What computer should I get?

My son is 11 and has discovered computer gaming. I would like to get him his own system but we are on a budget.

I was thinking of getting an 80g HD, 1g ram... and then I am lost, lol.

I did see that Dell has some scratch and dent and refurbished ones for under 500, but I don't know what type of processor I should be looking at.

From reading varioius forums, I've read that almost every processor is both the best and the worst, lol. Now I'm more confused than ever.

This comptuer will be used for computer games, surfing the net, and a few school assignments.

What brands are considered good? Is there a cheap build it yourself site I should look into?

I can eventually install a decent graphics card on my own. I don't need a printer or monitor.

Any advice for a confused mom would be most appreciated

 

Sorry, I don't know how to get rid of those stupid smiley faces.

 

The most demanding application listed by you is gaming. This is where processor power and RAM and graphics card come in. My advice is work out the type of games that will be played, as in what they require processor wise and then look for a system with higher specs, especially if you want to play TNG games. I am about to build myself a gaming machine to play relatively recent games, but not real high end stuff and my absolute minimum processor requirement will be a 2.8, and I am seriously thinking in terms of a 3.6 er intel that is. also 80gb drive? Yeah fine for one or two games but consider this. Relatively recent games often require a 5gb install each, and this size will grow [if it has not already, darn I feel so old]. Assume you should not use more than 3 quarters of a hdd or the system will slow down to a snails pace. So that leaves 60gb, for 10 games and an os Before adding all the other kinds of software that will be installed.

 

Ok, that makes sense (the hard drive size).

Currently, he's playing age of empires III, zoo tycoon and a star wars game of some sort. So, yeah, I can see how all these games will consume a hard drive quickly.

Ok, I was trying to read up on processors. The amd, pentium D, pentium 4 and the celeron. (is that all of them?). Anyway, from what I can gather, celeron sucks. I heard pentium is better than amd on one site, the opposite another. Same goes with the two pentium processors.


Exactly what processor should a person get for gaming?

 

Would recommend a 160Gb Hard Drive. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core CPU. And 1GB of RAM. I hate Intel. I cant lie i am a AMD lover. AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Rocks. Its a really good CPU for the coast. I am using it in my new pc

 

Well, if you post your budget then the people can recommend properly matching components so that you don't go overboard on one component. A budget system cand be an AMD 64 single processor and say an ASUS A8N-e motherboard with a decent video card like a 7600GT and a 420W power supply.

 

Thanks for the replies. Since this is for an 11 year old, I'm thinking around 400-500. I have an old 17" monitor here and that will be good enough, I'd think.

 

er 400-500 what? GBP, dollars, roubles? My answer may well be way off if your thinking in dollars.

 

Assuming you are talking in USD, this Dell computer would do well for $419 + tax and s/h. The video card is not great for gaming, but it would do ok for those games and you could upgrade it later on. It starts at $600; just unselect the 19" flat panel monitor to bring it down to $419.

http://www.dell.com/content/product...a4bAjf9rvvYJbgF4QUaGTSnEqGp3RQNARPCjsIRB6rkE=

 

I'm an AMD Fan myself too. Intel is fine but I prefer to save the extra bucks. For now I would just go with a single core cpu. The motherboard would support dualcore so you can always upgrade. I would suggest something like the following:


AMD64 3800+ CPU
K9NU Neo-V
1Gig RAM
250 Gig HDD {price between 80 & 250 is not much anymore}
ATI 850 Video
DVDRW Drive


Something along those lines. I'm from Canada and could build that for about
$450-500Cdn. So you should be able to do it for $400US.