Need help choosing a new computer.

nosignal1

Baseband Member
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I'm in the market for a new computer. I have a little knowledge about the important parts to look at when comparing systems (ram, processor speed, and hard drive space). My problem is I don't know how things like the system bus affects the performance, and how different processors (amd, intel, triple core, quad core) compare to each other.

My budget is $400-$600 (of course cheaper is always better, but I don't want to sacrifice quality). I've been trying to find the best deals for that price range and I've come up with a few options.

I'm open to more suggestions, these are just the ones that I've found
Dell
Inspiron - $519

Gateway
Desktop with Intel i3 processor - $559

Asus
Essentio - $509

HP
AMD Athalon II Quad-core - $499
AMD Athalon II Triple Core - $499
AMD Phenom II X4 - $549

These all seem like good options, but I'm not sure how to make my decision. I like having more ram, so the expandability to 16 gb of some of the options above are nice. The asus seems like a nice deal, but it has a low system bus with 800MHz and like I said, I'm not sure how that affects the rest of the computer.

Could anyone help me make my decision? Thanks
 
Ill be doing graphic design/animation (Photoshop, flash), listening to music, and audio production. I'd totally be willing to consider building my own, as long as I could get a signifigantly better system for the same price.
 
Ill be doing graphic design/animation (Photoshop, flash), listening to music, and audio production. I'd totally be willing to consider building my own, as long as I could get a signifigantly better system for the same price.

What kind of audio production applications are you going to use?
 
If you're doing graphic design and audio production, you'll get a LOT more value by building your own, and you can tailor it to your own needs too.
 
Ill be using propellerhead reason, and cubase. I'm not very firmiliar with how to put a computer together, is it very hard to do?
 
Do you know around how much it would cost to get a similar setup to the ones posted by building my own? I don't think I'd have any problem building my own computer, I've installed disc drives, ram, and pci cards in my computer, without problem. I think it would be an interesting and fun task.

ps. GibsonSGKing, your username is awesome! haha
 
You will do much better building a better computer for the same cost as the ones you posted.

Question time:

What is your resolution? Do you have parts you can recycle? Do you have an OS already? Do you need any specialized hardware (sound card, tv tuner, etc.)? What size hard drive do you think you will need?
 
I'm in the market for a new computer. My problem is I don't know how things like the system bus affects the performance, and how different processors (amd, intel, triple core, quad core) compare to each other.

My budget is $400-$600


The most bang for your buck, would probably mean a self built, as you dont have to pay for any labour costs then :) It isnt too hard, and at any point if you do get stuck, there is allways plenty of technical help on this forum (as i found out!) and helpful tutorials elsewhere online - seems you arent alien to it anyway, with your ram and drive installations.

R.E. The processors, they are fairly easy to work out. The more cores your have, the more number crunching (hard work) the computer can do at once. The MHZ is the speed at which it (the core) works.

AMD at the moment, is the better processor for low / medium builds, intel is only really winning in costly, High end systems for large CPU loads, at the moment.

R.E. The budget, does the $400-$600 budget include everything?? Would you be buying a mouse? monitor? operating system?
 
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