Buying new PC

[mnewsham]

Good news is I found someone who can help me build it so i don't butcvher it and this advice has been great sorry for any lack of clarity earlier.

Just make sure he actually knows his stuff, I have a friend who builds computers for his friends, however he LOVES AMD, he builds the worst $1,500 computers, My $1,000 computers kick his computer's asses. Anyway, just make sure you don't get overcharged and it is someone who has built computers before (more than 1 or 2 for friends, like 5-10 or more)

 

[mfenn]

Just make sure he actually knows his stuff, I have a friend who builds computers for his friends, however he LOVES AMD, he builds the worst $1,500 computers, My $1,000 computers kick his computer's asses. Anyway, just make sure you don't get overcharged and it is someone who has built computers before (more than 1 or 2 for friends, like 5-10 or more)

I know what you mean. There are plenty of people out there who know how to build a PC (let's be honest, it hasn't changed much in the last 10 years), but don't keep up to date on hardware. As long as the OP hands his buddy lehtv's list (or better yet, buys the parts and hands him those), he should be OK.

 

[DSF]

Good news is I found someone who can help me build it so i don't butcvher it and this advice has been great sorry for any lack of clarity earlier.

Glad to hear it!

I'd bet dollars to donuts you never look back.

 

[Yuriman]

Some general information that might be helpful to you:

Intel's upper-end CPUs come in i3/i5/i7 variants. The i3 is 2 physical cores + 2 virtual cores, the i5 is 4 physical cores, and the i7 is 4 physical cores + 4 virtual cores. What this equates to is, i7 is the obvious choice for people who do a lot of CPU-heavy stuff such as rendering/encoding/number crunching. It's a waste of money for gaming, as games typically can only take advantage of 1-3 cores. The i3 does just fine for gaming in a majority of situations - Battlefield 3 is a notable exception, it's one of the few games that take advantage of more than 2 cores and sees a performance improvement moving to an i5 over an i3. The i5-3570 is a newer generation chip than the i5-2500k, which is newer than the i5-760. 3000 > 2000 > 1000.

With video cards, both companies (nVidia and AMD) are competitive. AMD's HD7xxx cards are a newer line than their HD6xxx, which are in turn newer than the HD5xxx's. A newer generation card isn't necessarily a faster card though - an older "flagship" card will typically beat a newer mid-range card. A good example is the HD6970 is in general a faster card than the HD7850, but only marginally. The HD7770 is slower than the HD5870. It's something you'll need to look at on a case-to-case basis but don't assume a newer generation is better. If you hit "bench" at the top of the main site you can find charts to compare cards.

I'm going to recommend vaguely that you build a system that contains the following:

1x Copy of Windows 7

Core i5 2xxx or 3xxx

1x AMD Radeon HD79xx or nVidia GTX6xx

At least 8GB total of DDR3 1600 (or better) ram, buy it in 4GB sticks. 4x4GB = 16 = happy camper

1x Solid State Drive (SSD) - super fast but small storage drive, you'll load Windows and your games on this

1x mechanical hard drive - slower but significantly larger storage, useful for keeping large amounts of movies and music which don't need to be accessed quickly

A power supply - for this system, I imagine 500w - 700w from a reputable company would be adequate, there have been several good ones linked in this thread

And of course a case. Throw in a cheap optical drive if you want. All of the miscellaneous other bits needed to assemble a computer should be included with the above parts.

 

[Yuriman]

You'll probably want a new mouse/keyboard/monitor/headset(?) or speakers. I recommend you don't skimp on these parts. Get a nice Logitech or Razer mouse (I use the logitech G500 and like it) and spend at least $40 on a keyboard. Hit up peripherals for specific recommendations.

As for monitors, the resolution is the number of pixels. 720p and 1080p are shorthand for 1280x720 and 1920x1080, which are resolutions commonly used in HDTVs. 1920x1080 is probably the most common resolution (I don't recommend anything lower) and will typically be found in 23-24" screens which are the sweet-spot right now for cost vs size. There are 27" and 30" screens available which have a higher resolution of 2560x1440, but they're probably out of your budget.

Increasing the resolution increases the number of pixels your video card needs to draw, which will slow your games down, but it also looks a lot better. 720P looks like @$$. A modern high-end video card will have absolutely no issues with 1920x1080 - many people buy top-end cards to push 3 monitors for surround-gaming.

EDIT: As for Diablo 3, I put my system together in 2007 and it runs the game smooth as butter.