Good computer specs

Hi Guys. This is, once again, a request for information regarding computers. I've made this request before here and got great answers, but that was awhile ago and I never got around to getting a computer. I'm definitely getting one now, a desktop. Instead of asking where to get a good computer, I am wondering what are considered good specs for a good computer these days. I'm not looking to spend more than $1,000. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Off the top of my head, I hear the intel sandy bridge i5-2600k, and the nvidia geforce 560 are currently good stuff, although that could be just me not paying enough attention and misinterpreting things.

Is that $1k for just the computer, or do you need monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc and all the trimmings?

I'm sure you already saw this thread, but if you're interested, on the last pages of that thread, there's been a lot of talk about the i5-2500k, which is what I put into my machine. The total amount of money I had to spend was about $1300, but if you already have a monitor, keyboard and a tower, than it should cost you closer to $1000.

My bad, I should say that I'm not looking to build my own computer, I'm looking to buy a pre-built one. I'm wondering about how much RAM I should get, what is considered a powerful cpu, etc.

Dirt wrote:

My bad, I should say that I'm not looking to build my own computer, I'm looking to buy a pre-built one. I'm wondering about how much RAM I should get, what is considered a powerful cpu, etc.

Hiss, booo. :p

Wait till everyone starts to pressure you into building your own.

Never mind, I'll start.

You should really consider building your own, it's far simpler than you think and everyone here will be very happy to help you out.

Dirt wrote:

My bad, I should say that I'm not looking to build my own computer, I'm looking to buy a pre-built one. I'm wondering about how much RAM I should get, what is considered a powerful cpu, etc.

Ram: 4 Gigs minimum.
Any of the i5 or i7 CPUs are pretty decent tech.

Going pre-built limits what you can get for 1000, so you need to prioritize your needs.
A decent monitor can easily cost $200 once you look in the 22+ inch ranges, and the graphics card to push enough pixels fast enough can run about the same, so that's about half of your hardware budget gone already.
Using a cheaper screen at a lower resolution means you can get a better processor and more ram since you won't need a top tier graphics solution.

I USED to have good luck with the Dell XPS line and recommended them without hesitation. Not anymore. Support has gone to hell and the quality of the hardware, even in the upper tiers has been sub-par in my opinion. A lot of that shine has moved to their Alienware products, which my brother is currently happily using. But $1000 means you'll be shopping in the lower tiers and looking for deep discount deals which aren't going to be the cream of the crop.

Price out some prebuilts and then take a peek at the Newegg system bundles.

You could also compromise and get a barebones PC with just the CPU and motherboard. That way you just need to pick out your video card, hard drive, etc. Slightly more work, but you'll get more computer for your buck than a pre-built. And you could still use the build-your-own spec sheets as a reference.

With the advent of Sandy Bridge, if you're willing to build it yourself and spend some time tweaking an overclock, you can get an incredibly fast machine, much faster than anything you can buy premade for any reasonable amount of money. It's not particularly difficult to build current PCs, it's just fairly time consuming; you should expect to spend a few hours assembling the machine. The upside is a hell of a lot more CPU grunt; I'm running my i7-2600K at 4.4Ghz with almost no effort. The downside is that if you're unlucky, and get a bad part, you have to RMA it and get a replacement, which is a pain.

One option is to find a local whitebox builder, give him or her a list of parts, and pay to have it built.

As far as what to buy... you probably want an i5-2500K, 8 gigs or so of RAM, and a video card well-matched to whatever monitor res you're running. If you post back with your planned resolution, we can give you some options. You may want an SSD if that fits in the budget. You may need to buy a new DVD drive, as few (if any) of the current boards come with PATA adapters anymore. And make sure you use 64 bit Win7... 32 bit is old and busted.

There have been a couple Newegg wishlists posted in the last couple days in the build thread; you might want to peruse those for ideas, reading the commentary in the thread.

Just note that Sandy Bridge is bugged today, so maybe wait a bit before buying it. I too recommend a DIY setup. Newegg is your friend. Check out the system specs thread at the top of the page.

If you can go $1200, you can build a screamer.

Yeah, if you're gonna do Sandy Bridge, you want to wait until fixed motherboards are available. Your most certain bet is going to be waiting for the Z67 chipset in March... Z67 will combine the overclocking of P67 with H67's ability to use the onboard Sandy Bridge graphics. Z67 chipsets should never have this problem at all, where with P67 and H67 you'll have to shop carefully to be sure you're not getting a bad rev of the SATA chip.

