Friend wants computer help

[Ender]

My friend wants a computer for $1300 US, no monitor or speakers required.


He really wants a pre-made one, but I'm telling him to customize it himself, or at least ask a guy to build it for him, so he saves money.

Can you guys make up some specs lists for him? Also, it would help, for desperate measures to recomend a good company that builds computers like Alienware or Voodoo Computers etc.

He's an avid gamer, playing games alot.

Thanks for anyone's help.

 

[microAmp]

<< My friend wants a computer for $1300 US, no monitor or speakers required.


He really wants a pre-made one, but I'm telling him to customize it himself, or at least ask a guy to build it for him, so he saves money.

Can you guys make up some specs lists for him? Also, it would help, for desperate measures to recomend a good company that builds computers like Alienware or Voodoo Computers etc.

He's an avid gamer, playing games alot.

Thanks for anyone's help. >>



I know Dell you can buy a comuter w/o monitor, and down grade to the cheesy speakers to save a few bucks.

 

[Ender]

But that has intel which is over-priced compared to superior cheaper palomino processors.

 

[Def]

I'd tell him to go to a local computer store and get them to build a computer with exactly what he wants. Then if he has a problem, just bring it in and they'll fix it up.

For that price, he could get an Athlon XP 1800+ or higher, at least a GF3 Ti200, 512MB DDR SDRAM etc.

I'd much rather go with the local computer store rather than an overpriced Alienware prebuilt. While the Alienware is better than a Dell or something, the local support isn't there, and you're paying way too much for that stuff.

Then again, the best situation would be him building his own and learning about it. I just helped a completely computer illiterate person build a computer for himself last night. He started really getting into it, and knowing what to do before I needed to tell him. Just stay there, walk him through it and occasionally offer a helping hand and anybody can build a computer. Then when something goes wrong, he'll know how to change out a hard drive or change his CPU etc.

The best tech support is yourself...

 

[ojai00]

You'd definitely save him money by building one for him. From reading posts on the other forums, I've come up with this list...

Athlon XP 1800+ (or 1900+ if he'd like)
Soyo Dragon+ or Epox 8KHA+ are both very good motherboards
512MB DDR RAM from Crucial or any other reputable company
Santa Cruz, Philips Acoustic Edge, Audigy series as the sound card
A cheap modem, an average priced ($15-$20) NIC if he needs one
Pioneer DVD-106s Slot DVD
Lite-On or CenDyne 24x CD-RW (OfficeMax currently has a deal where you can get it for $56)
350W-400W Power Supply
Whatever case he likes
Elsa Gladiac Geforce3 Ti500 or any other Geforce3 Ti500 video card
Seagate Barracuda IV 60GB hard drive as a single drive, or get 2 and configure it in a RAID configuration...

If I had money, that's what I would get, I hope I didn't go over his limit. You can get most of those parts from Newegg for a pretty good price.

Hope this helps.

 

[Ionizer86]

Here's a list:

Abit KR7A-Raid . . . . . . . $150
Athlon XP 1700+ . . . . . .$120
Pal 8045 HSF . . . . . . . . .$40
Crucial 512mb PC2100 . $150
2X Maxtor 40gb ATA133 $200
SB Audigy . . . . . . . . . . . $60
Decent NIC . . . . . . . . . . $20
Decent case . . . . . . . . . $50
Decent PSU . . . . . . . . . .$50
24X Burner . . . . . . . . . . $100
16X DVD . . . . . . . . . . . . $50
Visiontek Ti500 . . . . . . . $300

Total $1290

The HDDs can be raided for superior performance 🙂 And the Abit has ATA133 support, not that it's gonna help the HDDs out at all.

 

[DDad]

First off-

Why can't he build it himself? If he's merely inexperienced you can help him, but in the long run he'll be better to build it himself. Sorta like the "give a man a fish and you feed him once, teach him to fish and you've fed him forever"