Computer Recommendations?

[thom]

My grandchildren have sent their mother's PC to its final resting place. Too many games and too many downloads. They are looking for a new replacement PC at or below the $500 price range. The computer will be used for games, music downloads, photo storage, and homework research. All fairly basic functions. I think they also want a computer cam. They will be keeping the monitor. I would think Vista, should be the OS, if they can get a free upgrade to Win 7, when released. Recommendations please?

[Alaron]

Hard to beat a Dell for a low price machine.

[wylackii]

Try for a Core i7 minimalist machine. This type of computer will have upgrade potential when Windows 7 comes out. So far the beta of Windows 7 has to be the best in terms of installing (15 min) to boot time (15 sec).
A quick scan of newegg showed some decent X58 Mobos, if you go the OEM route make sure your computer has a X58 mother board or can upgrade to a Core i7 Processor.
When I built my machine I got a Celeron processor,Value ram, and a cheap HD and eventually upgraded to Core 2 Duo. By then the $200+ processor I wanted was $120. The cheap parts left over are good for hardware troubleshooting (swap out suspect part with old part) or for use in another build that will eventually upgrade.

[wylackii]

Don't forget to scavenge your old computer for useful parts.

[jdeb]

Originally Posted by wylackii Try for a Core i7 minimalist machine. This type of computer will have upgrade potential when Windows 7 comes out. So far the beta of Windows 7 has to be the best in terms of installing (15 min) to boot time (15 sec). A quick scan of newegg showed some decent X58 Mobos, if you go the OEM route make sure your computer has a X58 mother board or can upgrade to a Core i7 Processor. When I built my machine I got a Celeron processor,Value ram, and a cheap HD and eventually upgraded to Core 2 Duo. By then the $200+ processor I wanted was $120. The cheap parts left over are good for hardware troubleshooting (swap out suspect part with old part) or for use in another build that will eventually upgrade.

ok... build one for 500.00 with links, in this thread.

[jdeb]

Originally Posted by wylackii Don't forget to scavenge your old computer for useful parts.

ok... make sure you include theirs in your minimalist i7 build for 500.00

[jdeb]

Originally Posted by Alaron Hard to beat a Dell for a low price machine.

i would agree, you can also find some great deals in the outlet store as well

http://www.dell.com/content/products...=22&l=en&s=dfh

[wylackii]

You can build any computer for $500 if you use the cheapest parts in the best mother board and then upgrade when you can afford it or prices come down. It will only be able to do low end tasks but will run an OS (Linux OS reduces costs but will not run any favorite apps you might use). It depends on what you want your computer to do. I managed a self built laptop with Puppy Linux until I could afford a good processor and used open office and GIMP for my day to day needs.
Don't get Vista, it will up the costs of building your computer and run like a dog for the effort. The W7 beta used a lot of ram but not as much as vista on a clean install (over 1 GB). Go for Linux or XP or even the W7 beta which runs out some time in Aug and find out which apps you can run and cannot.
I know my AutoCAD suffered from 512mb of value ram but it wasn't a critical app and I made do without it.

[wylackii]

One last thing:
MSI Core i7 mobo $169.99 after $20 rebate good reveiws
Crucial 1 GB DDR 1333 RAM $15 can go higher if you want
Core i7 920 $280

Under $500, even with the $280 processor, reuse old computer except maybe the power supply. It all depends on what your old machine was running and what you want to run now.
Intel will be releasing lower spec processors so you might not have to spend $300 on the processor.
Once Windows 7 comes out you can install it and see if you like how it runs or upgrade just because.
I would run linux but you can get XP licenses cheap on ebay or borrow from a friend.

[wylackii]

If you don't feel like going into your bios and manually changing ram voltages you can get OCZ gold ram tri channel kit 6 gb for under $100.

[wylackii]

Or Crucial DDR 1333 Triple channel 3 GB kit for $35

[glc]

wylackii and jdeb - please use the EDIT button instead of making repeated back to back posts. Thank you.

- Admin -

Core i7 is *NOT* ready for the $500 market. This will be socket 775 and AMD territory for quite a while longer.

[wylackii]

Ok, I never use forums, just practicing. I was just mentioning that, using my model as an example, I could salvage everything except the processor, mobo, and ram and I could purchase those items for under $500.
Will work on the forum etiquette.

[glc]

There is no certainty that the components out of the old PC will be compatible with an i7 build, and if they are, they may be old enough that they will bottleneck the new system. It may even be a proprietary brand name machine, which would make it even more iffy. We generally do not recommend trying to recycle old components these days, we recommend the old machine be cleaned up and reused as a whole.

Another admin note - this particular forum is the one for Silver and Gold members to get support directly from the staff. We welcome comments from other members, but please don't take the forum over as an authority figure, ESPECIALLY when you say that you are "just practicing". Thank you. The other forums here are more of a "peer to peer" nature.