Help me pick a new computer

[Kyklis]

Alright guys, here's the plan. I'm saving up money to buy a gaming computer, and I want a fairly kickass one. The max price i'd be willing to pay for this would be 2000$.
Now, currently, i've considered buying off of www.lucomputers.com, as a friend of mine got one off of there for 1000, no problems, and it's a good one. So, I enlist you, soldat forum member's, to aid me in building a good gaming computer.

So, go to www.lucomputers.com, and then either high-end gaming center, pick a computer, and customize it for me. Remember, max is 2000$, but I still want it to kick some serious ass. I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to this, so I'm not sure about graphics card and all that. However, here is things I do require:

- A big harddrive, i've got a lot of games and files to dump on it.
- An LCD monitor, my current one is a POS, and a new one would be good. Nothing insane, 20'' is the max here.
- A good gaming computer+mouse, preferably wireless. Again, current stuff is terrible.

That's for things not computer related, and yes, you can add it onto the price within lucomputers, so no worries, I just wasn't sure which was better out of the choices.

Yes, this is pretty lazy of me, but I offer you eternal thanks and possibly sexual favors for those who help me out with this.

P.S: I live in Saskatchewan, Canada, and by all means if you know of a better place to purchase a computer, point me in the right direction.

[The Specialist]

sexual favors

What kind?

As for the site, I'll check it out and make a reconmendation for you.

[Graham]

Might try other sites like tigerdirect.com or newegg.com think both of those deliver to Canada.

[Dascoo]

Newegg unfortunately doesn't

[The Specialist]

I checked out the website for you and choose a reasonable operating system.

Here's the link:
http://www.lucomputers.com/aStore/default.asp?selection=customize&systemid=1547

For a gaming pc, it'll do the job.

[The Bone Collector]

here ya go. no screen tho, sorry.

[The Specialist]

The computer you posted has a slow processor.

[Death MachineX350]

http://www.lucomputers.com/aStore/default.asp?selection=system&usersysid=66337563
I assumed you wanted a OS with it so I choose the cheapest one.
Also I picked the best Processor for gaming because games are not optimized for quad core at this time.

[Kyklis]

Death Machine - Me like. People, take a look at this and let me know if there's something to be improved here.

The Specialist - That link leads to a 200$ machine . You have do it like Death Machine did.

The Bone Collector - Also looks good. Especially having two graphic cards with SLI.

So, another question, which would be the better choice between Death's and Bone Collector's. Both look good, but again, i'm a newbie to this, so help would be appreciated.

EDIT: Oh, and The Specialist, it's a suprise .

[The Specialist]

I'd say the computer I chose is the best choice.  I gave you the fastest processor, decent amount of hard-drive space, USB Ports, Modem Connections, a wireless router card (if you need one), and the best operating system.  I don't why, but $200 for that computer is really cheap if you ask me.

[Pred]

I recommend buying that parts and building it yourself - it's far cheaper.

[Clawbug]

Umm.

Core2Duo's are fasters processors available at the moment, of course Core2Quad beats them, but the price is alot higher aswell.

Graphics cards in SLI, good? NO. 8600-series cards are not so fast, not all games can take advantage of SLI + one faster card is faster than two slow cards together. e.g. 8800GTS 320MB.

Pred said it, build your own. Core2Duo E6320 should be enough. If not, learn to overclock and overclock it a bit, it goes well over 3GHz if needed.

AMD? No, unless you really need to be with cheap machine. Currently AMD is ALOT behind intel in terms of performance per watt and in overall performance. Mainstream Core2Duo's beat high-end Athlon64 X2's in the terms of speed, and are cheaper, consume less power, and overclock alot better.

As  said, don't get 2 cards in SLI/CrossFire. DON'T get Radeon HD2xxx cards. They are not so good compared to nvidia's. HD2900 is made with BAD silicon, has alot of leaks, and is just slower than 8800GTS. Consumes alot of power, slower, more expensive. Why to want such a crappy card?

