if you dont play the latest pc games or do heavy video editing any computer you buy will be more than sufficient for your needs. if you want a better looking case then you should build. as far as the processor intel and AMD make great processors. the only reason to pick 1 over the other would be for cost savings for building yourself or brand loyalty really. but if i had to pick one of the links you posted i would go with the first link you posted. that is similar to the one i just built from newegg over a month ago except i got a different processor (amd fx 8350).
Tech Help: I'm looking for a new PC for under $500...
- Thread starter playahaitian
- Start date
Yeah, I don't really do much, but my pc is 10 years old. Its working fine but I need better specs for a job opportunity. The thing is I want to get one that I don't have to worry about for ANOTHER 10 years...lol... They've basically said as long as it has 6 GB of ram and has been manufactured in the past few years I should be ok. It doesn't look like any of these come with 2 dvd drives by default anymore either. I'm leaning toward the first one or the one with several usb ports. I'm still looking tho. I have a few weeks to decide.
then i say go with the first link. alittle more future proof and it comes with a graphics card. if you want more usb ports you can always get a usb hub. they are pretty cheap. i cant remember the last time a computer came with 2 dvd drives but if you want another one they only cost like 18 bucks so adding another if you wanted would be pretty easy. a good reason to build would be to have the extra usb ports. the motherboard i got for mine got 6 usb ports on it and the tower got 2 on the front so i got a total of 8. i didnt need that many but i love having the ones on the front for convenience of plugging in flash drives or controllers. and if you felt like you wanted more ram in the future adding another stick is easy too. an 8gb ram stick can be had for like 30-40 bucks depending on sales. i just added another one to my tower a week ago.
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883221276
i like this one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2982823
this is a good combo deal.
i like this one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.2982823
this is a good combo deal.
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That's pretty sweet deal. I guess the only question I have is the effectiveness of a 128 GB SSD. The whole purpose of having an SSD drive is to be able to speed up the load times of applications and games whose content is on the SSD. Windows OS itself is going to start small, but grow to be as big as 50 GB on disk. So that doesn't leave a lot of rooms for apps and (especially) games.
I'd spend an extra $40 books for 256 GB SSD drive or just drop the standard hard drive and go with a 512 GB primary SSD.
yea i dont like the 128 but the read/write speeds are wonderful. i myself would go with at least a 250. i put a samsung 850 evo in mine and i love it. an ssd also helps if you got fast internet cuz it can write to the hard drive faster. if she got it then as long as she just put software on it she'll be fine. just have to remember to always put other stuff on the second drive. on my desktop i do download stuff to it but if i dont watch it within a couple days i transfer it to my other hard drive, especially the movies.
let us know what computer you end up getting.
I'm still deciding. I'm leaning toward the one you posted from newegg that you said you liked. The combo deals are diy, right?
the one that was $398 yes. thats really the best way to save money and ensure you end up with a nice pc. the one time i bought a computer (HP) it lasted a year. i tried to upgrade the ram and it killed the motherboard. been building ever since. there's alot of videos out there to show you how to build if you dont know how. or if you gotta local friend who does have them help you. its pratically plug and play. a friend up mine needed a pc a year ago wanted a cheap one. i told them to buy everything piece by piece until they had everything then i put it together for them. now they tell all they friends and i get emails from her requesting to help them do the same.
Yeah I'm not trying to do all that tho. The most I've done is open the case to spray out the dust and add more ram. The one I have now is a dell and it's been a workhorse, but companies don't manufacture things to last anymore. I want to get one with high enough specs where hopefully I don't have to worry about it.
I'll see what the prices look like Sunday or Monday and then decide. It will most likely be either the one you posted from Newegg or the one with all the USB ports from microcenter. The gaming pc I originally posted had to many reviews saying it failed after a year. Now they were most likely gaming and taxing it to death, but better safe than sorry.
usually the first thing to fail is the power supply. sometimes those pc parts are good except that. i had a power supply that died on me in a week. it was a raidmax. i bought a 600 watt corsair unit and been good ever since. in the end its all about what you're willing to pay for. if a pre-built pc gives you more comfort then go for it. there are websites that do custom builds and ship them to you. newegg also does it on certain diy kits. a couple of sites to check out is ibuypower or cyberpowerpc. i got lazy on my last pc and had ibuypower do it. lasted a good 6 years. i still got it as a backup tho. i might repurpose it to another tv in the house as a media center.
Newegg has a sale on a 240gb ssd drive for 57.99
I'm still looking. Two more I came across. This would be 475.00 after the coupon (new):
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dfh&cs=22&key=OLqUHPVrYctKnm1c4k0g0Q==&puid=f80b3c05
This one would be 482 or 454 (refurbs)
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnline...22&key=dTpy+RZFSAZHm5VEh1fLaQ==&puid=d22b0b69
For the second one, both are listed exactly the same, I don't know why one is 40.00 more.
They only have one 1TB hd and 8 GB ram tho. They have decent reviews on amazon tho.
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineSales/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dfh&cs=22&key=OLqUHPVrYctKnm1c4k0g0Q==&puid=f80b3c05
This one would be 482 or 454 (refurbs)
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnline...22&key=dTpy+RZFSAZHm5VEh1fLaQ==&puid=d22b0b69
For the second one, both are listed exactly the same, I don't know why one is 40.00 more.
