Critique this comp (aka DOES THIS COMP HAVE AIDS?)

MichaelJackson

MichaelJackson

[14] Master
So I'm in the market for a new comp that's about a mid range system and I come across this:

This comp is $459.99 Canadian which comes out to be ~$375.90 US. Shipping to the US is $40 Canadian which is ~$31.90.

I realize it does not have an operating system and I don't give a crap about sound cards or that it uses an on board network card... barring those things... how is this rig so cheap??? Does it have teh aids? I see this specific setup on eBay from this company up constantly so they're just churning these babies out... can anyone more tech savvy than me take a glance at this??? Is this just an amazing deal or what? Help me out here...

http://cgi.ebay.com/AMD-DUAL-CORE-G...14&_trkparms=72:1234|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1309

Processor........AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ Socket AM2
CPU Fan..........AMD Original AM2 CPU Fan
Motherboard....ECS nVidia GeForce 7050M-M Motherboard
Memory..........4GB DDR II 800 Memory 240 Pin (Kingston) 　
Hard Drive.......Western Digital 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA II
Optical Drive....LG 22X DVD RW + Dual Layer
Video..............nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI HDTV
Audio..............Realtek ALC662 6-channel HD Audio
Network Card...Onboard 10/100 Network Card
Ports...............6 USB 2.0 Ports, 1 Parallel, 1 1394a
Case...............1285 Deluxe Black Tower Case
Power Supply...600 Watt Heavy Duty Power Supply
Warranty.........1 Year Parts 3 Years Labor Warranty & Life Time Toll Free Support
Assembly.........Fully Assembled and Tested
 
It has AIDS... don't go with AMD cores these days... they are far inferior to Intel's Core 2 Duo line, as well as having double the power consumption (thus having double the heat production). Memory is also one of the most important things about a computer; people dont realize that quality of memory trumps almost everything else. You can have an amazing machine, put some shitty Kingston memory into it, and it may as well be a piece of garbage.
 
i'm in agreement wih jaxel on this one. AMD is fail these days, they were A teir against the P4 but at the moment they are playing catch up to the core2 line. The amd64 was better than the P4 line because of the memory. same with the sega genesis and the SNES. Genesis clock speed was almost double SNES's, but it had no memory so the SNES was superior. having little memory is the equivelent of shipping merchandise to a store in a porshe. it will outrun an 18 wheeler no problem, but you will have to make alot of trips to compensate.

Also ati's equivelent of the 9600 is far better.

also, i dont know what your budget is, but if you can make the jump to DDR3 and get a raid0 setup going on there it will be well worth the extra $200 or so, it would defanatly add a year to your system before it gets horrificly outdated.
 
EXCELLENT

This is exactly what I wanted.

I built my last computer pice by piece based off of Newegg reviews (you know... where the people on there say stuff like, "I used this MoBo with BLAH BLAH BLAH" and was very pleased with the results) however with this one it's good to see live opinions on this comp.

I'll look for an Intel Core 2 Duo (or Quad? ...is it worth it over a Duo?) with better RAM and a SATA Hard Drive.

I appreciate the advice gentlemen.

(I also just noticed that there is a technology board and feel a little dumb for not posting this on that forum...)
 
It depends what you want out of your computer. Core 2 Duo is clearly cheaper than than the quads, and for most practical purposes will be just fine. For games, the gpu is the main factor anyways.
 
RE: Duo vs Quad. Depends on what kind of computing you're going to do... Honestly, for most users Core 2 Duos are more than enough for regular use/gaming. Quads produce quite a bit more heat than Duos but if you're planning to use your computer for stuff like a/v editing, encoding, etc., the C2Q's are worth it.
 
also note, that as nice as quads are, intel discontinued them. Very few programs are optamized for quad cores and since quads are no more, that list wont get any bigger.

TL:DR: quads dont have an overwhelming advantage over a dual core. They're still better but not as much as you would expect.
 
Quads are GREAT, if you do video encoding like I do. If all you do is normal PC stuff and game, you dont need a quad core.
 
Critique this comp (aka DOES THIS COMP HAVE AI

If you want an honest opinion:

CPU: Piece of shit at this point in time, bad all around

Mobo: I wouldn't touch that motherboard with a 10 foot pole

GPU: A 9600GT is not bad. It's usually only around 10% slower than an 8800GT/9800GT (which are the exact same card). Just don't expect it to run any modern games at 60fps at maximum detail on higher resolutions like 1680x1050 to 1920x1200. Unless you really play games on the PC a 9600GT should be just fine. These days for PC gaming I wouldn't recommend anything lower than a GTX 260 216/Maxcore.

PSU: "600 watts" means jackshit. Often el-cheapo power supplies are advertised at their peak power rather than what they can constantly sustain. One of the most important things these days with a power supply is how much amperage it has on the 12v rails since parts like video cards often rely directly on the 12v rails. When you buy a PSU make sure you know how many watts it can constantly sustain and know how many 12v rails there are and how many amps each one has. Never be stingy on the PSU, it'll come back to haunt you.

RAM: Bleh, DDR2-800 is kinda the standard but I don't know specifically what IC type that RAM is (you didn't specify exactly what RAM it is) so I don't know how much it can overclock. Usually it's no problem at all since any non-shitty BIOS has a ton of options but with a motherboard like that you may have some problems if you plan on overclocking (a motherboard like that isn't going to overclock much anyway). You didn't list the timings of the RAM. DDR2 is so cheap these days that if you build a PC yourself you might as well buy DDR2-1066.

Building a PC these days can be cheap if you can find a good overclocking motherboard and throw in a Core 2 Duo then overclock the shit out of it. Clock for clock K8 CPUs are ridiculously slower than even first generation Core 2 Duos... AMD Phenoms are even slower clock for clock than first generation C2Ds.

For example you could buy a "Celeron" E1200 (which is actually a Core 2 Duo with crippled L2 cache) for like $60 which is 1.6GHz and overclock it to 3GHz with air cooling on a cheap overclocking motherboard like the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L or whatever the modern counterpart of that is.

Long story short, if you're going to buy a computer as a whole and not build one piece by piece then I guess that's not too horrible. However if you build one yourself you can build a significantly better PC for around the same price give or take like $50.
 
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