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Buying New PC. Suggestions?

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MilesOhToole:
What suggestions would you fine people make for me to purchase a PC?  Difficulty:  My budget is around $500.00.

Listening to Clark Howard on talk radio, he's just about discouraged me from Dell.  What do you guys think?

Deozaan:
$500 for a desktop PC isn't too bad of a budget for the average PC user.

Personally, I would buy the parts off of TigerDirect.com or NewEgg.com and put them together myself. However, I can't in good faith recommend that to you because I am not sure of your computer knowledge. For one, you might not know how to put the parts together yourself and for two, you don't get a service contract with technical troubleshooting if you do it that way. I guess you can buy them separately, but most PC manufacturers (Dell, Gateway, HP) bundle them with the sale of the system. Of course you would still get the 1-year hardware manufacturer's warranty, but that might not suit your needs.

What do you plan to use this computer for? Besides word processing, e-mail, and the internet?

Here's a system from TigerDirect for about $470 including shipping but has a $90 mail-in rebate (Expires Saturday the 30th), which would bring it down to $380. This does not include a monitor, but TigerDirect also has a sale on a 19" Flat Panel LCD monitor for $190, which would put you a bit above your $500 budget but not into the $600s.

dk70:
Would be best if motherboard had PCI-E slot. Most of these cheaper boxes use onboard video, which can be ok for anything but latest games, but should you upgrade in X months it will be a lot easier to find good PCI-E card than AGP. AGP are even more expensive - they are on their way out, availability might be a problem too. So a little extra cost today will be saved later. Seems like there are many options to pick from so should be possible to squeeze in.

mitzevo:
What suggestions would you fine people make for me to purchase a PC?  Difficulty:  My budget is around $500.00.

Listening to Clark Howard on talk radio, he's just about discouraged me from Dell.  What do you guys think?
-MilesOhToole (September 28, 2006, 07:19 PM)
--- End quote ---

Well for starters.. it would be good to know what you plan on doing on this new computer... Are you just going to be using the internet? Or do you plan to play games.. (if you do then you wont be able to get a solid gaming computer for $500)

Do you know any thing about computers? Do you know any thing about your requirements for RAM, hard drive space, etc?

I think you should explain more about the problem.. before any one can give a good answer.

f0dder:
Yup, we need some usage specs.

If it's just for a bit of word processing and internet usage, just about anything will do. Personally I'd go for a core2 duo and at least 512 megs of ram, graphics card depending on needs (but definitely PCI-E, although onboard with possibility of PCI-E expansion is an okay option too if you don't know if you'll be doing games).

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