Planning on getting new PC - tell me wat u think of this one

[ATARI800XLfan]

You may need to create an account to view wishlists. Mine is definitely public; Atari's didn't work for me either.

I have an account and I'm logged in.

the prebuilt with upgrade could end up costing around 700 dollars.

I figure $30 for the power supply and $75 for the video card.

Which video card and power supply? Might be able to get a 480W one for that price but it will not be a well Known brand.

[sabrage]

Hold the phone... Does that pre-built even have a PCI-E slot? I just noticed that the GPU is integrated, so you probably can't even upgrade it at all (without replacing the entire motherboard) There's also spacial considerations; a replacement card won't necessarily fit in the case.

[ATARI800XLfan]

Hold the phone... Does that pre-built even have a PCI-E slot? I just noticed that the GPU is integrated, so you probably can't even upgrade it at all (without replacing the entire motherboard) There's also spacial considerations; a replacement card won't necessarily fit in the case.

Yes you can. It is the new AMD APU. They figured out how to put the CPU and GPU on the same chip/die/part. Most likely it is a micro ATX so only one video card at a time. You can crossfire the APU and a AMD 6570 if I remember correctly.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded ... spx#/56927

[BoringSupreez]

the prebuilt with upgrade could end up costing around 700 dollars.

I figure $30 for the power supply and $75 for the video card.

Which video card and power supply? Might be able to get a 480W one for that price but it will not be a well Known brand.

Here's a 480W power supply for $12, and this video card looks pretty good.

Hold the phone... Does that pre-built even have a PCI-E slot? I just noticed that the GPU is integrated, so you probably can't even upgrade it at all (without replacing the entire motherboard) There's also spacial considerations; a replacement card won't necessarily fit in the case.

Here's the spec list.

[sabrage]

Ah, it seems AMD only supplies that APU to OEMs so I wasn't familiar with the model number just skimming the page.

If Amazon was still offering that particular pre-built you linked for $430 (like the first review mentions) I think this would be a no-brainer, but right now I'm not really seeing any pre-builts that can outperform anything you can build at the same price point.

[sabrage]

Here's a 480W power supply for $12, and this video card looks pretty good.

xD don't buy that power supply, and I don't think the 630 is going to be a significant enough upgrade from the 6530 to even be worth the effort. Supreez, bear in mind that you're trying to retrofit a consumer-grade pre-built to play games. Gaming is a niche market, so your options from an OEM like HP are pretty slim and less than ideal at best.

[Cronozilla]

There's a few things to note about the HP computer you've linked ... for starters it's got a mobile processor, not a desktop processor from the Athlon 64 family. Things like Athlon II are different.

The GPU is also not going to run the games that you want to run. It's just not.

While $500 is a nice round number to shoot for, it's a little unrealistic. The computer you're linking, for example, is way below spec. and is more like $550. Considering a fully functioning rig is still in the same range (realistically, the components you're getting in that HP ... are more like $300 worth of parts, not $520 ... which is originally closer to $700, just to be clear) ... if you want to play any recent-like games, you're going to need to aim towards the $600-650 mark.

It's important to keep expectations realistic (and also realize that you may, in fact, not be able to replace parts in that computer) and also plan for the future ... so another upgrade wouldn't be nearly as much. With that in mind, I scoped out these parts ... take a look at them:

I have not included an OS ... since that's really your prerogative and this doesn't include any tax that may apply in your area. However, this computer would be drastically upgradable and comes in around $630. (I also have not included any of the current running discounts and rebates which would, in fact, make this rig under $600 USD)

Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme $74.99 (10% Off)

CPU: AMD FX-4100 $109.99

GPU: XFX Double D HD-685X-ZDFC Radeon HD 6850 1GB $159.99 ($20 MiR)

RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB DDR3 1333 $47.99

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB $94.99 + $2.99

CASE: Antec Three Hundred $54.99 ($5 Off and $10 MiR)

PSU: SeaSonic M12II 620W Bronze $89.99

Total out of pocket: $635.92 ... after all rebates and discounts: $593.42

This machine would be upgradable to (power and spec wise) the Zambezi 8 Core AM3+ chips. 3 more sticks of 8GB ram (making it 32GB) and one more 6850 HD card in crossfire without upgrading the power supply. (Though if you wanted to toss in a 6970 or something, it'd only be a single card solution for the amount of power that's being pushed out)

The warranty on the GPU and Memory is lifetime. The warranty on the HDD and Power Supply are Five years. The warranty on the CPU and case are three years. The motherboard is just a year, though.

And ... I just realized I forgot the DVD drive . You can just pick one, they're all about $20.

Like others have said ... you can scale down the quality of the components to get a cheaper price, or you could sacrifice the ability to upgrade. But I don't think either would be a very good idea. But if it's that or nothing ... it's certainly possible ... and you could build something for something like half the price also. Just ... don't expect it to work very long (about as long as you'd expect that HP machine to work, which is maybe a year)

Anyway, check it out, weigh some options. Building your own is definitely the way to go ... the part lists everyone is suggesting here are actually significantly higher quality than anything you'll find in a bargain HP box. The price can go down ... but it's just important to be realistic about what you want from the computer and what you'll need to pay to make that happen. After-all, it makes little sense to toss out $500+ for a computer that can't even really do what you want.

Update: The GeForce 630 can't really run games. The low end cards aren't made for real-time rendering they're made for every day GPU use. It doesn't even have the appropriate cores, even if it has the speed, to do what you want.

And the APU chips are great ... for the same purpose ... but again, you said you wanted this to play games ... and Fallout 3 and games like it will not run very well there. (Let alone another game 2-3 years down the line that you'd want to play)

[BoringSupreez]

Decided to go with this one.

I don't see why the machines I'm looking at wouldn't be able to handle what I want. If my machine can run them (albiet poorly) it seems to me that these machines, which happen to be much more powerful than mine, should run everything I own at least decently.

[sabrage]

I don't see why the machines I'm looking at wouldn't be able to handle what I want.

The long and short of it is that the processor in that computer, though similarly specced, only runs at about 60% the capacity of the Core i5 I sent you. It scored even lower here (~3600) but I figured the direct comparison would help illustrate my point better than that massive chart. Better-known benchmarking sites (Tom's, Overclockers) don't even test that particular processor because it's not meant for gaming.

[BoringSupreez]

I don't see why the machines I'm looking at wouldn't be able to handle what I want.

The long and short of it is that the processor in that computer, though similarly specced, only runs at about 60% the capacity of the Core i5 I sent you. It scored even lower here (~3600) but I figured the direct comparison would help illustrate my point better than that massive chart. Better-known benchmarking sites (Tom's, Overclockers) don't even test that particular processor because it's not meant for gaming.

I'm only trying to get a PC that will let me run stuff from last year and before. I realize that it's not gonna cut it for today's biggest games, or tomorrow's. If I can run Civ V and Portal 2 at medium setting @ 30 FPS, I'll be content.

Besides, once there's a large number of modern games I want but can't run, I can always upgrade it. I'm fine with being a bit behind the curve.

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions.