I was thinking of getting a new Desktop (Because mine is very old). But I don't know what to get. I game alot and I am a internet junkie. I was thinking of getting a HP Pavilion Elite m9300z or a Dell XPS 630 there is also a chance of me getting a Gateway FX because it's cheap. XPS- $1099
Pavilion-$799
FX- $799

If you build your own you can get better parts for cheaper. Now OEM computers can be described in only one word: CRAP.

It's not like in the old days when they were tough and extremely stable. They're flimsy, cheaply built, come with a lot of bloat, overheat, and the companies have lousy support on top of that.

PS. If you get a Phenom, get a quad not a triple core for god's sake. It's like what, $15 extra.

Exactly. You can build nicer for the price.

None of those has a very good vid card for gamers either (the dell's isn't that bad I guess, but it's also $300 more and has lower specs besides the vid card)

One quick example of that:
CPU: E8400 $175
Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L motherboard $95
4GB RAM around $70
ATI HD4850 $175
WD6400AAKS 640GB hard drive $90
DVD writer of your choice ~$30
that still leaves you with ~$165 for a case and quality PSU before you reach the price of the slowest computer you were looking at.

The CPU is faster, the vid card is much better for games, it has a quality motherboard (pre-built PCs normally use cheap/ghetto motherboards), a bigger/faster hard drive, and if you make a couple good choices, a far better power supply (pre-builts use junk PSUs) and a better quality case with better airflow too. And it's customized to your needs, you pick the parts you want.

I'll third the suggestion, and fully support crahak's parts list. Buying pre-built computers is a waste of money, and in the end, you'll probably be much happier with your computer than you would otherwise.

I second crahak's configuration, and if you're not going to overclock it the stock cooler for the E8400 will do. However a Scythe Ninja could take that CPU without even needing a fan, and get some nice clocks out of it too. Those chips get to 4GHz without a sweat, a E8400 is listed as my next upgrade too.

For a DVD-RW i'd go for Lite-On, nothing else, and for a cheap but reliable PSU i'd go for Fortron. If you want very good quality, go for a Corsair HX620 and you won't be needing anything for 5 years to come.

But there is a difference more: the prebuilt systems come with Vista, but still I would build the system myself like the others stated .

* Crahak, where did you get that config from?

Yeah, I tend to assume most people are going to reuse their existing OS when they replace an old computer, but you're completely right.


Vid card wise? From you I really, really don't ever follow those. Any time I look at a vid card, I only look at things like H.264 decoding and such.
For the rest, it's various sources, preferences, and what I felt like picking today: fast dual core chip, standard Gigabyte board with a P43 chipset (P43 mainly for PCI-E 2.0), a decent HD (cost/speed/size), and I left the rest up to him. If he's got the $, he could go for something like an Antec 900, but there's still lots of good options for cheaper. Same applies for PSUs, some are going to recommend high-end $150 models, but lots of people get by on a $40 Fortron too... It comes down to preferences and budget a lot really.

P.S. Please, lose that font

Personally I think it is better for you to build your own computer, that way you can get a very good comptuer with the same budget, and you can build it according to your needs, for say you need it for gaming, or graphics. Some good stores you can go are newegg, tigerdircet, frys. And you can go and have a look at HP home, they are offering a $400 off $999 sale HP Pavilion Desktops, I got that news from a on line coupon, you can get a code there, that sounds quite nice.

I'm going to fourth crahak's suggestion. Even if you are going forward with Vista and that adds a few bucks to the total spent, you know what went inside your pc and those parts are way better than what OEM's offer nowadays.

Sorry for the bump, Well I chose the XPS 630. It's HUGE compared to my old Dimension. I gettin it back tommarrow. I'm getting the software installed on it right now. I decided to get Home premium instead of Ulitimate. It's a beautiful machine. I won't need to configure any features to run Crysis easily. I planning on getting WoW, Halo 2, Crysis, Age of Conan, Grid, Crysis Warhead and Sins of Solar Empires and GTA IV when it comes out. I passed off GTA IV thinking a PC expirence would be a great way to try the XPS. I'm not really into hardware, I'm more of a software guy, so I chose not to build, but this would be a great computer to start building off of.
Recommend By Games For Windows: http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Hardw.../GamingPCs.aspx
And Game Informer(Srry can't find link it was removed)

That´s too bad, I´m sure you would have loved to build one on your own and we could have helped you trough it (Although we had 1 or 2 persons that could not follow our instructions but they and we tried ).

If you need any help in the future don´t be afraid to come back to us .