PS3: Convince me.

[Szymon]

Originally Posted by TheSlyMoogle

I can link you to all the products. I'm not going for maximum awesome. I'm going for being able to run the game without crashing out and still looking decent like XBox quality.

Rough prices:
320 GB HD for 45 dollars
4 GB of RAM for 79 dollars (Corsairs as well)
Antec Sonata III case for 89 dollars and that includes the power supply
Going with the AMD athlon II 3.0 Dual core processor for 68 bucks
I'm going with a relatively cheap motherboard, it only has a few PCI slots, but don't need many. It's 70 dollars. Reading reviews it's a pretty tough bitch though. Can't remember what it is exactly, and newegg wont let me log on right now for some reason.
The graphics card I'm kinda splurging on a bit. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102864

164 dollars.

Anyway it only cost me 515 dollars which was 65 dollars over my goal, but I think I'll have a decent gaming rig. I don't care about the best settings, just want middle ground kinda stuff.

320 GB HD should be more than enough to hold all the games I want. I'm really only interested in Diablo III anyway, but sure some other games will come along that I'll at least want to play. It will definitely hold all my music, and have plenty of space left. Plus it's not like I can't get a larger drive later if need be for storage. They were running a special on some Corsair RAM last week so grabbed that up. It's like 119 dollars now I think, but regardless I would have went with G.SKILL 4 GB for like the same price had corsair not been on sale. 4GB of RAM should get me through the rough times. lol. I've heard really good things about AMD athlon II, and figured I'd give it a whirl. Going on the advice of a friend who is more into building than me and he says it's a great processor for the price. The motherboard I am getting could support all my stuff and had really boss reviews. Has integrated sound (Which is fine as I always have to play with headphones on anyway) and integrated Ethernet. Limited PCI slots like I said, but I only need the one for my video card anyway. That case is a steal and the power supply included has more than enough power to run my machine. That case has great reviews, and for the price it doesn't look half bad either. Not my ideal case, but I'll get over it.
I've heard good things about the graphics card as long as you're just looking for middle ground gamerness.

And the OS is not a factor, and you can take that to mean whatever you would like.

That's a good rig. I heard good things about the new Radeon line. This should get you way better than xbox quality.

[manasecret]

Alright! I was wondering when when my fellow PC nerds would pipe up.

To be honest I haven't actually built myself a computer since 2002. This is back in the IDE days (no serial HDs yet!), in the AGP video card days (PCIExpress was just barely coming on the scene), in the Pentium 4 heyday, and when (if any of you even remember this) Rambus RAM was the best, but most expensive, RAM you could get and 512 MB of it was a lot and 1GB of it was hardly thought of.

That PC is still running for me well now seven years later. The only upgrade I made was to get the best AGP video card that will ever be made. With that, it played BioShock at about 20 FPS, if that. I also desperately looked to upgrade the RAM. Nowadays Windows XP and the first program will eat up almost 512MB by themselves. But Rambus soon after I bought the PC went kaput, so the maximum RAM I could possibly get is 1 GB, but it's very rare and so costs around $300-$400 to get it. Rip. Off.

Anyway, when I bought that PC, I went for a computer that would last me a long time, and so spent about $1700 I believe. In its day, it played games excellently. Now, it has trouble with TF2.

So... now that I write this, I guess you guys are right. That PC lasted me seven years. If you buy one several tiers down, it ought to play games at the moment decently, and last around 3 years.

The biggest lesson I learned is to make sure your rig is easily upgradeable. Like Moogle said, there's no reason to get the 2TB hard drive now, when a year or two from now when you actually need that much space, the price will be cut in half. You can save money now, and just upgrade later when your PC starts to slow down/run out of space for much cheaper.

Going with the new, popular standards is really important as well. If I bought a computer now, I would get a motherboard that accepts the newest RAM type and the newest CPU socket, since in the future all the new parts will be using those and the old versions will be slowly phased out. The last situation you want to be in is when you can find the super fast version of everything for really cheap, but you have to buy the expensive but much slower version just because no one manufactures them any more....

[TheSlyMoogle]

Yeah I think probably the most important thing is sticking with industry standards, and also going with new stuff.

Like I said this computer should coast fine for about 3 years and then I can upgrade it. I think upgrading is important. It's so easy to upgrade a desktop, I just don't see why more people don't learn about computers and still buy from places like Dell and other outfitters. So much wasted money. I mean the process of putting together a computer is relatively simple and hard to screw up (Oh god just be sure to put spacers in though, that seems to be what most people screw up their first time.)

I think really the only complicated thing to do is making sure all the parts will work together and normally you can find that stuff online for sure.

Anyway my parts should arrive next week (Supposedly thursday)

BTW I got a nice HD monitor to play fighting games on when they started releasing them for 360 and PS3. There's no lag. It's amazing.

[Vampyr]

So did you decide to not go for the ps3?

[TheSlyMoogle]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

So did you decide to not go for the ps3?

Yeah I did. I'm only slightly upset I cannot play Valkyria Chronicles yet, but I know someday I will buy a PS3 and it's the first (And only game) on my to buy for PS3 list.

[Vampyr]

Originally Posted by TheSlyMoogle

Yeah I did. I'm only slightly upset I cannot play Valkyria Chronicles yet, but I know someday I will buy a PS3 and it's the first (And only game) on my to buy for PS3 list.

Yeah, good choice IMO.

I checked out that Alan Wake game you mentioned...I had never heard of it, but it looks like it will be awesome.

[BreakABone]

There is a lot to love about the PS3.

And really if it was between a PS3 and a 360, I would lean towards the PS3 now, but since he already has a 360 it would be like crossing the same ground over and over again.

Also, I don't get Alan Wake.. the magical flashlight is just too much for me.

[Vampyr]

Eh? I don't think the flashlight is magical, the villagers/creatures just don't like light in general.