Well after much consternation and gnashing of teeth I placed my order for a new PC. It's not state-of-the-art by any means but it'll get me somewhere between an "entry-level" and a "mid-range" PC.

Here's what's coming:

Case: Nzxt Alpha Gaming Tower Case - Black
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E8400 (2x 3.0GHz/6MB L2 Cache/1333FSB)
Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-CM -- Intel G31 Chipset
Memory: 4 GB [2 GB X2] DDR2-800 PC6400 Memory
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 – 896MB - Single Card
Power Supply: 600 Watt
Hard Drive: 320 GB 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s
CD/DVD: 22X Sony Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive
Sound Card: On Board
Speakers: iBUYPOWER 2.1 Channel Stereo Super Bass Subwoofer Speaker System
Network Card: Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
Keyboard: iBUYPOWER USB Keyboard - Black
Mouse: iBUYPOWER Internet Mouse - Black
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

I spent a little more than I wanted to (isn't that always the way?) but I wanted to upgrade the CPU and the video card to something above "bare bones/entry-level". Hopefully this system will be good enough to run ArmAII at an acceptable framerate at 1680x1050 (with or without AA/AF). Really, it's about the only PC game I have any interest in at this point, though that might change in the future.

The downside is that it'll take about 2 weeks or more to get it!

Congrats on the new PC, have fun!

The GTX260 is plenty for Arma2 at that resolution, the CPU will do okay, not great but bearable. It's a sensible "on a budget, but not handicapped" combination IMHO.

Leemz, where did you order it from ?

And that's exactly what I was looking for. I wouldn't have been looking for a new PC if my daughter's hadn't died. So, she'll get mine and I'll get this. Plus, my wife gets a $500 stipend from work (about $350 after taxes) so I'll only be paying about $400 for this PC out of pocket.

@ oldgrangard: As I've done with my last two PC's, I'm getting this one through iBuyPower.com. It's a customized "free-shipping" special.
I was looking at Best Buy for a PC and, though they had some decent Dells, they all came with more memory than I needed, a lower end CPU and crappy video cards so I would have had to buy a better video card and install it myself (not that I can't do it, but why bother?). Anyway, like I said, I bought my last 2 PC's through iBuyPower and I've been happy with them so I'm trying them again. I think they do a good job and they're cheaper than Dell (even with my wife's stipend AND her 7% employee discount).

If you run into trouble with stock Arma missions due to CPU constraints, you can always look for custom designed ones with less AI - I actually have a nice template around that I can send you.

Going by the one and only CPU benchmark

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,687567...imulation/Test/

you clearly see that your originally planned E5300 would have been at the bottom of the chart, somewhere near 15FPS avg. or lower, whereas the E8400 is surprisingly good at 22avg. Which is a perfectly playable framerate for A2, and in missions with reduced AI count (sub-100 by my estimate) you should easily get 30FPS out of it, with normal GFX detail settings.

I'm looking at ibuypower and Cyberpower systems. Right now I'm leaning to a Cyberpower, but am worried about some of the user reviews.

The cyberpower is just a bit cheaper and has overclocking which the ibuypower doesn't.

If you need a bit more oomph that CPU will overclock to 3.6 on air easily, maybe even 4 with a decent cooler and a bit of luck.

@RSColonel_131st
Thanks for the benchmark info. Now I'm extra glad I decided to go with a better CPU!

@oldgrognard
A co-worker of mine bought a PC through CyberPower at the same time I bought mine through iBuyPower. As far as I can recall, he was happy with his purchase. I've gone to both sites and priced the same system. CyberPower was about $5 cheaper for about the same rig.

@Mark Aisthorpe
Good to know. But, I probably won't attempt any overclocking while it's under warranty. But, down the road, I might give it a try if I need a little extra horsepower. The case will only come with minimal cooling, I'm sure. I didn't order anything special for fans but I could probably add more at a later date.

Leemz, thanks for the response. The config I worked between them was a $47 difference plus the Cyberpower was overclocked by them.

OG - I bought a customized Cyberpower with specs below (except for a just-installed Nvidia 260) two Thanksgivings ago. Both the sales adn the tech staff were excellent to work with, always accessible and quick to respond to questions. The hardware has run well and is still going strong.

