OT: Help buying a new computer

[Wolfman77]

well I can offer my opinion on a few of your ?'s, but others may know more.

512k memory should be a MINIMUM, 1 gig is not overboard.

I'm not sure about the graphics card but I would recomend avoiding integrated mother boards, as you can't upgrade them, and may not even have an agp slot,

DVD may be a good idea but unless you plan on saving several GB of data I couldn't see a need for DVD-R. Maybe If you have a digital camcorder and want to do video editing or something along those lines. You can put 650MB on a CD-R and they are cheap.

I'v heard AMD heats up easier than Intel, but if you keep them ventalated good you shouldn't have a problem. still you may want someone who has more experience with them, as I haven't had an AMD yet. I would suggest though wichever one you go with, that you get the high quality chip. Pentium for Intel not the Celeron, can't remember AMD's at the moment. The way I understand it (anyone can confirm this, or correct me if I'm wrong) is they are made the same and if they don't qualify as a Pentium they get the celeron name. which to me sounds like just a lower quality chip.

Thats my 2 cents, anyway.

[Iron Giant]

www.slickdeals.net

I just bought a Compaq
AMD 64 bit 3200+
512mb ram
60Gig hard disk
on board video and nic
XP home
modem

For $550 including shipping with a $300 rebate = $250.00 shipped. Slick deals shows you when these deals come up, usually a few times a month.

No monitor, but I already had one. You can get a nice conventional 19" for short money.

I had an AGP 4200Ti video card in another PC which I put in this one so it will run any modern game. That video card is very nice for games and can be had for around $70 with shipping at www.pricewatch.com.

I love AMD chips, never had a problem with them and I've owned around 10 of them. I always use a good heatsink and a secondary fan in the case.

XP home is just fine for my home PC.

[Alneyan]

No problem with the lower-end chips from AMD here (K6, Duron and now a low Athlon), and I cannot say I had any trouble with heating either: all three withstood an average summer here with no trouble at all (temperatures going up to 35 C in the room containing the computer), despite having only average fans. Then again, I never used the biggest CPUs, and those probably heat up more... but British Columbia should have cooler summers than France.

[Timstone]

Oh dear, now you've asked a very stupid question. Now, you've done it.

Practically everyone has something to say about this subject. Beware of the minefield you've stepped in.
There will be as many advises as there are posters.

Of course I don't mean anything bad with this post.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Go the easy way. Find a friendly and honest shop tech. One who doesn't charge you if they didn't actually have to do any work on it.

Then, buy what he recommends.

2.0GHz AMD, almost never crashes.

[Renegade 13]

No linux for me!

[Fyron]

Wolfman77 said:
I'm not sure about the graphics card but I would recomend avoiding integrated mother boards, as you can't upgrade them, and may not even have an agp slot,

Nearly all motherboards come with integrated video, sound and ethernet controller these days, and are designed to automatically disable them if you install an appropriate card into the AGP slot or a PCI slot. Decent boards do not lose PCI/AGP slots over it. Sticking with integrated video is definitely a bad idea, especially once SEV comes out.

Wolfman77 said:
DVD may be a good idea but unless you plan on saving several GB of data I couldn't see a need for DVD-R. Maybe If you have a digital camcorder and want to do video editing or something along those lines. You can put 650MB on a CD-R and they are cheap.

You can definitely find a decently priced DVD-R drive these days, so long as you do not care about the most recent burning speed technologies. DVD-R drives will almost universally also burn CD-Rs, so you can use those 700MB CD-Rs (and the old 650s) as well.