New desktop for under $600....

[save77]

I'm looking to buy a cheap desktop for my kids to use and I'd like to keep it under $600. I know I can build one for cheaper, but I don't have the time with work and the kids so I'd like to buy a prebuilt one. I've had bad experience with Dell in the past so I'd like to stay away from them. I've seen some decent looking ones on newegg but I haven't bought a PC for over 7 yrs (yes I'm a mac guy) and I'm not sure what brands are good? It'll be used mostly for playing kids games, doing some AutoCAD work on and streaming movies to my tv. Any suggestions would be great!

Thanks,
J

 

[Muffin Man]

I would say go with a compaq tower computer with 2.5 or 3Ghz processor, but I am not sure that would work very well for streaming movies to your tv. if you want something that is cost effective and fast go with an HP tower computer. they sell some pretty decent towers that are quite powerful for around 500$. a full blown HP game computer only costs around 1300$ and these are the kinds of computers that pro gamers pay around 6 thousand dollars for. while the computer may not look as cool as the 6 thousand dollar computer it does have it where it counts and can usually outperform the 6thousand dollar computer after years of use. speaking from experience you should go for an HP computer because they are very hard to physically destroy beyond use and they are EXTREMELY long lasting computers that dont take much impact to performance over the years.

suggesting a pc based on the clock speed of the cpu is a vague suggestion. cost effective and hp (or any brand of pre-built pc's) is like an oxymoron. that's kinda how they make money, they take cheap parts and sell the pc whole for more than what it would cost to build yourself the majority of the time.

how long they last depends completely on who is using it and what they are using it for. if it's your average joe that uses it for checking mail and the occasional document or whatever, then he's probably not gonna care to upgrade from a decade old p4 with a gig of ram.

one that I am trying to build is a full size tower motherboard with 2 processor sockets, a 6Ghz Intell I7 hexacore processor, a 6Ghz AMD quad core processor (I think they exist but I'm not sure), a solid state FLASH hard drive to hold the OS, a 1T hard drive to hold all of my other crap, a NVIDIA graphics card with built in processor, water cooling system, LED fans throughout the chassis with manual speed controls, luminescent fluid (under black light), a UV internal light for cooling system fluid glow effect, internal red LED's, MSI winki instant on OS, a 1500 watt power supply, a secondary 500 watt power supply, a mini motherboard with fastest processor possible attached to main motherboard, and a kick *** chassis to hold it all. this is the kind of computer that can play crisis 3 different times on 3 different monitors at the same time. this is the computer that i well worth every penny until you get the electricity bill from running such a massively overpowered system that can handle the task of an entire server system all inside one computer. but it is going to look cool and play games like no other! the perfect system to take to LAN parties where you are not paying for the power consumption and guaranteeing you get the bandwidth that you need.

sorry, but a lot of that just doesn't make sense...

save77, i took a look at what newegg has, and found this
Newegg.com - lenovo IdeaCentre H405 (7723-1CU) Athlon II X4 645(3.1GHz) 4GB DDR3 1TB HDD Capacity ATI Radeon 3000 graphics Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
for the price it seems to come with some decent parts for the money compared to others, but its integrated video is on the weaker side.

you could add a card like this in to fix that, it consumes low enough power that it should run on the stock psu and cheap enough to still keep the total cost under 600
Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100293DP Radeon HD 5570 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Low Profile Ready Video Card w/ Eyefinity

 

[Abstract Hero]

one that I am trying to build is a full size tower motherboard with 2 processor sockets, a 6Ghz Intell I7 hexacore processor, a 6Ghz AMD quad core processor (I think they exist but I'm not sure), a solid state FLASH hard drive to hold the OS, a 1T hard drive to hold all of my other crap, a NVIDIA graphics card with built in processor, water cooling system, LED fans throughout the chassis with manual speed controls, luminescent fluid (under black light), a UV internal light for cooling system fluid glow effect, internal red LED's, MSI winki instant on OS, a 1500 watt power supply, a secondary 500 watt power supply, a mini motherboard with fastest processor possible attached to main motherboard, and a kick *** chassis to hold it all. this is the kind of computer that can play crisis 3 different times on 3 different monitors at the same time. this is the computer that i well worth every penny until you get the electricity bill from running such a massively overpowered system that can handle the task of an entire server system all inside one computer. but it is going to look cool and play games like no other! the perfect system to take to LAN parties where you are not paying for the power consumption and guaranteeing you get the bandwidth that you need.

Ok, I'm sorry but I got to pick this apart.

-There are no 6ghz processors. You could overclock one to 6ghz but then you would be looking at nitrogen cooling.
-There is no motherboard with 2 sockets that can use both AMD and Intel.
-All graphics cards have a processor built in. How else would they work?
-Your planning on having multiple motherboards and a grand total of 3 CPU's? I won't ask how you're going to do it.
-How are you going to play 3 instances of Crysis with one mouse?
-Hypothetically, if you could put this together how much do you think it would weigh? Would you take 200lbs of thousands of dollars in water cooled equipment house to house? No? Than how would you LAN?
-You're troll'n

Back on topic.

I like that Lenovo for the price even though it's prebuilt. But Muffin Man is right. You may or may not need a dedicated GPU.