Thanks Eugene. I am looking at:

Intell i7-920 Overclocked
MSI x58 Pro-E motherboard (might change this)
Liquid cooling
6 GB PCI1333 DDR3
ATI HD5870
500GB Hard drive
Two LG 22x DVD Dual layer drives
Thermal display
External All-in-one card reader
External USB hub
Windows 7 Home Premium
NZXT M59 case
etc

Comes in at $1,457 including shipping

Sounds good. But, my budget is only about half that. If my daughter's PC hadn't died I wouldn't even be looking to get a new PC.

And yesterday my other daughter's PC got infected with the Antivirus Pro 2010 virus. This thing is the most brutal virus I've ever seen. It nixes any attempt to remove it. You can't boot into Safe Mode, you can't bring up the Task Manager you can't bring up Add/Remove Programs, you can't attempt a System Restore, etc. I went online to look for help on how to remove it and the program wouldn't let me do any of the suggested fixes. I finally caved in and brought it to the Geek Squad. They claim they've been dealing with this for over a year and said they'd have no trouble cleaning it out (for $130).

I'll be glad when they both have Macs and I won't have to deal with their PC's getting infected anymore.

Yeah, I am sinking a good deal into this one. The one I currently have is 5 years old. So I tend to keep them as long as I can. When you divide the cost by the time you keep it, it is usually cost effective to get something good.

Sorry didn't mean to hijack your thread. I had a seperate one about asking any inout on Cyberpower, but I had no responses. I've mixed feelings about them based on customer reviews. So I shamelessly butted in here to get some input.

My E6850 3Ghz runs overclocked at 3.8Ghz (raising my CPU voltage to 1.425v) without breaking a sweat. I do have a Zalman CNPS8000 cooler on the CPU though but that one runs always at 1500rpm and my temps never get any higher than 65 C°, in the summer with very CPU pushing aplications running (games )
Also depends how good your case airflow is. If you gonna overclock make sure you have a good airflow in your casing!

Best regards, Kodiak.

OG, yours will kick the stuffing out of mine, and it was upgraded from their stock (sound card, bunch of fans, extra drives, upleveled mobo, etc.) at about your price - to just under $2,000! figures... But it was a huge move up from my home built endlessly upgraded previous rig. Hope you get a a lot of pleasure and no pain out of it.

You should have asked first, could have saved you $130 ^^! We've removed this stupid thing and it's variants countless numbers of times. It's easier to get rid of it from a Live CD, outside of windows. At least you didn't pay it to go away, as I've seen a few people do hehe




What a rig! I'm *really* interested to see how far you can push that on liquid cooling. Post some SuperPi times when you get done putting it together. Btw, seems as long as you have the cash, you should get Win 7 Ultimate to go with it

Why Win7 Ultimate ? What does it do better ?

By the way, Kodiak, I like your sig. I saw Zeppelin on Friday, June 10th, 1980 at Madison Square Garden, NYC. Best concert ever. They played non-stop for 3 hours. What a show!! They played there 6 nights, we saw them on their 3rd show. Awesome!

I'm not sure home premium already includes the complete PC backup (I think it does...)

Ultimate can boot from VHD files (which gives a nice undestructable test environment), you get Bitlocker and Bitlocker to Go (hard drive encryption and memory stick encryption), you get the WinXP mode (not useful for games though).

For a pure gaming system, maybe not needed. For a productivity system it might be worth it.

RSColonel, surely you are not implying that I'm going to be productive.

RSColonel nailed it. The Ultimate/Professional editions usually include Windows built-in Windows features that are handy (in my case Fax/scan, backup tools), so you don't have to go hunting for 3rd party software to do it.

The biggest consistent difference I've found between Windows Home User and Professional/Ultimate editions are administrative tools. The home editions don't have them at all or are defeatured. If you like to setup a lot of administrative policies for users, programs, or the OS itself, the professional editions are a must. For example, I welcome family members and roommates to use my comp, but I don't want them going through stuff. This type of thing becomes even more important when you are on a network, running a server (including hosting games), or allow access using any remote connection tools. In a nutshell, these tools let you micromanage how your machine behaves and what is accessible.

Here is a quick comparison, if we can deduce anything from Vista
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

My suggestion was little nonchalant, I ass-u-me-d that with the cash you were spending on the machine you might as well just buy the full package to avoid missing out on something you might want later. Truly, if you're not doing anything fancy, don't bother with tripped out security settings or the like, Home premium will be just fine. If you know a student who could it for you for like $20 on campus, I'd go the ultimate route -- otherwise the increased cost might just be a waste for you