pimp my puter

[spatch]

I've decided that this week has shown me that Ye Crummy Cameraphone is perfectly decent for the time being, and that I'm actually having fun seeing what I can get it to do. So I won't be running out to get the Powershot S3 any time soon, as beautiful as it looks.

So perhaps it's time to Frankenstein up a new computer. The PC that Ben so kindly sent my way last fall is capable of doing what I like, only it's showing its age. When I try to play a new game and I hear cooling fans inside start to whirr up -- cooling fans I've never heard whirr up before. Also, the power supply is so feeble that I can't have the CD burner and the 200GB drive online at the same time.

So the time has come to take some money set aside from the last quarterly bonus and put it towards a new machine. I seem to recall someone in the old Schwa guild offering to help price me up some options, but for the life of me I can't remember who that was, and that was last fall.

This is what I need:

• AMD Athlon proc, 2GHz or greater
  
• At least a gig of RAM
  
• Another nice 200G drive would be keen
  
• Decent graphics card with enough memory onboard to kill an elephant
  
• A case to throw it all into, a power supply that provides power, and lyrics that won't embarrass you in front of your children

I already have speakers, a CD burner that's probably giving up the ghost as we speak, a mouse, keyboard, wireless network card, speakers, the rudimentary stuff. Unfortunately the stuff I have doesn't nick a price down considerably when omitted from a build.

And then there's the prebuilt option. Surprisingly, Microcenter's got some nice prebuilt options online in my price range -- in fact, I can get exactly what I want in the $600 neighborhood -- and I like shopping at Microcenter because it's where the neckbeards shop. But the prebuilt options there are mostly HP and Gateway systems and since I've been using barebones systems since 1999, I can't remember which PC brands are reliable and which ones stink on ice.

Where else shall I look, O Intar Web?
(platform-specific zealotry will be met with pictures of anne geddes babies)

Comments

[johnnycanuck.livejournal.com]

If you're at all comfortable with the whole online-ordering thing, I'd recommend www.newegg.com. Excellent pricing, and fairly quick delivery time. Pretty sure they've started to offer pre-builts as well.

Otherwise, I could point you toward some very nice shops here in Ottawa, but I think that option is less helpful.