You could get a 150GB IDE HDD for like $10 bucks...

Indeed. But it never hurts to shop around. I think Newegg will be a likely source for some good parts.

Yes but my parents don't like tech so much. WE just got XP a year or 2 ago. :(

I only just got a laptop of my own january.

I would buy everything from newegg. They're customer service is excellent. They're prices are very reasonable. They deliver hella fast.

Wow...*their*...that's embarrassing....

that was 4 times better than the family tower. They think the Intel Pentium is a great new chip ready to last them till 2015. And not even a duel core, a single 2.8 one.

eh, I still use my Pentium 4 hooked up to our TV to watch movies. It's fine.

Yes but not for games. I also had to use office 2000 when the school had 2007. I actually learned stuff on the school computers till i got in trouble for giving my account administrator access. I 5th grade.

then middle school had some really expensive monitor program. Except the override password was "admin" but it got changed.

We have a 1080p flatscreen that we had running on 480p till I fixed it. :(

Also, I'd see if you could get the desktop w.out selling your laptop. You'll want it when you go to college.

It usually takes me two months to build a rig, three if there's any special mods like painting or cable sleeving. I deal shop the whole time I'm building it, but most of the parts are pretty straightforward.

Asus Motherboard
G.Skill Memory
Corsair or OCZ SSD(s)
WD, Seagate, or Samsung HDD(s)
Seasonic PSU (no exceptions)
EVGA GPU(s) (or Sapphire if AMD is required for some reason)
Scythe fans and Noctua cooler (if not going liquid)
Cases are much more subjective (desired looks, possible mods, and space constraints) but I usually try to lean towards Corsair, CM, or Fractal Design
The only external sound cards I use are two Asus models and some of the HT Omega, but most people don't have an ear (or care to) for quality sound.
Dell screens, Saitek peripherals, not even going to start on speakers/headphones.

I don't just buy from newegg. If you live near a Microcenter, always buy your CPU from there (about $50 cheaper). Other than that, its usually alerts from bensbargains.net and the occasional tigerdirect purchase.

/nerd

I've got solid state drives in both my laptops and desktops and can say they're easily the best upgrade a computer user can make. It's the difference between having to wait and not having to wait, even if just seconds.

^THIS ALL THE WAY. My hard drive got fucked and I went ahead and bought a solid state drive for the replacement. BEST DECISION EVER.

My boot time went from >1min to <10s. And that's not even the biggest benefit... no spinning magnetic disk means the chance of your disk getting damaged is dramatically decreased. That was actually why I got it... wasn't even expecting the speed upgrade.

The ONLY advantage conventional hard drives have vis a vis a solid state drive is cost per total disk space, but it's worth the extra money.

2 months? What to you do during that time?

Do you really find the increase speed of the SSD to be worth the cost?

Oh, and Microcenters are pretty awesome. But, there are none around me.

Used a flash drive with Linux Mint on it.

And yeah, I do. I only use about 40GB as it is, so a 60GB drive for $100 was worth it imo. I dunno that I would do the same for a larger drive, but for 60GB? Absolutely.

@PE

lol That was directed at Geo.

I agree that SSDs are pretty nice for laptops. I'm just not convinced for desktops.

herp derp, that was pretty relevant to me too :p

hmm. SSDs don't have to worry about fragmentation. That's a pretty nice perk. And the speed is still pretty godly (though idk if a more powerful desktop couldn't get close to that speed in absence of an SSD).

Yeah, it was funny how well it lined up with both of your comments.

So we have 2 in favor of the SSD one at least as well qualified as yourself abg. Might just go for it. And also may try building. It would be nice if I found someone else to help who has done it before because even how easy you call it it never hurts to be careful with 1000$ of parts. But I need to find someone first. But I will take your advice with the liquid cooling.

Maybe if I build I will save enough money to make a system with 32 gig ram! That would be awesome but would require 400 dollars worth of ram cause i would have to use 8 gig sticks.

32GB of RAM is a total waste. You will *never* use it. Even 8GB will rarely be used.

I know that. Just seeing what everyone would say. Plus 8 gig sticks are so expensive. I will just get the cheaper 4 gig sticks. A pity AMD motherboards cant have more than 4 RAM sticks. Hurts when trying to future proof.

You can get 16 GB 1600MHZ of RAM for under 200 dollars.

I thought SSDs have lower throughput than a regular HD if you have the read/write head in the right location (ie, are reading/writing a large non-fragmented file(s))? Have SSDs surpassed regular HDs even there now? I confess the last time I looked at SSDs was about two years ago. I'm sure they've improved substantially since then, but by how much?

Yeah, but why would you want to?

Although if 8 GB is enough you could get the better 1833 or 2100 MHZ sticks.