Wait 2 more weeks for black November, and black friday deals.

Thats usually how i base my builds, buy what's on sale. Which is pretty much everything.

I seriously have no idea where to start, i'll read through this thread and see what others have put together, but I haven't built a PC since 2000.

But I figure I can end up with something a little better and cheaper than buying another Dell.

I'm still using a Dell I bought in 2007. 1.6Ghz dual core with 8GB of DDR2.

How much do you want to spend?

Yeah, come on Brain, just like if someone asked you to build a turbo miata. What's your budget and goals? Play new games at 'ultra'? Facebook machine? Play 2 year old games a la the Joe Perez gaming machine?

probably want to spend under $1K.

I need something that can handle processing large photographs in lightroom and photoshop.

I only play Starcraft 2 as a game, but only hesistate buying new games cause I know it can't handle anything (like Bioshock 2)

i dont need ultra, but i need something competent.

With very few exceptions, I have stopped building PCs. It's almost impossible to spend less money and wind up with something better than what you could achieve buy purchasing a low-end machine off the shelf and then adding some RAM and a video card to it.

So that we have some reference, describe the Dell machine you have now. I know it's a 1.6 Ghz dual-core machine, but that covers several classes and generations of processors. Which CPU, specifically?

I would think about the "new" i7's since you want video processing something like the 3550k or if you can swing it the 3770k, then some mother board that fits, 16gb of ram, a previous series mid range video card at least 1TB of hard drive space, and something around 800W power supply in a $30 case with some fans sounds good.

For right around $1k I got an i5, z77 motherboard, 8GB ram, a 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD, and an AMD HD7850, and a 700-ish watt PSU (I already had a case). That was almost a year ago, so you should be able to get that for cheaper or the newer versions of everything (Haswell instead of Ivy Bridge, Z87 instead of 77, etc) for the same $1k. I cheaped out on the graphics card relative to everything else since it's the easiest to swap out once you want more power.

Hey, I'll have you know that I'm playing SIX year old games!


But seriously. I would start with something totally mundane and ordinary like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883113259

And then throw in a nice, mid-range graphics card like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202011

And that's about it. $560 total for a machine that'll be perfectly adequate for quite some time to come.

Problem with that Joe, is you will need a new PSU also. I don't think 300w will cut it with a mid-level graphics card added on. Did the same to my dad's Dell that he got for a nice employer discount. Then you have to hope that Gateway didn't use some bullshit proprietary case that won't fit an aftermarket PSU.

Good point.

The graphics card I linked to draws 80 watts, so it might or might not work depending upon how honest Gateway's published specs are. Add another $37 for a beefy power supply: LEPA N Series N500-SA 500W ATX12V Power Supply - Newegg.com


Fitment into the case won't be an issue- I have that video card, and it's fairly small.

Yeah I looked it up in a PSU calculator and it is a lot closer than I thought. However I was talking about power supply fitment, not GPU fitment.

Damn near everyone uses off-the-shelf PSUs these days in their "full size" machines, with the exception of some Dell models, and every single thing produced by Apple. The Gateway PCs most certainly do.

Here's what that specific machine I linked to looks like on the inside:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1382122729

Were it not for the word "Gateway" written on it (and the lower price) it would be nearly impossible to distinguish from a build-it-yourself PC.

Well if you DIY-ed and got an H67 mobo with an Ivy Bridge i5 like that one has, it wouldn't work because the H67 would need a firmware upgrade to be able to use the Ivy Bridge CPU. Ask me how I know.

Sorry Joe, I didn't want to do the m.net thing of 'X told me that Y tried Z and it didn't work' but I have heard of people who tried to replace their PSU only to find it was a proprietary size.

No worries- I totally get what you're saying. This used to be a huge problem, but of late, pretty much all of the store-bought PCs I've come into contact with have been built of pretty standard stuff. Some of the Dells are still a problem, and some of the smaller-form-factor stuff still has some proprietary components in it, but even those are increasingly standardizing on either TFX or mini ITX.

I've got a couple of small-form-factor Lenovos at home, and even they are built with all off-the-shelf hardware. The power supply in the back of this ThinkStation might look proprietary, but it isn't; that's a TFX12V form-factor, and you can get these from NewEgg for $25 (albeit at a max of 350w):

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1382125231


And here's the Intel design guide describing the TFX form factor: http://www.formfactors.org/developer....01%20PSDG.pdf


If I had to guess, I'd say that some of those people "who tried to replace their PSU only to find it was a proprietary size" either didn't know where to look or weren't trying hard enough. Eg: "It's not ATX, so therefore it must be proprietary."


But that Gateway? 100% ATX.

Trade for a MS?

Yeah, Brainey if you're end goal isn't something like this: (think dem or soviet's car)
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1382134516



Then you're best off going the JoeP route. Off the shelf machine, add some ram and a video card.

Lets step this back a bit, if we're going to do the Joe route, why not go my actual route. I haven't bought an entirely new computer for myself since highschool. But I've bought almost 3 computers worth of stuff since then. Brain, lets get a full run down of EVERYTHING in your current computer, including type of ram and the type of connectors on the DVD drive and hard drives and if your case is somewhat standard or not. I would bet that you could do this in stages, buy used part, etc. At the very least we can keep the DVD drive and HDD from the current computer and save a couple hundred bucks there in the short term.

Video cards are a great thing to buy used, they're hard to kill or fuck up, and they ship well. And that GTX460 in my computer right now thats like a 3-4 year old mid range card will still max or almost max most games with an acceptable frame rate on a single monitor at 1680x1050. And little timmy insisted that mommy buy him the GTXRR9001 Purple Penis edition and he's selling his GTX580 for like nothing compared to what it cost new.

I'm gonna guess a Dell from '07 has nothing of value left. Maybe the HDD. In my case the DVD drive from my old case was IDE so it was worthless, but a new one is like $15 so it's not a big deal, it certainly won't save you a couple hundred bucks.

Also a used GPU that is equivalent to a 'midrange' card today is going to eat up a lot of juice, which may be a problem for that 300w gateway power supply.

It took me a while to switch away from IDE optical drives, I only did it for the cleanliness.