Need advice on a new pc

[tifosi]

Looking to build my own and need some opinions on the following barebones kit from Tiger Direct.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...6&Sku=B69-0018

What's good and bad with it?

TIA

[r8man]

Looks good except I would recommend a full tower instead of a mid tower.

The AMD can be around the Intel Quad but its not any better. The memory could be faster, I would suggest DDR2 1066 to go along with any processor above a single core. Other than that its a good base computer.

[Stack]

1st thing that jumps out at me is that it doesn't come with a graphics card or operating system ... which of course aren't necessarily BAD things, it just means that on top that bare-bones price, you'll be spending another 50%-100% (or more) than that on an OS and a graphics card that you can get the most out of.

[sbranda]

First, one thing to know about Asus is that they make good products at a lower price, but only update things like firmware for a couple years. Usually this isn't a problem, but if you want to keep upgrading this system as long as possible, you should invest in a Gigabyte brand motherboard. Which way to go is more personal preference than anything.

Personally I would stay with a mid tower. There's enough room to make installing things fairly easy, but it's not so huge you have no place to put it. A full tower is nice if you want to have 7 hard disks, but if you don't need the space it will just be a pain in your ass.

The mobo in that deal has onboard graphics, but onboard graphics aren't great. ATI and Nvidia have excellent budget cards out right now for around $75.

The 8gb of memory is a waste. If you want to play games on it, presumably rFactor, then you'll want to run 32-bit windows. That limits you to using 3 GB of memory. If you use Windows XP instead of Vista (and you should) 2 GB of memory will be plenty.

For my money I would put together something like the following from newegg.

ASUS V2-M3N8200 AMD Socket AM2+ / AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 Black Barebone

$144.99

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500410AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

$64.99

SAPPHIRE 100255HDMI Radeon HD 4670 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

$75.99

Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2K2/2GR

$22.99

AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core Processor Model HD960ZWCGDBOX

$95.99

Subtotal: $404.95
Shipping: $23.18 (depends where you live)

[tifosi]

Thanks for the info guys. The OS is not an issue as I have a free Vista 32 or 64 bit license from testing Vista. My son is running rFactor on a 64 bit Acer. Does 64 bit just revert to a 32 bit mode when running a 32 bit program and make no difference?

[sbranda]

For most games it won't make a difference, especially if the program says it supports 64-bit windows. This means the developer has tested it and confirms it works on 64-bit windows even though it is probably 32-bit. If the 32-bit game has not been tested on 64-bit windows, it will work fine most of the time, but there will be some games (usually older games) that will fail to work.

If you plan to run 64-bit vista, the 8GB of memory might not be a bad idea

[tifosi]

I figured I'd give Vista 64 bit a shot until Windows 7 SP1 comes out!

[HawkBat]

Ok Tifosi, you opened up a can of worms with me. I am going to suggest for you one thing.... MORE! More Power and more well power.

One problem you might have with mid-tower is cooling. Wires can constrict airflow in a midtower. I run a Antec full tower and love it.

I will detail this more, but when you build your computer think logegivty and what you are going to use it for.

My next build is going to a massive upgrade in power and processing.

I will come up with my suggestion list soon.

[f2000keith]

I'm holding out until rFactor2 comes out to build a new box.

[tifosi]

Originally Posted by f2000keith

I'm holding out until rFactor2 comes out to build a new box.

Any timeframe for that KC?