upgrading my pc. tips, pointers, guide me in the right direction!

cwapface

Supernerd
Mar 30, 2005
464
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0
43
Eugene, OR
www.dylanwiggins.com
If you aren't going to game, which is a HUGE factor here, I vote for watching slickdeals.net and digitaldeals.net until you see a $300 dell computer sale and jump on that. Make sure you get plenty of ram and you really can't go wrong when they are on sale as they are most of the time
 

drunk_medic

7Ms are for Cressidas
Apr 1, 2005
574
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Woodstock, GA
D34DC311 said:
holy crap $800,
i can build a system for $800 that is top of the line with monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers. and im not kidding man.
Define "Top of the Line".
I paid $250 for my Logitech Z-5500 speakers, and it's tough to find anything for that price which delivers what this system does.
Buying your operating system [which you want to do these days - XP pro with service pack 2 and regular updates is more than worth the price you pay for an OEM version of it, which most vendors only require you to buy a system component for building a new system - AKA the hard drive you are already going to buy] will cost $100-$150 for a legitimate/legal copy.
$100 for a 250gb hard drive.
$100 for a 17" CRT Monitor
$50 for an OEM Sound Blaster Audigy2 5.1 Sound Card

This brings your total to $600 and you still haven't even bought your motherboard, processor, memory, case/power supply or optical drive.

I just dropped $200 on 2 gigabytes of PC3200 [DDR400] dual channel memory, and it was NOT top of the line.
I also dropped $130 on a "top of the line" Antec P180 case, and it didn't even come with a power supply [which will cost you $50-100 for a good one that delivers great power and won't rattle your brain with fan noise].

I paid $90 for my wife's keyboard and mouse set alone.

Define "top of the line" again, because while the $50 OEM sound card I listed is great, "top of the line" in the general consumer/gamer category costs about $200.