IMAGE(http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/frankbeecostume_2143_648808342)

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

IMAGE(http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/frankbeecostume_2143_648808342)

There is nothing nerdy about building your own PC. It saves you money so you can spend money on fast cars and hot women.

Yah most prebuilt's skimp on the graphics cards. So you will either get something largely ineffective for anything but flash games and web browsing. Or you will get a hamstrung middle of the road card.

Well don't let these guys pressure you into doing anything. Check out the Dell outlet store too. I picked up a i3 machine with 8 gigs of ram for under $500. I did however have to upgrade the video card and power supply. I already had both so there was no extra cost.

Some tips.
Recycle what parts you can. Assuming you have a few hundred GB hard disc, optical drives, monitor, case, you can shave off a lot of money. Just re-using the DVD drive and case can save you 50-100 bucks. That is either saved money, or money you can spend on more memory, more powerful CPU or graphics.

Get an energy star certified Power Supply. What you pay up front, you will save in electric bills. I use my desktop a lot, games, web, work, video. My new PSU is 800 watts. With the same usage, my power bills we as much as 40 dollars a month less expensive over my old desktop with a 600 watt(non energy star) PSU. And my house has 2 plasma screens and a PS3 on a lot.

As someone linked above. Buying OEM or New old stock from Amazon, Newegg, your local computer shop can get you 90 percent of the way to where you want to go. In fact, you can buy a 400 or 500 dollar tower, spend 200 bucks or so on upgraded video and come out far ahead of the rest of us.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Dirt wrote:

My bad, I should say that I'm not looking to build my own computer, I'm looking to buy a pre-built one. I'm wondering about how much RAM I should get, what is considered a powerful cpu, etc.

Hiss, booo. :p

Wait till everyone starts to pressure you into building your own.

Never mind, I'll start.

You should really consider building your own, it's far simpler than you think and everyone here will be very happy to help you out.

DON'T LISTEN TO THEM!

If you don't have the time or patience to do it, then don't. While I loved building mine, it was an absolute act in extreme frustration. I bought everything from newegg, and ended up having to send about half of it back (at different times throughout the process). Bad memory, incompatible motherboards and power supplies, bad motherboards, bad hard drive... Ugh. If I had a local source for parts, it would be a different experience, but after shipping things back and forth, it turned into a 3-4 week process after I first received everything.

sheared wrote:

DON'T LISTEN TO THEM!

If you don't have the time or patience to do it, then don't. While I loved building mine, it was an absolute act in extreme frustration. I bought everything from newegg, and ended up having to send about half of it back (at different times throughout the process). Bad memory, incompatible motherboards and power supplies, bad motherboards, bad hard drive... Ugh. If I had a local source for parts, it would be a different experience, but after shipping things back and forth, it turned into a 3-4 week process after I first received everything.

Ugh, that does suck. So far I've been lucky with any builds. But I am also really paranoid about getting my ducks in a row before hitting the 'Buy' button.

sheared wrote:

DON'T LISTEN TO THEM!

If you don't have the time or patience to do it, then don't. While I loved building mine, it was an absolute act in extreme frustration. I bought everything from newegg, and ended up having to send about half of it back (at different times throughout the process). Bad memory, incompatible motherboards and power supplies, bad motherboards, bad hard drive... Ugh. If I had a local source for parts, it would be a different experience, but after shipping things back and forth, it turned into a 3-4 week process after I first received everything.

I've only ever had to send two parts back due to issues across like ten builds now.

And as far as "You might have a problem!" goes as justification to order pre-built... there's way more than just a few stories from people who order a Dell or an HP and then spend months in customer service hell trying to get their stuff taken care of.

A potential for having problems is not a reason to go one way or the other. Both have their potential failings.

I've dealt with Dell for years as a computer technician, so take my word for it:

DO. NOT. BUY. A. DELL.

They used to do good computers. But they keep cutting costs by going with subpar parts manufacturers and giving poor support.

This also means DO NOT BUY ALIENWARE. They're just a Dell with a different logo on them.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

IMAGE(http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/frankbeecostume_2143_648808342)

There is nothing nerdy about building your own PC. It saves you money so you can spend money on fast cars and hot women.

You got me wrong. The thread asked for "good computer specs". I posted a pic of "good computer specs". Sheesh. Tough crowd!