Posted: 12/29/2014 11:11:47 PM EDT
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I have a few questions to ask the experts. Has anyone had experience or have heard anything good or bad about Cyberpower pcs? I want to replace my 7 year old computer with something new, but can't spend too much. Costco has a link to Cyberpower's website where you can configure what you want, but I've never heard of this company, so any feedback would be appreciated.
This is the build I came up with for $740.00, would this be good to last for another 7 years or so for moderate gaming plus pics, music, and standard household stuff? CPU; AMD FX6300 3.5 ghz. 6-core AM3= CPU 6MB L2 cache 8GB ram, it also comes with a free Radeon 24 GB Ramdisk also but I'm not sure what that is for. Video card Radeon R7 240 2GB GDDR3 600 watt power supply Hard drive 2TB SATA3 6.0 Gb/s 64MB cache Windows 7 Pro Plus a flash media reader/writer, keyboard and mouse, processor cooling fan and an optical drive. Any input would be appreciated, this is the cheapest computer I've been able to find with these specs, but I'm concerned about not knowing the company, and I'm not sure about the AMD CPU. |
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If you can build an AR, you can build a computer.
I would stay away from the cyberpower, and ibuypower junk. check out websites like pcpartpicker and you can pick the best parts for your budget, have it filter compatibility, and even show who has the best current price on the items. If only they had something like that for ARs..... ETA...spend a few minutes on youtube watching linus tech tips, or even austin evans. They do regular price point builds that maximize dollar for performance. |
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Quoted: I have a few questions to ask the experts. Has anyone had experience or have heard anything good or bad about Cyberpower pcs? I want to replace my 7 year old computer with something new, but can't spend too much. Costco has a link to Cyberpower's website where you can configure what you want, but I've never heard of this company, so any feedback would be appreciated. This is the build I came up with for $740.00, would this be good to last for another 7 years or so for moderate gaming plus pics, music, and standard household stuff? CPU; AMD FX6300 3.5 ghz. 6-core AM3= CPU 6MB L2 cache 8GB ram, it also comes with a free Radeon 24 GB Ramdisk also but I'm not sure what that is for. Video card Radeon R7 240 2GB GDDR3 600 watt power supply Hard drive 2TB SATA3 6.0 Gb/s 64MB cache Windows 7 Pro Plus a flash media reader/writer, keyboard and mouse, processor cooling fan and an optical drive. Any input would be appreciated, this is the cheapest computer I've been able to find with these specs, but I'm concerned about not knowing the company, and I'm not sure about the AMD CPU. AMDs are fine, but Intels are better these days. Not hugely better, just a bit. No computer will last 7 years without upgrades, unless you plan to play the exact same games for those whole 7 years. Regarding specific parts, devil's in the details. Like that PSU might be fine, might be overkill, might be not good enough. Can't know without more specifics. Same for RAM, what freq and what CL? RAM disks are something like an SSD, but faster, basically just RAM that gets used as a hard drive by the OS. I'm not sure what they're actually selling you here, though. A 24GB RAM disk should cost $200+ by itself. |
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Quoted:
This is the build I came up with for $740.00, would this be good to last for another 7 years or so for moderate gaming plus pics, music, and standard household stuff? Gaming is the one thing that stands out there. You're not going to find a video card that will be useful for gaming for 7 years, even if you spend the entire budget on the card. I ran a PC for gaming for that length of time and went through 5 video cards (one died, all were upgrades). Replacing the card every 2-3 years is pretty cost effective, and you should really plan to from the start; you can probably get away with ~$180 after rebates/sales for a card that will handle any reasonable gaming requirements. This is true whether you're building or buying, as you'd need to upgrade the card on any PC you get. If you really need to pinch pennies you should, as others have noted, consider doing your own build coupled with some responsible backups in case of hard drive/system failure. You will generally save about 50% doing your own build when comparing apples to apples with off the shelf PC's; not all of this is markup and warranty, a lot of it comes down to the quality and performance specs of the parts. Everything about building PC's keeps getting cheaper and easier. There are plenty of good articles you can find with tips. Off the top of my head, I would suggest ... - 256 GB SSD hard drive for your OS, games, and frequently used programs. This will get you a crapton of noticeable performance, and for everyday stuff it will help much more than any difference in CPU or RAM you may get. You don't need a cutting edge one; a good brand drive from the prior generation on sale can be had cheap and should be a proven performer. - ~1 TB standard HDD. Don't get a crap brand/model. They're not expensive. This is for storing pics, etc., so it doesn't need to be super high performance either. - Go for quality (reliable brand) over bling on the motherboard. Just about anything from a reputable maker will work. - RAM is cheap. Good quality RAM from a good brand is also cheap. Just get a good brand, don't spend extra on really high performance stuff. - Your video card will have a large impact on gaming performance. I'd suggest looking at "Best GPU for X amount of money" articles on Tom's Hardware as a good place to start. - When parting things together, $15 here or there and rebates really add up. Just remember to actually send them in. I think I saved about $300 in rebates when I built this PC 2 years ago. - Figure out how you're going to do your backups if you don't do anything like that already. - If you already have a (modern) monitor you are happy with, then you may not need a new one. Mine is 5 years old now and I have no plans on replacing it any time soon. |
| Get an Intel chip and an Nvidea video card. You're probably better off buying it piece by piece from newegg or tigerdirect and assembling it yourself. Building a computer is pretty easy imo. It sounds intimidating if you've never done it but you'll be surprised how easy it is. |
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I may have caused some confusion when I said build, actually Cyberpower would build the computer to these specs. On their website you start with a basic computer and price then change the components to what you want, within limits. This one starts with AMD components and only have AMD cpus to choose from. The 24 GB RAMdisk is a special offer, it's free if you keep the AMD ram.
The RAM is 4GBx2 AMD DDR3/2133 MHz dual channel, and the power supply started at 350 watts, I upgraded to the 600w because I thought bigger is better in case I upgrade cards later. It doesn't have the brand name but says standard 80 plus certified, SLI/crossfireX ready. The newest games I have now are Mass Effect 3 and Dead Space. My current computer is a Windows xp with a 150 GB hard drive, 4 GB of ram, and a Radeon 6570 video card, that plays those games fine in single player, but it crashes regularly when I play ME3 multiplayer. I would get halo 2 and might check into the c.o.d. series or skyrim or far cry because I've heard so much about them and others like portal and bioshock. None of these are the latest games but I'm fine with being a few years behind with the games, they are much cheaper that way. I have changed the video card in the current computer twice, the power supply once and added some ram to it, but would rather just buy something already built instead of trying to build my own from scratch. So the question is would what I have specified be ok for those games now with the understanding that I could upgrade cards a couple years down the road. And would the cpu be ok for 7 years or so or is it already too old? |
| No computer is good for seven years, unless you just want to surf the net. If your gaming three or four years is the max. What you put together is already three years old. 2 gig video cards are the bare minimum right now. You're going to have to do better than that with everything you chose. |