If I was to build a comp right now, i'd take 8800GTS 320MB, 2-4GB of RAM, some decent C2D mobo, like Asus P5K-series and some Intel Core2Duo CPU, depending on how much I have money to spare.  That is about the hadrware inside your comp. If you need display, mouse, keyboard, speakers, mousepad and so on then it gets more tricky.

Currently, say no to ATI and AMD, they just suck atm, alot.

[a-4-year-old]

I recommend buying that parts and building it yourself - it's far cheaper.

QFE

Right now is a pretty bad time for getting a computer. There is this big hump in the price of hardware for games on XP or Vista. Wait until Vista is standard and then buy.

I checked out the website for you and choose a reasonable operating system.

Here's the link:
http://www.lucomputers.com/aStore/default.asp?selection=customize&systemid=1547

For a gaming pc, it'll do the job.

That is a horrible PC do not buy that. For a few hundred more you can have one so much better.

[Death MachineX350]

Core 2 Quad is only better than Duo Core 2 if you do video editing and not gaming.
Specialist you posted the slow computer (Core Duo= GHz x2) and with a crappy motherboard- only 512 MB of RAM max and AGP video slot(s).

[a-4-year-old]

I will never go back to low ram.

Onboard graphics just suck on ram because they don't have any memory dedicated, I wouldn't have any less then 2 Gigs of Ram even for XP and a decent graphics card is a must.

[Kyklis]

Clawbug - Many thanks for all the info. I'm most likely going to go with buying my own parts, but first off I just quickly customized one on Lu Computers and would like it if you could take a look at it and tell me if everything is good and i'm not making a mistake here.

http://www.lucomputers.com/aStore/default.asp?selection=system&usersysid=91540200

Right now it's priced at just under 2000$, and i'm going to be taking a look around, but a rough estimate of how much money I would save by buying the parts seperately would be nice.

EDIT: Also, theres a large number of Nvdia Cards built by different people (ASUS, Gigabyte, eVGA, Foxconn, XFX, BFG, MSI, PNY). What is the difference here, and which one should I be getting?

[Coolio]

You should just buy the best one. You won't have to update your computer for a long time.

[Clawbug]

Clawbug - Many thanks for all the info. I'm most likely going to go with buying my own parts, but first off I just quickly customized one on Lu Computers and would like it if you could take a look at it and tell me if everything is good and i'm not making a mistake here.

http://www.lucomputers.com/aStore/default.asp?selection=system&usersysid=91540200

Right now it's priced at just under 2000$, and i'm going to be taking a look around, but a rough estimate of how much money I would save by buying the parts seperately would be nice.

EDIT: Also, theres a large number of Nvdia Cards built by different people (ASUS, Gigabyte, eVGA, Foxconn, XFX, BFG, MSI, PNY). What is the difference here, and which one should I be getting?

They are just manufacturers.

The difference is usually just a different sticker in the cooling fan or so. Maybe different included stuff, or totally different cooling solution.

Basically the cards are equal in the terms of speed, but price, included stuff and MAYBE clockspeeds can vary. Just take which one is cheapest.

I have to say yet another thing: I have GeForce 7300GT, made by Palit. This has GDDR3 memories, but nvidia's reference 7300GT has DDR2. This 7300GT beats 7600GS.

This is factory overclocked aswell, the original clock speeds are 350/350MHz. (GPU/MEM) This is running 500/500MHz at default.

Core 2 Quad is only better than Duo Core 2 if you do video editing and not gaming.

Not true. A vast majority of future games take advantage of multiple cores. You can't play Alan Wake without DualCore CPU, and they actually had to overclock Core2Quad to run it well enough when they previewed it.

Old games won't take advantage of multiple cores. Image/audio/Video processingediting takes.

Also please remember that Intel cut's some prioces in 22nd of this month!

[Kyklis]

Thank a bunch. For the record, the entire process of getting this all sorted out will probably take a month or maybe  even 2, so I imagine some prices are going to be dropping.

Recently the Facepunch forums told this computer was horribly overpriced. If only Newegg shipped to Canada :-/.

[Iron Man]

if anything, get mac OSX

i use windows, toyed around with decent OSX (my school had it but it was shit) and fell in love. simplicity is beutiful