Posted: 12/3/2009 7:55:18 PM EDT
|
I am posting from a Mac, and have a 5 year old HP laptop at home. My wife wants to take the Mac I am on because it has a Japanese keyboard. That leaves me with some money, and a need for something. The HP is running well enough, and with some work should be fine. i am looking at a desktop for home, and trying to decide between the mini and a PC. I usually just surf the net, but the computer will be asked to play video games, currently wanting to play warzone 2100 ressurection, and Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 laughs at my home laptop. Warzone 2100 is about a frame rate of 10. Far Cry 2 shows I need InVidia 6800 or ATI X1650 or better; must support Pixel Shader 3.0, and Pentium 4 3.2 GHz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better and I can't find anything for Warzone. Other programs would be photshop, Audition, and maybe Avid or Final Cut Pro HD(Mac), but that would be rare, and can be upgraded to later. If I build it in the US, then I have to fly it back to Japan, which is why I am thinking small form factor. I can find a monitor here no problem, and may be able to get some parts cheaper than the US here, but want to get the essentials nailed down soon. So, what do you think, should I boot camp a mini, or build a PC? |
|
The Mac Mini nor a "small form factor" PC are not going to be ideal for playing games they will both lack a dedicated graphics card. As far as a Mac goes I would be looking at an iMac preferably the 27" of course :P it has been performing swimmingly at our store. But alas for all my gaming duties I ended up building my own desktop. |
|
I wouldn't recommend a typical SFF pc or mac mini for gaming either. However, as long as you are ok with just good quality graphics instead of "must have everything on highest quality at 1920x1200 resolution and 1 zillion frames per second" you will be able to build an acceptable smallish form factor PC. Start with a case like this one ($190): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101037 Add a Core 2 Duo (or core 2 quad) processor ($100-$200), 4GB of DDR2 800 RAM ($70), DVD/RW drive ($30) (or blu-ray), 1TB hard drive ($80), and a low profile graphics card ($75-100). |
|
Quoted: Thoughts? .... Looks good to me, the graphics card will fit the case (often a problem with the SFF cases), if you can afford a few more bucks I would go for 4GB of RAM instead of 2GB (games hog a lot of memory) and/or a 5770 instead of the 5750. FYI the samsung and hitachi 1TB drives are $5 less and the hitachi is retail packaging instead of a bare drive. |
|
Quoted:
Thoughts? <snip> Bad choices for the money spent verses the components… Spending way to much on the motherboard, you do not need a $140 motherboard for a Celeron. I would suggest a much cheaper motherboard something like this… http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128396 Then spend the saved $70 on a Core 2 Duo processor. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115206 Even better rethink Intel and look at AMDs new $100 quad core processors that give you performance of Intel processors that cost $50 more... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103706 Get this processor-CPU combo deal with that much faster AMD processor for less that what you intended to spend on on the Celeron processor and motherboard above... this would be a much much faster system and cheaper to boot. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.304701 Trust me that AMD Athlon II X4 620 will run circles around the E3200 Wolfdale is faster than that Core 2 Duo E7400 and as fast as or faster than Intels low end quad core chips.... that is the best buy for your price range. That case will not take these motherboards, but Newegg has plenty of cases that will fit Micro-ATX motherboards that are about the same size as that Silverstone case. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010090007%201054808292&name=MicroATX%20Desktop |
|
I had this question 2 years ago, and I went with a Shuttle XPC, AMD Athlon 64 X2, because the on-board video didn't suck as much as the Intel socket models...
The Vista install went T/U last week... now I have no desktop, and I have to figure out what to do next... |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
Thoughts? <snip> Bad choices for the money spent verses the components… Spending way to much on the motherboard, you do not need a $140 motherboard for a Celeron. I would suggest a much cheaper motherboard something like this… http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128396 Then spend the saved $70 on a Core 2 Duo processor. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115206 Even better rethink Intel and look at AMDs new $100 quad core processors that give you performance of Intel processors that cost $50 more... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103706 Get this processor-CPU combo deal with that much faster AMD processor for less that what you intended to spend on on the Celeron processor and motherboard above... this would be a much much faster system and cheaper to boot. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.304701 Trust me that AMD Athlon II X4 620 will run circles around the E3200 Wolfdale is faster than that Core 2 Duo E7400 and as fast as or faster than Intels low end quad core chips.... that is the best buy for your price range. That case will not take these motherboards, but Newegg has plenty of cases that will fit Micro-ATX motherboards that are about the same size as that Silverstone case. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010090007%201054808292&name=MicroATX%20Desktop That combo deal is pretty smoking. I was thinking about updating my aging AM2 system with a 6000+, but this has me thinking about replacing the mobo, processor, and RAM. It'd be a more complete upgrade for under $250. That's not so bad. Of course, I need put some more storage into my HTPC first, so that will probably get put on the back burner for a while. |