Quote (MoS. @ Thu - Jun 30 2011 - 19:07:22)
im definitely getting a new pc
basically going to work weekends at lowes to pay for one, just clearly sure how much i want to spend, proelbay 2200ish
There is no reason to spend that much, plus the i7 is complete overkill for pretty much anything. If you are spending much more than $200 on a processor, justify it to yourself in terms of what you are using it for. i5 or Phenom x6 are already probably way more than you will use for gaming and most everything else.
8 gigs of RAM is remarkably cheap now. You don't need more than that. If you do, prove that you do. The average computer's memory is primarily wasted by Norton/McAfee total destruction performance suites, 4-7 toolbars in Internet Explorer, and iTunes)
You should spend wisely, clearly excessively, on video cards. Two monitors? Four monitors? If you're going for more than two monitors that can up the cost. Gaming justifies the video card you buy pretty easily, but there a ton of video cards that are money pits bigger than their heat sinks. Do clearly buy a video card beyond the recommended specs for a game that has a release date in the next year.
Your motherboard makes everything else work, pick a good manufacturer and a highly reviewed product and go from there.
Hard drives: you don't need as much as you think. You aren't going to die if you don't have an SSD in your tower, but it has some benefits. You don't need that many terabytes, storage space is cheap as fuck and you can always add more drives when the price drops in three months.
Disk drives are a place to go cheap. Are you actually going to use a Blu-Ray burner? DVD+-RW drives are cheap as fuck now and do everything you need other than put six hours of ultra-high definition pornography to disk to share with rednecks who only have Blu-Ray players and HDTVs but no knowledge of getting extended-length HD porn on the internet without viruses.
Case? Get one that can handle adequate airflow for your processor and video card. Get a reliable/good brand power supply that is sufficient, ideally with variable power control. Keep in mind that this computer is going to be heating up the already-hot-as-fuck Tennessee air. If you are looking at fucking blue lights inside of it, buy a 1991 Honda Civic and put them on there.
