Buying a Desktop and laptop on the cheap

[FInn Rescue 12]

What would be recommend for buying a laptops or desktops for under 700.00 that would be be compatible with game and mods. Performance is every thing and there are computers out there for thousands of dollars, but I do not have that kind of money. The system I have now is not good and it is old Dell 2350 with minor upgrades 1 gig Ram 80GB standard video card. To rebuild or add on I think would be to much money thanks for reading.

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[billyfromhill]

Anything with at least a dual-core and a dedicated GPU will do you fine. Dell makes some quality desktops and laptops, although you probably will have to upgrade the GPU and RAM on some of the lower-end Dell desktops. Both of those things are very easy to do by yourself once you purchase the computer.

[Xplorer4x4]

The topic says desktop AND laptop. The thread says desktop OR laptop. Need to establish that, and you say 700.00. Is that US Dollars? British Pounds? Euros? Finland currency(whatever they use over there)? Pesos? For $700 US Dollars you can build a Core i5 desktop with pretty good performance. However it depends on what you need to do on the computer? Is it mainly for gaming? What games? Is it for school work with minimal gaming? Do you need soemthing for video editing? You get the idea.

[FInn Rescue 12]

Ok got it thanks again for the help...

[brandanl]

Don't buy from Asus they have great products but if anything goes wrong they'll leave you behind.

[Xplorer4x4]

My ASUS mobo dies in under a year...great products? Sadly I cant agree

[brandanl]

My laptop is having major issues in its 3 months old 1600$ returned 5 times.

[Xplorer4x4]

My laptop is having major issues in its 3 months old 1600$ returned 5 times.

And?

[FInn Rescue 12]

Ok got it thanks again for the help... Ok after some research I might go with this desktop for the cheap but it should be able to play EM5 with a proble and maybe some mods. I wolud like the GHz to 3 or better but for the price sould do.

Features of eMachine ET183107 / ET1831-07:

2.70GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Processor

4GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory

750GB Serial ATA Hard Drive

Microsoft Windows 7 Premium 64-bit Edition

16X DVD+_R/RW SuperMulti Drive

NVIDIA GeForce 7050 graphics for excellent video playback

6 2.0 USB Ports (5 Front/4 Rear) 379.000 the price in not bad for the amount of ram and GB + Geforce.

Yes I know you get what you pay for.

[Xplorer4x4]

Its hard to help if you cant answer questions, again:

The topic says desktop AND laptop. The thread says desktop OR laptop. Need to establish that

You say 700.00. Is that US Dollars? British Pounds? Euros? Finland currency(whatever they use over there)? Pesos?

[FInn Rescue 12]

SORRY ABOUT THAT! THIS TOPIC WAS FOR LOOKING INTO BUYING ETHER A DESKTOP OR LAPTOP ON THE CHEAP US CURRENCY.... 700.00 DOLLARS BUT I FOUND ONE MUCH CHEAPER WITH A GOOD AMOUNT OF HARDWARE RAM GB.... IN THE FUTURE I WILL TRY TO BE MORE CLEARER ON THE TOPIC... ANY COMMENTS OR HELP WOULD BE VERY APPRECIATIVE ON THIS TOPIC THANKS AGAIN.

DESKTOP:

Features of eMachine ET183107 / ET1831-07:

2.70GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Processor

4GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory

750GB Serial ATA Hard Drive

Microsoft Windows 7 Premium 64-bit Edition

16X DVD+_R/RW SuperMulti Drive

NVIDIA GeForce 7050 graphics for excellent video playback

6 2.0 USB Ports (5 Front/4 Rear) 379.000 the price in not bad for the amount of ram and GB + Geforce.

Yes I know you get what you pay for.

[Xplorer4x4]

amount of ram and GB + Geforce.

Is irrelevant. Quantity doesnt mean quality.

eMachine ET183107 / ET1831-07 - Well theres the first problem.

2.70GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Processor - Not a bad CPU but AMD makes better low end CPU.

4GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory - What brand?

750GB Serial ATA Hard Drive - What brand? There was a batch of 750 GB Seagates that came out a few years ago that had major reliability problems.

Microsoft Windows 7 Premium 64-bit Edition - I would have probably stuck with Win XP 32 bit.

16X DVD+_R/RW SuperMulti Drive - Hard to go to wrong, but it is possible. Companies like Dell or HP often buy drives from Lite-On and other manufactures, and slap some custom firmware on the drive making it trash.

NVIDIA GeForce 7050 graphics for excellent video playback - JUNK. I hope you dont plan to play EM5 on this thing.

If you have bought this, so be it, but for $700 you could have built a quality machine that would last you years to come.

[FInn Rescue 12]

No! I have not yet purchased just looking for suggestions on this desktop because it was so cheap thanks.... I will look into the recommendations from the last post thanks...

