New PC

My dad's gonna buy a new pc. Wich one shall we buy?

I only recommend getting one custom built. Find a friend who has the knowledge, or seak out a local shop that specializes in custom built. Get what you need, and only what you need.

Gateway, Dell, compaq, e-machines, all pretty much suck. Dell and gateway at least have the decency to use name brand parts that wont generate a lot of compatibilty errors. They also have models that have seperate sound and video cards, instead of ones on the Motherboard. Motherboards are for mothering, not for rendering screen images. There are only 2 major problems. They load you down with a lot of useless "free" software that nowadays are more like trials that can be had off the internet. The other problem is the price. They charge twice as much, and the support is not what it used to be, especially dell's. Gateways support ws never anything to write home about.

Store bought models are worse, with one noted exception. I know BestBuy and CompUSA both carry Alienware, you can also go through their site. Again, the price is prohibitive, but they build some good stuff, especially for gamers.

Custom builds are the way to go, and the trouble it is to order all the parts is well worth the savings. Nowadays, they are easy to build and set up, though knowing someone who is at least knowledgeable is helpful if you have no experience. But everyone knows someone, unless you live in the sticks. Still, computer nerds are everywere and the web is a great source of info.

Case in point, my dad kept buying these crap HP computers. He went through 3 of them and I kept telling him to save money and let me build one for him. Finally, he caved in. WE spent about 2/3 of what he wanted to spend, got all the computer he needed, and has not had one singe problem with it. has been exceptionally stable.

[gouldy]

hmmmm, well, a little hard to say, just think about how many different computers there i to buy and how many different combinations of hardware and software you can have, there really is infinite possibilities. Also it really does depend on what you're going to use it for. If you're going to just have one game on it really, like NL then you should get one that has lots and lots of power, but not so much memory. If you want a few games on there, then go for a more in between one, one which has quite a lot of power but still with quite a lot of memory. If you want lots and lots of games on there, then you have to get one with not all that much power, but a lot of memory. OR, if you have a lot of money, then you could just buy one with LOADS of memory and LOADS of power at the same time [:)]

www.tomshardware.com and www.newegg.com best reviews and some of the best prices and shipping around. im ordering a computer from there soon. still deciding between amd and intel. but i htink that the ATI Radeon 9800PRO with 1GB RAM, liquid cooling, 5.1 surround sound speakers, antec case should kick some major ass in NL.

I am a big fan of www.newegg.com I have built quite a few computers with parts from there, including my last 2, my father's, sister's and 4 workstations and a server for my last place of employment. I got one bad component, which was a combo CDR/RW & DVDR/RW drive. I learned my lesson with combo drives, I am sticking to seperate ones. What made it really bad was I had to go through the manufacturer (plextor) instead of newegg, and plextor was horrible to deal with.

I definately need something where NL works perfect on

You really do not need a supercompter to run NL with acceptable framerates. The problem with a lot of PCs are bottlenecks. I do not know how many times I have seens someone post about horrible framerates playing this game or that, and they were thinking of buying a new video card, yet they had only 128mb or RAM. Or the RAM was PC100 instead of PC2400 like the motherboard needs. Sure, you can use it, but it will slow down anything.

Just about any processor on the market right now will run NL just fine with all the right additional components.

I highly recommend a Motherboard that has an S-ATA hard drive capabilities. They are faster than E-IDE drives, easier to set up to if you decide to go the custom route.

Most motherboards come with sound capabilities, but get a seperate sound card, the on-board can be disabled. You can save a few bucks on the card too, since you do not need a TOL card to get great sound.

You can get away with just about any video card too. Just stay away from the ATI Raedon 9700, NL had some problems. ATI boards are better, but have had driver issues in the past. Nvidia Boards are not as fast, but have had better drivers. So they are about the same. I had some terrible luck when I was doing PC repair a few years ago with ATI, and I have stayed away from them ever since. I will admit that they have gotten better, but every singe computer in my house (all 6) have nvidia based boards. Stick with some of the better name brands to.

I like at least 1GM of RAM.

I have no idea how much you want to spend. Whether you buy a ready made or build your own, you need to look for those kind of basic features. If you are on a tight budget, you can save some dollars on other components. Stuff like CD Drives. You can upgrade these later if need be.

You took the words right out of my mouth there RCFlyer, on the hard drive front at least.

If you're building one yourself (or getting a mate to) make sure you go with SATA (versus EIDE) - it's at least 30% faster but the same price! (At least over here they are )

There's no machines you can buy off a shelf that I know of with SATA drives in. Bloomin' shame really, given that your HDD is likely to become a major bottleneck in the system fairly quickly...

Yeah, My big PC has 2 Western Digital Raptor 74GB, 10,000 RPM S-ATA HDDs in a RAID-0 configuration. With the two disks striped (RAID0) working in parrell, and since the drives already have a scant 4.5ms seek time, I get near top of the line SCSI performance without SCSI problems.