dogfighter

I've finally given up on the PC I've had for the last 5 years and decided to order a new one. After realizing how FUCKING BEREFT the internet is of quality, impartial PC reviews, I settled on this:

Gateway DX4860-UR10P PT.GCPP2.017 Desktop PC - Intel Core i5-2320 3.0GHz, 6GB DDR3, 2TB HDD, DVDRW, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit at TigerDirect.com

From the website...

What It Is And why You Need It:

• 2nd generation Intel Core i5-2320 3.0GHz processor with Intel® Turbo Boost 2.0 Technology; provides the power and speed to handle demanding tasks with ease

• 6GB (upgradeable to 16GB) of DDR3 internal memory; lets you face intense multitasking with confidence with its fast system performance

• 2TB SATA Hard Disk Drive; provides ample space to store a number of your ever-growing files, documents, programs, and other data

• Intel HD Graphics 2000; delivers high-quality HD images great for movies and games

• DVD SuperMulti optical drive; allows you to play and burn DVDs and CDs in the comfort of your own home

• Multi-In-One Media Card Reader; accepts most media cards for easy multimedia sharing

• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi CERTIFIED; ensures an easy connection to your home network for convenient Internet access

• Twelve USB ports; lets you connect different USB devices such as flash drives and hard drives for extra storage space and easy file sharing

Shipped for $560 so I'm cool with that. Wondering if anyone has suggestions for programs to start out with. Stuff besides the obvious (chrome, adobe, uTorrent, etc). I don't play games and I don't do media on my PC.

So far I'm planning on one of the Steganos packages for their "free space shredder", CCleaner, Defraggler, SweepRAM, PeerBlock... but I've been running XP this whole time and my current PC is too shitty to install anything new on.

Any suggestions?

__________________
If you can't make money with these offers, SELL YOUR $&%@#*! COMPUTER!

I was a young man when I fought dogs in Mexico. There were many dog fighters but none as great in size or as quiet. Then I was unsure of my words. But the fighting was always a language I spoke well.
-Marc Bojanowski

Staccs

I just did this last week.

My favorites:

• Notepad++
• Evernote
• SumatraPDF
• Launchy
• KeePass
• TrueCrypt
• HyperDesktop
• ffdshow + VLC
• IMG Burn
• TeamViewer
• LibreOffice
• SyncToy

Beach Affiliate

Good price but eh...Gateway?

At any rate, use Ninite.com to put that shit on faster.

MSTeacher

Nice list, I'll have to check a few of those out.

+1 for notepad++, launchy, keepass, truecrypt

couple others to consider:

f.lux
dexpot
rocketdock

edit I have a gateway laptop and it's pretty good. I think acer makes them now which is not so good but it's behaved well enough. i3 4gb memory win7 home. Done well for a year or so now.

__________________

Instrumentalist

lol that computer is probably at par with e-machines. you could have gotten something MUCH better for just a little more money.

__________________
Wickedfire - It's like twelve cocks in a thirteen cock bucket.

Funny Pictures

Jameel

Stardock Corporation - Software - Fences

I've never had an organized desktop until this and been using PC's for over 10 years.

http://www.voidtools.com/

Everything - Instantly find any file

http://www.dropbox.com/

Of course

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

For monitoring your temps

http://www.evga.com/precision/

For adjusting the speed / fans on your graphics card

(dont adjust processor speeds if you dont know what ur doing)

@Stacc: HyperDesktop, wow FUCK this changes everything

MSTeacher

^^ yeah fences is sweet

I also run rainmeter. takes a while to set up properly but it is blissful

__________________

Beach Affiliate

Care to point something out? I'm actually currently looking for a new tower with similar specs but don't want integrated graphics (want to run 3 monitors).

I don't game.
Business use only.
Prefer i7
Prefer expandable to 16g

cheshire

E-Machines, Gateway, Acer all junk brands. It's not like other companies where they produce good stuff and shitty stuff. They all just produce shitty stuff. Shitty stuff is their entire business.

If it were me I'd anty up the extra dough and get this:

Newegg.com - HP Pavilion h8-1210 (QW693AA#ABA) Desktop PC AMD FX-Series FX-6100(3.3GHz) 10GB DDR3 1.5TB HDD Capacity NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 1GB Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

That's a system that is going to last you a good 4-6 years before it's totally obsolete.

__________________

b_sun

Take the advice above and get something much better off NewEgg.

Then put Battlefield 3 on it.

