Building A New Desktop

[redwood13]

Need advice re putting together a new desktop computer for a mate.

He has a couple of boys around 10 y/o. They will naturally want to play games, but otherwise it’ll just be used for surfing, watching videos, etc. Since I’ve no experience with games what I need is suggestions as to components that will run games satisfactorily without getting into the latest and greatest. Keeping the final cost down is important.

From what I’ve read I’d think the AMD 770 (no onboard graphics) or the 785G with graphics (Radeon 4200) motherboards might be acceptable. If one of these is OK, which AMD processor would be suitable?

If not the 785G then what graphics card would work?

2MB or 4 for the memory?

He may start with XP but would want to be able to upgrade to Windows 7 eventually.

HDD suggestions?

-redwood

[Spoonman]

Firstly, what games are these 10yr old boys going to be playing.

[d0ndela]

I'm not meaning to turn this topic down the same road as many others have gone before, but please please don't buy a new computer and put a 10 year old operating system on it. Microsoft stopped selling XP in Thailand as well, so unless some shops stocked up on them, you will have a hard time even finding a legal XP copy.

About the build and your questions, then as Spoonman said, what games do they play? Flash-based Thai games or new high-end graphics heavy games?

You should get 4GB RAM as it would smoothen everything regardless of what you use it for, HDD doesn't really matter much.

[garyh]

The motherboards with onboard graphics are designed to make cheap computers. They however are not up to gaming other basic or older games. You can buy a Nvidia 9800 or ATI 4670 Card for under 3000 Baht which will allow them to play all but the very latest games, you will want a 500 watt power supply with this also.

Why wait to go to Windows 7 Later? If you can get a disk you can legally trial it for up to 120 days, (search TV there is a article posted by George on how to do this).

[ignis]

Myself always use the Nvidia at the moment use the 9800GT with 1GB memory on the graphics card was about 4.000 baht ..Yes there around 3,000 baht for the 512MB... you can also get the 9500 with 1GB memory on the graphics card for just under 2,000 baht.

The AMD 7750 @ around 2,000 baht is fine. I have the CoolMaster CPU fan around 1,000 baht, also have the case fans as thick as would fit.. Likewise have the twin fans on the Hard drives, [have done for years], here they cost about 100 baht.

Guess you may not need these it you/they use air con... I never use air con

Use a good Power supply unit, mine is a 550 watt and cost around 2,800 baht.... you can buy them for 5-600baht but it s not worth it. you can buy bigger and pay up to 14,000 baht,

[JSixpack]

Best thing to do is consult the real experts on this recurring sort of question. See the guides here:

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/

and here:

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/

Find the hardware or equivalent in Thailand.