we're building Mike a gaming PC (recycled thread)

[mjmjr25]

Greetings,

Got this email from a church member who works at a local community college.

Anyone looking for a great IMac for $450ºº?


The NAME REMOVED Community College is selling their lab Macs.

21" screen size. Newest operating system installed already. Speedy! They were new in 2009.
My husband bought one yesterday and it is great.

If you're interested contact NAME REMOVED at 218-879-XXXX or just go there and ask at the Info. desk on the way to his office.

Questions I have:
Is this a good price knowing what we know (not much)?
What questions should I ask?

I'm looking for a possible gaming PC - could this do the trick (again, based on such little info).

[fastbilly1]

Not a gaming pc in any regard - do not buy for that purpose.

A 2009 iMac will look like this:

And will most likely be 2ghz, and have either a Geforce 9400M or a Radeon 4670 installed. For the $500 price point you can get a much better windows pc. Heck you can get a similar machine to the one they are selling on ebay for cheaper right now:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iMac-20-P ... 258e14cbc0

[noiseredux]

yeah for just a bit above that you can get a prebuilt Digital Storm PC that is made for gaming.

[mjmjr25]

Ok, thanks Fast / Noise.

I know i've seen Macs for like $1,500 new, but they're all the same to me, so I have no idea what the criteria would be and afaik, you both could have easily said the opposite, BUY THEM ALL! and I wouldn't have been the wiser.

Thanks...

[fastbilly1]

you both could have easily said the opposite, BUY THEM ALL! and I wouldn't have been the wiser.

Wheres the fun in that?

Dont get me wrong, the computer is just a tool. You can play games on that iMac sure enough, but that one would not support King of Fighters 13 on Steam, which I know is one you are interested in.

[noiseredux]

we should start a pool of parts people don't need, have Fast assemble it all and set it to autoboot into Steam Big Picture mode for Mike.

[TSTR]

^I have a bunch of random computer stuff around; I could probably help with that.

[aaron]

^I have a bunch of random computer stuff around; I could probably help with that.

first time ever reading this forum and i came across this, but, yeah i can do that too.

[noiseredux]

me and TSTR were brainstorming on this last night. He's got quite a few parts around actually. I have a few. I've even got a Radeon R6670 GPU that I'm not sure if it works or not, but if it does, then cool if it got some use. I'm sure Fast has some shit too. I bet between me, Fast, TSTR and aaron we could throw together a pretty competent Steambox for Mike. I'm pretty sure Zenerik has some Win7 licenses too once we get the thing assembled....

My idea is that we set it up to autoboot into Steam Big Picture mode. We'd trick him into thinking it was a console.

We should figure out what we have and make a pcpartpicker list to put it together and make sure it's all compatible.

[aaron]

me and TSTR were brainstorming on this last night. He's got quite a few parts around actually. I have a few. I've even got a Radeon R6670 GPU that I'm not sure if it works or not, but if it does, then cool if it got some use. I'm sure Fast has some shit too. I bet between me, Fast, TSTR and aaron we could throw together a pretty competent Steambox for Mike. I'm pretty sure Zenerik has some Win7 licenses too once we get the thing assembled....

My idea is that we set it up to autoboot into Steam Big Picture mode. We'd trick him into thinking it was a console.

We should figure out what we have and make a pcpartpicker list to put it together and make sure it's all compatible.

yeah, lemme know what you need. push comes to shove i can buy a win 7 license for $20 from work.