It is completely impractical if you buy a high-end computer for just browsing the internet, or checking emails, similarly is is also impractical to by a low end machine for gaming, hoping a video card upgrade in later life get you all the gaming fun you need, so today, i will try to answer what the right computer for you might look like.
Applications: Email, chat, internet, movies & Music, burning discs — If your needs are as basic as these then spending $1000 on a pc is useless, you can save a lot of money by going in for a basic configuration, you can buy a simple and effective desktop or laptop considering the subtle requirement on power and memory, browsers and email clients hardly require a power rig, you can buy a decent computer with the following options:
Processor from one of these: Intel core solo, Intel celeron dual core, Intel atom, Intel pentium 4, amd semptron, etc will be the one you can choose.
Memory: 2 Gb should be enough to get the job done.
HDD: 320 GB drives are cheap and large enough for most users
Graphics card: onboard is enough
monitor: a 20 inches monitor can serve good purpose, for laptops you can go for screen size suited to your requirement for size vs portability
Applications: Word processing, Home office, light and old games, light photo editing– For this mid range PC I recommend a decent mid level platform with the following configuration:
Processor: core2 duo, i3, or i5 or an amd equivalent, depending upon how heavy computation you need, larger spreadsheet, huge databases be bettor off with an i5, anything above this may be a waste for a platform trying to be a office workhorse.
memory: go for a 4 GB configuration to future proof, although 3gb will not hurt much.
HDD: 320-500GB depending upon your needs
Graphics card: a mid level graphics card with around 512 mb memory should be what you can look at.
Applications: 3d editing, gaming, graphics editing & creation, audio-video encoding
for this machines there are no boundaries on what you can spend, however what we recommend is buying the following hardware configuration:
Processor: no compromises here but an Intel i7 based computer with a motherboard that supports 2 PCi-X cards in crossfire/sli configuration, along with support for large memory, at-least 16gb
Memory: get a machine with gamer grade 8GB at least
HDD: 2 HDDs with 500GB min with preferably 10K rpm drives
Source by Dave Darcy.
