HALP!?12

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Discuss.

Start here. This will give you a rundown on common components and what you'll want to look for based on your needs.

So yours is really cheap

Usually takes me 2 hours to assemble a desktop and costs around $1000 for a nice system. For the most part it is dead easy. At that rate you could screw up twice and still break even.

I'm not joking. Just get some computer that works, and has a decent warranty. Thats about all you can hope for.

I think you could easily get 3-4 years out of the base model, let alone you're uber upgraded version. Remember, you don't need a super fast ass cpu to run games, you just need to add ram, disk space, and get a faster GPU occasionally to keep up with the most demanding games. and by the time you want more gpu power, a mid/high-end new gpu would probably get you better performance than two of your old ones in SLI

The question really is this: are you susceptible to buyer's remorse?

The value of a high end machine drops rapidly. Obviously you're not a hardware enthusiast, so what are you getting out of the wild price tag? It doesn't even have an SSD.

If price is a concern at all, I'd choose something a little less (and more) powerful. If you're too scared to build it yourself, a lot of other websites offer to build custom PCs.

spend 1500 on a fancy computer and another 1500 on a fancy trip!

There's just a expendable that has to be upgraded regularly: the graphics card. My 4 years old computer now has its third inside of it. One got burnt though, and the store bankrupted

We want to see the hardware details. And preconfigured PCes, especially those offer OC & charge for it are really looking like $ suckers.

Furthermore I can't imagine a PC for 3000, and ESPECIALLY not when it's lacking an SSD or two IMO it's quite vital part in todays cutting edge computer.

I think the point is if you don't know enough to judge your purchase, you probably won't notice the difference between it and a Dell anyway. In any case, I agree with the others; there's nothing that computer's going to do that makes it worth 1K-2K more than a system you can build yourself. I like Goalie Ca's comment; even if you screw up twice you still break even. Learning experiences ftw; kgo.

You can put together an excellent PC for much less than that. I just replaced my server a few months ago (replaced everything except for the case and the 9TB array) for around $500, and that was with 16GB of RAM and a hex-core CPU, both of which are probably overkill for your desktop.

Hell, adding in a video card, case, and hard drive on to what I bought would still keep it under $1000.

As far as 'future proof' - my desktop is 4 years old and still working fine for everything I need. It's a Q6600 with 8GB of ram, and I spent well under $1000 to build it (under $1000 in January 2007, only upgrades I've done since were to jump from 4 to 8GB of ram, and put a SSD in). It's still plenty fast enough, plays any games I want, etc.

I'd say man up and build your own system. Everything will come with its own warranty anyway (unless you do something dumb like buy an OEM CPU). It's really not that hard to do.

Speaking of Portal 2, I'm grabbing the PS3 version. It comes with a free steam license anyhow, so you get two platforms for the price of one. And I'm fairly certain it will run just fine on my 4 year old 8800GT, at 2048x1152 at moderate/high settings. Just sayin'

As far as the specs you posted - no SSD and only 8GB of RAM? WTF. I'd take an SSD any day over a faster CPU. Also, a sound card is a waste of money - unless you're an audiophile, you'll never know the difference between that and onboard sound. I've never had an issue with onboard, unless it's a crappy motherboard that introduces whining or something. Also, liquid cooling is of questionable utility, given the cost for that as well.

Hey, that's cool!

Agreed. Even if you're an audiophile, you still probably wouldn't notice the difference. Back in the day you had to get specific hardware for advanced audio gear. Now that's not so much the case. You can be a music producer and get by just fine with some decent on-board audio, unless you're recording and mixing a live orchestra or band, in that case you'd probably have a break-out mixer which would plug-in by firewire anyway. Most decent mobos have at least 5.1 surround, and 24bit/96kHz audio, which is more than 2x better than CD quality. It's all in the software now.

Hey, jhuuskon, you'd probably know this... when am I gonna get a compressor/gate/eq type plugin where I can pencil in the arc/shape I want, instead of adjusting multiple gain/freq/bandwidth controls?

In that way, a compressor and expander would be the same device.

mmmnnnaaahh....

You can put together a really good PC for $1000, or you can blow it out for no practical reason and spend $3000.

[edit] That being said... I'd like to see BAF do it. I bet he could.