Christmas 2007 PC Buyer's guide

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Hi guys. Just a quick introduction to this guide. I thought that I would write a guide for everyone where people can get help what to buy for this holiday time. Since this is the silly season things are getting dirt cheap and its probably the best time to pick up yours. So here's something to help you in your quest for buying. Happy buying!

This guide will only cover the main components of the pc - The processor, the Hard disk, motherboard, RAM, a graphics card, and optical drive. All prices are taken from Newegg.com and are USD.

The typical net-surfing or Office PC.
Processor: Intel Celeron 440 - $65
This single core processor is based on a Conroe-L design which borrows most of its features from the bigger Conroe line. This processor is just good for any office usage or typical net-surfing.
Motherboard: ASRock ConRoe1333-D667 - $49.99
This motherboard is based on a 945GC chipset and is a solid board for anyone on a budget. To be honest, you can take any 945GC chipset based board.
RAM: CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) - $24.99
Since the prices of 1 GB RAM are dirt cheap, there's no way for going for anything less than 1 GB. Your PC will stay happy in this configuration.
Graphics: Onboard Intel GMA 950 graphics
There's no need for external graphics in this pc - the onboard graphics are enough.
Hard disk: Any 80GB SATA HDD. - $42 - $44
All 80GB HDD's are almost equal in terms of pricing and performance differences dont matter at this stage.
Optical Drive: Lite-On 20x DVD burner - $29.99

With that we end this pc. Lets move on to the Home PC / Very Casual Gaming PC.

The very casual gaming / Home PC
Processor: Intel Pentium Dual core E2140 / E2160 - $74 / $83
These processors, while keeping a Pentium name, sport a revised conroe design and offer pretty good performance for this type of pc. Also, these chips are highly overclockable, and details about them hitting 3.2 Ghz are very common, on stock cooling! Even without overclocking these chips offer excellent bang for the buck.
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-G31MX-S2 - $80
There's just no beating to this motherboard when it comes to G31 based motherboards. This one sports decent features, excellent layout, and very decent overclocking features to whack up your E2000 processor! Supports the upcoming penryn processors too, and upto 1333FSB. Pretty future proof.
RAM: CORSAIR XMS2 1GB DDR2 800 - $41
Good RAM from a good quality vendor. You might want to skip onto 2GB.
Graphics: EVGA 256-P2-N751-TR GeForce 8600GT - $109($90 after a mail in rebate at newegg)
This graphics card can provide superb HD video decoding and offloading that task from the CPU. Plus the card can also run games pretty nicely. Dont expect to run Crysis at 1440x900 though.
Hard Disk: 250GB Hard drive - Around $60-$70
This should be enough for gamers on a budget or to store a decent amount of HD content etc.
Optical Drive: Same as above.

Lets move on to the last and a powerful Mid range gaming pc.

The Mid Range Gaming PC
Actually the parts we are going to load into this pc, some may even call it a high end one.
Processor: Intel Core 2 duo E6550 - $169.99
This processor is very nicely powered up to fulfill the gaming needs. Plus its pretty overclockable too. It also has a 1333mhz FSB.
Motherboard: MSI P35 Neo2-FR - $120 / $100(After newegg rebate)
There's just no beating this motherboard. Its basically a P35 platinum with reduced price. So many features, and very very high overclockability(I really mean very high) Very powerful board based on the P35 Intel Chipset.
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 - $54.99
2 GB RAM is a must - thats all I can say.
Graphics: There a plethora of choices here. But still, in increasing order of performance and price, the AMD Radeon 3850($179), 8800GT 256mb($200-$220), the AMD Radeon 3870($249), and the most powerful 8800GT 512mb($250-300). the problem with all these cards is there availabilty, so catch one for yourself at the right price. All these are well equipped and powerful to run even the latest and most demanding of games at respectable resolutions and good Image quality.

The HDD is actually just a thing of choice, but i would still recommend the 250GB one if you're tight on budget. Opt for 2x250GB drives if more space is needed. The optical drive remains same.

So thats it! Thats our three configurations suiting different needs Hope you found this guide good and helpful. Happy Shopping once more.

Btw, I would really like your comments and feedback on this guide. A lot of time and effort has been put in. Thanks!


Kshitiz

 

[pingusten]

Excellent guide mate, just wondered which form of $ you were using, so maybe you could put prices in ?'s as well?

You might want to mention the 640mb version of the 8800GT, which seems to sell a lot more than the 512mb version.

Reps for fantastic effort

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Yep, reps deserved for taking the time to type that!

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Excellent guide mate, just wondered which form of $ you were using, so maybe you could put prices in ?'s as well?

You might want to mention the 640mb version of the 8800GT, which seems to sell a lot more than the 512mb version.

Reps for fantastic effort

I had mentioned that they are all USD. To convert it into yours kindly go here.
Also, there is no 8800GT 640 mb, thats a 8800GTS 640, which is much less powerful and outdated than the almighty 8800GT The 8800gt is more powerful and if you overclock it it can even reach the gtx levels.

Thanks for the appreciation guys . Glad you found it good and hoping that more people will find it the same too.

