The Gaming PC Building/Upgrade Thread

[Garcian Smith]

chapset said:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229124&Tpk=Intel%20Core%202%20Quad%20Q8200

is this any good for the price, I intend in using it for medium gaming. (keep in mind the price is in canadien dollar)

cpu: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200(2.33GHz)

gpu: NVIDIA GeForce GT 220

memory: 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC6400 DDR2 800 Dual Channel Memory

os: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

 

Don't buy from Cyberpower, iBuyPower, or any of those "cheap gaming PC" pre-builts. They're almost universally crap, due to the builders cutting corners with cheap, older, or underpowered parts. In this one, here's the immediate problems that I see:

1) The Core 2 Quad is outperformed in most games by the $90 Athlon II X3 440. It's also on LGA775, an obsolete socket.

2) The GT 220 is not a serious gaming video card - it's outperformed by a $50 Radeon 4650.

3) DDR2 800 is an older RAM standard, meaning that you'll have a tough time upgrading in the future.

4) The power supply manufacturer isn't listed, so I'm willing to bet that it's cheap and will fail on you within a year.

5) All that being said, the mobo is almost assuredly an obsolete model as well.

6) No digital optical audio out, nor even support for 5.1 analog. Any half-decent mobo will include both of those things.

7) The case is cheap, (IMO) ugly, and has two 80mm fans, meaning it's almost guaranteed to sound like a jet engine while running.

Basically, a prebuilt gaming PC manufacturer cannot undercut Newegg without sacrificing quality.

That said, if you let me know your budget, your monitor's display resolution, and anything else you'd like to do with the PC besides gaming, I can try to spec out something for you that would fit.