__________________

LOGOS - BANNERS - HEADERS - CHARTS - BUSINESS CARDS ---> http://tinyurl.com/designgrind

Beach Affiliate

Not everyone plays games. I don't see where people find the time to play games. If I'm not working then I'm definitely not at my computer. Fuck that.

Aznxmtg

This, but it is always good to have a computer to play games if for some reason you decide to play some.

__________________

dogfighter

LOL at people knocking gateway and recommending AMD. Take it from someone who is on every AMD earnings call -- THE SHIP IS GOING THE FUCK DOWN

Yeah I always keep Notepad++ and TrueCrypt as well. Tried EverNote some time ago and wasn't impressed but maybe I'll revisit. A lot of these I've never heard of or heard of but have no idea what they do, so thanks for the recommendations

__________________
If you can't make money with these offers, SELL YOUR $&%@#*! COMPUTER!

I was a young man when I fought dogs in Mexico. There were many dog fighters but none as great in size or as quiet. Then I was unsure of my words. But the fighting was always a language I spoke well.
-Marc Bojanowski

onigen

fuck hp, gateway, emachines etc desktop computers all shit.

build your own (easy as fuck, just little more $).

software:
+1 for notepad++, truecrypt, evernote

for basic security:
appguard, kaspersky av

roclafamilia

No shit. If Intel is having trouble, Wouldn't it be fairly obvious AMD is suffering too. Neither can crack the mobile market and that's all that's wanted anymore. Web Servers are starting to run on ARM.

ShadowCaster

It's actually cheaper. At NewEgg there are always discounts for item combos etc, and you can get the pc exactly like you want to,

As for software, +1 for Notepad++ and f.lux, probably RocketDock too, they also have this awesome thingy called Fences that allows you to manage desktop icons in a very cool way.

__________________

nickCR

I never buy a ready computer, I just order the parts and put it all together but then again my computer is a monster.

I would put SpyBot + Avast or Nod32.

You should try an app called "FreeMind" great for doing some thinking and planning.

CPUID HWMonitor (you should run this for a few days to make sure your temps are good).

Putty or SecureCRT

If you are going to have some movies there download XBMC

__________________
Good things come to those who wait!

dogfighter

Was also thinking about a firewall... I use AVG for antivirus, but haven't really used a firewall since they stopped making Black Ice Defender.

__________________
If you can't make money with these offers, SELL YOUR $&%@#*! COMPUTER!

I was a young man when I fought dogs in Mexico. There were many dog fighters but none as great in size or as quiet. Then I was unsure of my words. But the fighting was always a language I spoke well.
-Marc Bojanowski

firestarter

What SC said. Build your own, it's easy.

bluechinagroup

Oh man is that the biggest load of shit.

If you're gonna have a budget GPU, at least have it be Nvidia. Intel GPUs are still complete shit and poorly supported.

tspesh

Patience is a virtue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bri...roarchitecture)

advive

If you can get a small SSD drive for you operating system and other applications and a second HD for storage.

Zaino

I would kill myself if I ordered a gateway, didnt get a computer with an SSD drive, got intel 2000 graphics? WTF is that? Do they make intel 2000 on the sandy bridge?

If you get a new computer build it yourself from NewEgg
Get a sandy fucking bridge or dont bother.
Get a SSD drive
Get a $125 graphics card
Get COD for some down time.

You could probably put a SSD drive in your 5 year old computer and it would be better then the new one you are ordering.

BluAffiliate

You might want to wait a couple of months, as Intel is coming out with a successor line of processors.. I think codenamed Ivy Bridge.

MMM-no-problem

if you can get 2 small SSD drivers make RAID 0 with them they are not failing very often like HD drives anyway Put OS on them and paging file if OS is Windows. and Get big drive for data

aproxaday

Really? This is news to me, but I'm down

yeah, I'm definitely getting a SSD on my next PC
Thanks for showing me ninite, this will definitely speed things up when installing software on my business PCS

flaw3d

Honestly newegg has some dope built pcs to check out.

I do video editing with adobe after effects,photoshop and illustrator so any of my pc's might look like a gamer machine but instead of pwning nubs on the interwebs I'm designing ish to outrank them on the serps.

__________________
Hiring a sales copywriter.

HiGhPeR

I'm also in the market for a new PC.. was actually gonna make a post but found this thread. Yay!

I bought a ready-made Gateway about 2 years ago and it was the biggest fucking mistake I ever made. Ever since day 1, this thing can barely handle shit. I cant play any video games on it (SC 2, CS: Source or even BF2 -- forget BF3), and every time I try to, it just shuts itself off. Also, it randomly turns itself off at randoms times and gives me blue screens or other fun goodies for absolutely no reason. Sometimes it wont load windows. Its a lot of fun!