Btw, if any of you do end up buying something after reading this guide, do let us know

 

[Abhas]

Great Guide... very exhaustive, and will surely be handy for people wanting to buy a new computer
Thanks Kshitiz!!

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Great Guide... very exhaustive, and will surely be handy for people wanting to buy a new computer
Thanks Kshitiz!!

Thanks man. I'm thinking of adding a bit high end gaming pc too

 

[cnbd_novice]

Excellent giude there Kshitiz, a rep-worthy effort indeed.

A couple of questions though:

1. For the typical net-surfing or Office PC: why choose Celeron rather than the faster clocked single core P4 processors?
2. For the very casual gaming / Home PC: a X1950 GT, which costs essentially the same the 8600 GT, outperforms the latter by quite a large margin. And considering the fact that only a few game in fact utilizes DX10, wouldn't the ATi card be a better investment?
3. For the very casual gaming / Home PC again: I think a 250 gb HDD for a casual basic PC may be a bit superfluous. For me, a 160 gb HDD does the job perfectly, and can save a bit of money too if you're in a tight budget. Opinion?
4. For the Mid Range Gaming PC: The Core 2 Duo E6750 costs only $20 more than the E6550, and offers a faster-clocked processor. Again, opinion?


A brilliant guide - that has to be said again. I can't wait to see your ultimate pc configuration, and thanks in advance for your time to answer these silly questions of mine yet again.

PS: Pingusten's question reminded me - the newer G92 8800 GTS 512 mb editions beat the older 8800 gts, don't they?

 

[MattW]

3. For the very casual gaming / Home PC again: I think a 250 gb HDD for a casual basic PC may be a bit superfluous. For me, a 160 gb HDD does the job perfectly, and can save a bit of money too if you're in a tight budget. Opinion?

I suggest buying HDDs at the point at which the next jump in size is significantly more in $/MB terms than the last jump. For example if a 160GB HD is $70, a 200GB is $75 and a 250 is $100 (which they aren't, but this is just an example), get the 200GB. The same theory got me a 320GB HD last time I bought one, and an 80GB one the time before. It transfers over to a lot of other components as well.

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Excellent giude there Kshitiz, a rep-worthy effort indeed.

A couple of questions though:

1. For the typical net-surfing or Office PC: why choose Celeron rather than the faster clocked single core P4 processors?
2. For the very casual gaming / Home PC: a X1950 GT, which costs essentially the same the 8600 GT, outperforms the latter by quite a large margin. And considering the fact that only a few game in fact utilizes DX10, wouldn't the ATi card be a better investment?
3. For the very casual gaming / Home PC again: I think a 250 gb HDD for a casual basic PC may be a bit superfluous. For me, a 160 gb HDD does the job perfectly, and can save a bit of money too if you're in a tight budget. Opinion?
4. For the Mid Range Gaming PC: The Core 2 Duo E6750 costs only $20 more than the E6550, and offers a faster-clocked processor. Again, opinion?


A brilliant guide - that has to be said again. I can't wait to see your ultimate pc configuration, and thanks in advance for your time to answer these silly questions of mine yet again.

PS: Pingusten's question reminded me - the newer G92 8800 GTS 512 mb editions beat the older 8800 gts, don't they?

1. These Celerons are the newer design celerons which sport the conroe-L design. Which means that they are just stripped down versions of the conroe's. The deal is that they perform much better clock to clock when compared to Intel P4 processors, and run much cooler too. Whats more, the Pentium 4's used an old Netburst architecture and the new celerons(400 series) and pretty damn highly overclockable too!

2. Indeed, the X1950Gt is faster, but think about it, the nVidia 8600gt has purevideo support, which means you can seamlessly playback all the Hd movies without putting stress on the processor. Also, even though in total the difference is pretty much, in seperate games and real world scenarios you would notice a mere 1-3 fps difference. The 8600Gt overclocks pretty well too, and hey, an added option of Directx 10 never goes bad, does it? The resolutions we are talking in this pc, well, both cards can render games playable too.

3. Higher capacity HDD's provide more storage, and most importantly, better value per mb. Moreover, this PC would also be used to play and store maybe lots of HD content and other multimedia things, so a 250GB HDD might be a necessity.

4. The $20 premium that E6750 charges is pretty useless in real world scenarios and its almost negligible. Pick up an E6550 and i would prefer a minor overclock first ( its only a 233mhz increment )

And yes, the newer G92 8800 GTS 512 mb editions beat the older 8800 gts, but i recommended neither of them, so thats out of question

I would be adding the Ultimate PC soon

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Sorry to bump this very old topic, but you guys reckon I should write one more such guide for the current season?

 

[Abhas]

Sure!! that would be great for people wanting to buy a computer now

 

[Ritwik]

Sorry to bump this very old topic, but you guys reckon I should write one more such guide for the current season?

why ever not?

 

[Abhas]

I dont believe my eyes!!!!

 

[Ritwik]

I don't either. What are you doing up at this wicked hour?

Seriously though come on Gtalk or something so that we can talk ...

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

What on earth? Ritwik comes up on PC and finds out this almost dead thread and asks to talk?

I don't even know your Gtalk.