They only have one 1TB hd and 8 GB ram tho. They have decent reviews on amazon tho.
bump
OK I went with a dell 8900 refurb. I could have gotten a new pc cheaper, but I really wanted the intel i7. Newegg doesnt charge sales tax where as dell and microcenter do, but dell had free shipping. It also has premium tech support for one year so if it messes up they come to the house to fix it. It was supposed to be 749, but I had a coupon that brought it down to 524. With tax it was about 560. It only has 1 TB hd, and 8 GB ram, but the ram is faster than the other ones I was looking at and I can always add more. I know when looking at benchmarks and what not that I probably won't notice the difference between the different chips, but it was hard to go with anything else once I saw them.
There were two 8900's with the i5 chip and windows 10 pro, but the ram was a lil slower. There was a 8700 that had an i7 4th gen, but it had win 8.1 and I didn't want to have to bother with an upgrade. The one I purchased has windows 10 home. As far as reviews go, it seemed to have decent reviews. So I'll find out if it's worth it in 5 days or so.
as long as you end up liking it its all good. the price is good for it to come with an i7. the 8gb of ram will be fine unless you just like the idea of having more. but like you said you can always upgrade that later if needed. if you think you want more hard drive space those internal drives are on sale all the time. i just saw a 4tb on sale the other day for 90. i myself need to get another external cuz im almost outta space with my current one. i like having extra backups of stuff i really like to keep.
I think I will be happy with it. This is the image from the site:
It also has wireless, bluetooth and a media card reader. It has 6 usb ports on the back and 4 on the front and the top has an accessories nook where I can put my external harddrive neatly. Then the monitor that I'm keeping for the time being has 4 more usb ports. I want to get a newer and larger monitor tho, the modern tech is much easier on the eyes. When I looked around for pricing on the pc I purchased, I couldn't find one less than 700, so with the 30% off dell coupon it was the best deal. I'd probably have been able to find a better deal if I had more time to look, but I found out that I basically need to have it this week instead of the 3-4 weeks I was originally advised. Eventually I might upgrade the ram and add another dvd drive, but my old pc is actually working fine even if it is 12 years old, and to be honest I can't remember the last time I even used the dvd drive, let alone copied anything. I just want the option to be there. I'll probably use the old one to stream to my roku player. Thanks for all your help though, seeing the other options helped me finally decide.
it all worked out since you had that coupon. i get wanting 2 drives but in my opinion its only needed if you gotta do alot of heavy burning or something. but when you do get another one look into a bluray burner so that way you'd be future proof. especially if you ever decide to backup anything to a disc. i plan on getting a BDXL burner in the next couple of months so i'll end up with 2 drives cuz imma leave my burner i currently got in the tower.
Just want to put this out there for anyone (novice) looking to build a PC
This site will let you pick your parts and show you combo deals.
warns you if something is not compatible and lets you choose the vendor.
totals you out so you can see what your budget is like and you can order from the links.
https://pcpartpicker.com
Side note, you can check out other peoples builds as well.
This site will let you pick your parts and show you combo deals.
warns you if something is not compatible and lets you choose the vendor.
totals you out so you can see what your budget is like and you can order from the links.
https://pcpartpicker.com
Side note, you can check out other peoples builds as well.
i forgot all about that site. thats a good site for people willing to learn the ins and outs of building a pc. i use to send people there so they can understand what they're getting into when they started asking alot of questions.
Link to the dell coupons I mentioned earlier. They are good until 11:59 pm Monday night. Most 30% off outlet stuff.
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/22/campaigns/dell-coupons-codes-us-outlet
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/22/campaigns/dell-coupons-codes-us-outlet
recently copped a dell inspiron 15 3000 for like $440. Came with Win10, but I wiped it and loaded CentOS and it's now my primary home laptop. 
recently copped a dell inspiron 15 3000 for like $440. Came with Win10, but I wiped it and loaded CentOS and it's now my primary home laptop.
Why not Ubuntu/Fedora which are more up to date? I support Centos at work and the "old stability" of it annoys me sometimes.
Before I settled on centos, I had burned the newest ubuntu iso and tried installing, but it crapped out. Then I loaded from a 2 year old ubuntu install, and it was fine, but after a day something seemed to have got corrupted or something because it woud boot, but the login screen was all wacky. At this point I just wanted something that worked, so I loaded a 2 year old centos iso, which is what I'm running on now, and it worked. I've suppported fedora servers in the past and the application servers I support at the job now are mostly running centos, so I don't mind running it at home so I can fuck around with shit before doing it on the job.
For me it's about whatever works with the least effort, and although it took a couple tweaks, this install does what I need it to. I don't mind working under the hood and all, but I didn't want to spend a week trying to figure out what about the new ubuntu didn't like my hardware or what about the older ubuntu blew up. Basically on my home machine, I watch youtube vids, netflix, mfc/chaturbate, tube sites, browse bgol, etc, and my windows machine just wasn't doing it (fucking disk usage going up to 100 % when the machine isn't doing shit), so I needed an alternative.
For me it's about whatever works with the least effort, and although it took a couple tweaks, this install does what I need it to. I don't mind working under the hood and all, but I didn't want to spend a week trying to figure out what about the new ubuntu didn't like my hardware or what about the older ubuntu blew up. Basically on my home machine, I watch youtube vids, netflix, mfc/chaturbate, tube sites, browse bgol, etc, and my windows machine just wasn't doing it (fucking disk usage going up to 100 % when the machine isn't doing shit), so I needed an alternative.
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What do you need to be on the PC as far as apps/programs?
Either Dell Outlet online or check MicroCenter if you have one near to you. Slickdeals also you can check.
I used to build PC's all the time for myself, but as of lately makes no real sense these days I find. There's barely any cost savings because of the cost of the graphics cards. But still good to look at what you can buy as in a full pc and then list out the same parts on your own if you were to purchase separately and see where the numbers are at with shipping.
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