyways, unless you are doing some serious graphics or computational work. For web browsing, word processing, streaming video, etc, a $200 notebook is all you really need.

So you might want to consider a gaming console to hook to the TV, and a laptop for everything else. It would be within your budget and solve some problems that haven't happened yet. My work laptop supports three monitors, maybe four if you count the monitor that is part of the laptop. But I have never tried that.

[kalakoa]

"The Cloud" will be useless for those Puna residents who cannot get broadband.

If you really "need" a heavy rig for gaming or video production, buy some shares of HELCO stock while you're at it.

[Guest]

Are you doing actual gaming as in need a dedicated GPU? Or are you just doing casual web based games? If the former I recommend building your own system, it will be half the cost of a prebuilt system of the same performance. Toms hardware has configurations for a variety of budgets with up to date choices of the latest and best parts, here is the guide for their budget intel gaming rig:
http://www.tomshardware.com/system-confi...on-54.html
It only costs $650 and you would pay $1000 or more to get the same performance prebuilt, buy the parts on newegg.com

If you are just going to be doing casual gaming and web browsing then buy a Mac mini, you can dual boot windows if it makes you feel more comfortable. Its got 4 usb 3 ports thunderbolt and hdmi so you can run a monitor and hook it to your tv as well. The fusion drive is a worthy upgrade, as would be 8 gb of ram, any of the processors are more then fast enough. With the fusion drive its boots in about 15 seconds and all file access and application openings are instant.(far better performance then any of the faster processors) Get the wireless keyboard and mouse and you have a HTPC as well as a desktop. The $99 apple tv works pretty darn good as well, seeing as you can send any audio and video wirelessly from the computer. Educational discounts are not hard to get...
http://www.apple.com/mac-mini/