I went to dell and this is what I am looking at:

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English

Intel® Core™ i5-650 processor(4MB Cache, 3.20GHz)

No Monitor

6GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz- 3 DIMMs

Dell USB Entry Keyboard

Dell USB Optical Mouse

Personalize

1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache

ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3

No Modem Option

16X DVD+/-RW Drive

Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Dell 1525 Wireless-N PCIe Card

Adobe® Reader 9.0

[Xplorer4x4]

Thats much better. Now the Core i5 is a great choice, but I wouldnt go with this particular Core i5 as it uses the 1366 Socket, this means the cost of the motherboard goes up as it is meant to accommodate 3 or 6 sticks of ram where as a computer using the 1156 socket on the mobo is designed to run 2 or 4 sticks. For the CPU I would go with a i5-750. If thats not an option or to expensive, heres a list of good cpus:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006519%2050001157%2040000343%20600005864%20600005584&IsNodeId=1&name=Core%20i3

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006519%2050001157%2040000343%20600005864%20600005579&IsNodeId=1&name=Core%20i5

A Core i3 would likley get the job done if your not going to do anything that requires alot of CPU like video editing.

6GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz- 3 DIMMs - Well if you change the cpu like I said your going to want 4GB 2 DIMMs rather then 6GB/3Dimms. Problem is you dont know what brand they are. So its hard to gauge how reliable it will be.

1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache - Again no name brand(not your fault just how Dell,HP,and the rest of them are), so relaibility is questionable. However I would atleast switch it for a 1 TB w/ 32 MB Cache if possible.

ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB DDR3 - Pretty low end card. I can see it playing EM5 on low settings if thats ok with you? What other games do you play?

16X DVD+/-RW Drive

Now if you will take it up on yourself to build the pc, heres what I would suggest:

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=12513111

Cost before Shipping:

$729

Price After Rebates:

$680

That would leave $20 for shipping so you might go slightly over budget. This assumes your in the US.

Your going to sacrifice some cpu power compared to the Dell but chances are you should be fine. The second important thing to notice is your getting a more powerful video card, important for gaming. The third thing to note is reliability. The chances of a part going out are slimmer. Assuming a part does go out it likley had a warranty and all you have to do is ship that part back rather then ship the whole PC. Assuming that piece is anything other then the hard drive, and you ship it back to Dell, you risk loosing everything on the HDD. Last but not least, upgradeable. If you want to upgrade the CPU to a Core i7 860 in a few months, you can.If you want to upgrade the video card, you can. If you upgrade the video card you may have to upgrade the PSU/Power Supply, however with the Dell almost none of these upgrades in the future would be possible.

[FInn Rescue 12]

Wow!!! My head is spinning but I did look up your recommendation explorer and I found if had to go with Dell it would coast me 1,0049 Studio XPS 81000 for all the same modification,way over my budget and the items that you recommended are probably a lot better and not a standard like company's have. Known I have to convinces the wife who of course wants the I mac. Just one question I notice while researching the mobo they offered bigger power supply units 650, 750 dose it matter?

The games I play are so far Halo' Call of Duty 1, 2 will not work on the system, Need for speed, EM3,EM4. no video editing. But would like to look into,over the winter doing skins for my City Emergency units Boston...

Thanks for all your help with this dilemma,talking with people who know computers helped tremendously. I just have to lessening and do some research. Hopefully in few months I can enjoy playing EM5 2012 and some unbelievable mods created. Thanks again Explorer and to all who have made this site possible.

[Xplorer4x4]

Known I have to convinces the wife who of course wants the I mac. Just one question I notice while researching the mobo they offered bigger power supply units 650, 750 dose it matter?

The games I play are so far Halo' Call of Duty 1, 2 will not work on the system, Need for speed, EM3,EM4. no video editing. But would like to look into,over the winter doing skins for my City Emergency units Boston...

First the iMac, well lets see, Mac charges for updates that are about the equivalent of a free service pack update from Microsoft. The when it comes to the computer itself, your going to pay more money for a weaker PC. The main thing your paying for is the operating system.

Secondly as for the PSU(power supply) yes it does matter, but it depends what hardware you run. The main factor in this is really the video card. The bigger the card(in terms of power not size), the bigger the PSU needs to be. A 550 watt like I posted is ample for that build, even for a 5750 video card.

Third if you mainly just game, you could always downgrade to a dual core cpu, and upgrade the video card, and maybe power supply. The nice thing is, if down the road, you need more power, you could swap out the dual core cpu(Core i3 or Core i5) to a Core i7 860 and have a higher end quad core CPU. With a Dell, and likley a Mac, this wont be upgradable.

[FInn Rescue 12]

I went with Dell XPS 420 8800GT vidseo card , quad 6600, 320gb 4gis ram. Bought it uaed paid 350$ not bad better than what I had. Thanks for all the help. Now I'am able to play EM4 LA mods and sub mods WOW!!! a lot of fun...