I need a new computer

[Rackhir]

Unless you have a small/bad TV you are almost always better off watching DVDs on your AV system. Monitors are much higher quality than TVs and will give you a better picture, but are far more expensive per inch than TVs.

If you want a lot of bang for your buck in terms of a Monitor. High quality 21" monitors are pretty cheap $300 or less for trinitron models, though shipping may well add to that. One word of warning about the LCD monitors, if you get a sufficiently inexpensive one, you may have ghosting problems in fast moving video games as the response time on the LCD display may not be sufficient to keep up with the frame rate. If you can, I'd go and look at various displays before chosing one. Over all though, the CRT is still the best if you can put up with the space it takes.

BTW Do you have a rough budget as to what you are looking to spend on the system? $1000, $1,500+ etc...

I personally would steer away from the ATI All-In-Wonder Models. My experience is that the multimedia features those models have are rarely used and you are paying a $50-$100 premium for having them. If you are on a budget those are dollars better spent on a faster graphics card.

Do your shopping on www.Pricewatch.com, it's the best guide to prices I've found. If you just want to get it all from one vendor www.NewEgg.com is usually among the cheapest and I've had excellent experiences dealing with them.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

as for budget the most I want to spend is 1500$ and the close to 1000$ without sacrificing toomuch the better. Thanks for everyones help so far, I've been out of the game so long I really don't know whats what anymore.

 

[Rackhir]

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe ATX MB for Athlon64/FX - Retail $299.00
AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2 GHz) CPU - Retail $303.00
Maxtor 6Y080M0 80GB DiamondMax Plus9 Serial ATA 7200RPM 8MB OEM $77.00
Toshiba SD-R5112 DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW Combo Drive - Bulk (Drive Only) $68.00
512MB PC3200 CL3 DDR SDRAM Kingston Value RAM x2 $156.00
Albatron GeForce 6600GT 128MB DDR3 PCIe x16 TV-Out DVI $209.00
Antec SLK3700AMB ATX-12V Solution Series Mid Tower 350W - Metallic Bronze $77.00

Total $1,189.00

You could cut about $100 by dropping to a Athlon 3200+. The motherboard is relatively expensive, but lets you use the dual video cards for about a 75-100% speed improvement. It should be an excellent and very well equiped MB. The hardware built in Firewall is also a very good idea. But you could cut about $100-$150 by going with a cheaper MB. It is also probably not shipping until late this month/Jan. If you do decide to go with a less expensive MB I would probably still look for a nForce4 based MB. But as above, you would have quite a little kicker of a system. I am assuming that you salvage your floppy drive from the old machine. You could keep your CD-Rom drive as well if you wanted to save some more money.

 

[drothgery]

If you'd rather sacrifice a bit in terms of performance and value in order to have someone else put together a box for you (and since I'm lazy, this is what I did, though with a slightly higher budget, and in April),
I'd go with a Dell 4700 series, and then add an aftermarket video card; the Dell box configured like so:

P4 530 (3 GHz)
1 yr warranty
512 MB RAM (DDR2 400)
80 GB HD (SATA, 8 MB cache)
16x DVD-ROM & 48x CD-RW drive
no monitor
integrated GMA 900 graphics only

no other software, speakers, etc.

You'll also get a cheap inkjet printer and 6 months of either AOL or Earthlink, if either is of any use to you.

That's $659

And then grab any PCI-Express GeForce 6600 GT video card from NewEgg.com for ~$200.

That's about $860, plus shipping and sales tax

If you are going the build-it-yourself route, though, I'd argue for either foregoing PCI express or waiting a few months for nForce 4, Via KT890, and ATi-chipset boards to become generally available, because paying $300 for a non-server motherboard is just silly.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Ok I went with dell and a bit pricier than I wanted but I got a coupon for 25% off any desktop 1499 or more and well I'm weak.

Its a Dimension 8400 Pentium® 4 Processor 540 with HT Technology (3.20GHz, 800 FSB)
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (2x512M)
256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) nVidia GeForce 6800
160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/ Native Command Queuing
Dual Drives: 16x DVD + FREE UPGRADE! 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write
Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio
Speakers Dell 5650 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System with Subwoofer Free Dell Color Printer 720

with tax after coupon $1216

thanks for everyones help.

 

[drothgery]

Well, what you got looks like a better deal than what I suggested (mostly thanks to your coupon)...

1gb ddr2-533 insted of 512MB dd2-400 -- $140
gf6800/256mb instead of gf6600gt/128mb -- $150
160gb hd instead of 80gb hd -- $30
dual-layer dvd writer instead of cd writer -- $30
5.1 speakers -- $50

So you got about $400 worth of additional stuff beyond what I suggested, and paid ~$350 more for it (actually less than that, because I didn't figure taxes or shipping in).

 

[GlassJaw]

newegg.com is probably the best online retailer of any type of product, nevermind computer hardware.

But for you Shard, yeah, I'd say go with prebuilt.

When you get your PC in, make sure you have a full version of a virus scan software and a firewall, preferably hardware (get a Linksys). Make sure you run all the Windows and virus updates because I've found that brand-new, out of the box PC's (even from Dell) are notorius for not having all the updates on them.

I fault Microsoft and the vendors just as much as the spammers and hackers for all the viruses and spyware out there. Manufacturers just aren't doing enough to make it easy for people to secure their computers. Hackers know that and use it to their advantage.

I've been into computers for a long time and my computer is a rock but I go and check out computers of friends and family members and it's SCARY.