The other day, I barely even managed to boot it up... I had to keep it turned off for like 2 hours before it decided to boot windows again.

So heres my question.. because im pretty retarded when it comes to computer hardware. I've heard people price shit out anywhere from $600 to $3,000. I don't think I need a fucking $3,000 computer just to play a few video games and run photoshop, etc. I want to spend about $1,000. Is that realistic? All I need is the tower, I have monitors and kb's and all that shit. I want to be able to play BF3 or SC2 on it, run photoshop in the background, and have firefox open with about 20 tabs without it fucking blowing up or giving me blue screens.

Any suggestions?

__________________

Suddenly_Ass

tspesh

It's not a couple months, it's a couple weeks at this point.

conv3rsion

man, get ssd, its bar none the best bang for your buck right now.

__________________

emp

I am currently waiting until April for Ivy Bridge to hit.

Got a nice machine specced out and will build it myself.

::emp::

__________________
Your Logical Fallacies - know them to avoid them

That's because all programmers are also ninjas.(but not all ninjas are programmers) - LogicFlux

Blind Ape Seo

bobby_custard

if youre after a new machine online check out the dell factory outlet - end of line stuff passing through dirt cheap. keep checking it every day and you'll be surprised what you can get if you hunt about a bit.

teck112

Going to third the SSD suggestion. Put your OS and other programs you use often on it and use your other HD for the other stuff.

matthew9179

Glowing locks Hair Tinsel is becoming more popular in present-day expert salons. The tinsel lengths are available in a large range of sparkling colours, and are very simple to set up after a little exercise.

jacky0109

You are having good configurations on your system and price is also very low. My system is latest with all the latest softwares and configurations. My system has 5GB RAM and 500GB Hard Disk with i7 processor and Window 7 operating system but it cost me a litter higher.

mattseh

It seems some people here don't value their time very highly if they want to build their own machine to save money?

__________________
You have a right to obey.

tspesh

It's a 30 minute job...

dmnEPC

That saves 3 years of hassle

ScrogginsSharda

equip your computer with nvidia, plug it with 42 inches lcd of samsung and put the game on

tspesh

This statement doesn't have a lot of merit.

PassMark Software - Video Card Benchmarks - High End Video Cards

Check this out...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/i...ching-review/2

tspesh

Let's see how long it takes for someone to say "But nvidia is on top!" and completely miss the point

cheshire

You can build a PC from parts, install windows, install the 6,421 updates, install the over 60 apps you use, and tweak your environment to your liking all in 30 minutes? Doubt it.

__________________

tspesh

I can get a computer built in 30 minutes, I can get windows on it in 15 minutes.

The rest is bogus, because on a Dell (for example) you spend time doing the same updates and uninstalling the bullshit 60 apps they come with and then install the 60 apps you do use and then you have to tweak the environment to your liking.

Don't be a pud-whacker.

If you wan't to overpay on sub-par hardware be my guest.

cheshire

Point taken. I still doubt you can build a computer in 30 minutes. It takes atleast that long to get all the shit out of the boxes. I also doubt you can install Windows and all the updates in 15 minutes. Unless you're running SSD's in a RAID 0 config I doubt you can even get Windows installed in 15 minutes.

If you buy over the counter you plug it in, boot it up, install the "decrapifier" (The PC Decrapifier Wipes Unwanted Junk | The PC Decrapifier) then install all your tools.

Also if you buy from the business line of products you don't need to decrapify.

__________________

Beach Affiliate

No you can't.

Napolean

I built my computer I'm using now for around $800ish. 2TB HDD, AMD Phenom X4 925 Processor 2.8 GHz, NVidia GeForce GTS 450. 8 gigs of ram. My wife bought all the hardware for me last year for christmas. So I would have to dig up the exact list of everything.

I run windows 7 ultimate (64 bit), visual studio 2010, few sessions of remote desktop, notepad++. I've played some games on it but I'm really not a gamer. Haven't had problems with any games I've played.

So if your needs are similar to mine or even a bit more demanding, you should be able to build something to handle your needs for less than $1,100.00.

tspesh

k...

pacman0r

Building it yourself is the way to go, just be careful when it comes to installing the processor, because if you break one of those tiny little pins your gonna have to fork up the dough for a new one. (learned the hard way)

But all in all you can build a top of the line system from scratch for under $1000.

__________________
Affiliate Marketing & SEO

Napolean

Or if you zap it with your own static electricity.