remnant
New member
I've sent a pm to Joker for his advice but wanted to get others adice as well.
My mom is getting a new pc to run AutoCAD but wants a lot more in her pc than what she needs...and...who am I to complain
I haven't upgraded my pc since 4 yrs ago (8800GT, AMDx2, 2gb RAM) as my brother and I went the console (Xbox360) route as we didn't want to constantly fork out money to upgrade our pc. But now...is the time
My one big requirement is that I buy the pc from a physical store so that if anything happens they can fix it. I don't like the idea of buying online and then something goes wrong and I have to ship it somewhere and wait forever before i get it back. And it will reassure my mom. (I bought my netbook online and i regret doing so).
I've always been a CafeVIVA fanboy so the first place I looked was there and I found this pre-built rig:
From my limited knowledge it seems pretty legit in terms of what you get for the price you pay. The pc doesn't need a 1Tb hardrive or a dvd-drive but i don't seem to save that much money by eliminating the dvd-drive or making the hdd smaller. Its lacking a graphics card so I was thinking along the lines of this guy:
ZT-GTX550TI ZOTAC GEFORCE GTX550 Ti 1GB DDR5,192BIT,900/4100 - R1499
or
SC-GB-GTX550TI GIGABYTE NVIDIA GTX550TI 1G GDDR5 192BIT, DUAL-LINK DVI-I/ D-SUB/ HDMI - R1599
I'm not sure what the difference between the cards is and I'm not sure if Gigabyte is better or Zotac. I've always liked the look of Zotac cards The main reason for that specific card is that it's not overly expensive and it seems averagely-good AND its also sold by CafeVIVA (i know the wanting to buy from a physical store limits a lot of the choice, which is lame).
BOTTOM LINE: need it to run AutoCAD - which this setup will definitely. It just needs 4gb RAM, average graphics card and, to be safe, a quad core processor.
I would like it to be able to run games at medium-ish settings (high on some). Would like it to last so that it can still play games on low in a few years. Our monitors are 23" and run at 1920x1080.
My questions:
1) Anything in the ready built setup that you would change?
2) PSU need to be bigger (500W) for GTX550?
3) is the 192-bit going to be a problem (soon/long term)?
4) the amount and kind of RAM good enough?
5) ivy-bridge and that specific i5 good?
6) What about AMD? Should i look at AMD cards and AMD CPUs? AMD CPUs seem to be a lot cheaper and the motherboards too...but I know that they aren't as good. But to save a lot, is it worth it? AMD cards seem to be cheaper too.
7) will the case be big enough for the card?
8) are there better graphics cards for cheaper? am i over paying for what i get from the GTX550?
9) is the motherboard average/good?
My mom is getting a new pc to run AutoCAD but wants a lot more in her pc than what she needs...and...who am I to complain
I haven't upgraded my pc since 4 yrs ago (8800GT, AMDx2, 2gb RAM) as my brother and I went the console (Xbox360) route as we didn't want to constantly fork out money to upgrade our pc. But now...is the time My one big requirement is that I buy the pc from a physical store so that if anything happens they can fix it. I don't like the idea of buying online and then something goes wrong and I have to ship it somewhere and wait forever before i get it back. And it will reassure my mom. (I bought my netbook online and i regret doing so).
I've always been a CafeVIVA fanboy so the first place I looked was there and I found this pre-built rig:
From my limited knowledge it seems pretty legit in terms of what you get for the price you pay. The pc doesn't need a 1Tb hardrive or a dvd-drive but i don't seem to save that much money by eliminating the dvd-drive or making the hdd smaller. Its lacking a graphics card so I was thinking along the lines of this guy:
ZT-GTX550TI ZOTAC GEFORCE GTX550 Ti 1GB DDR5,192BIT,900/4100 - R1499
or
SC-GB-GTX550TI GIGABYTE NVIDIA GTX550TI 1G GDDR5 192BIT, DUAL-LINK DVI-I/ D-SUB/ HDMI - R1599
I'm not sure what the difference between the cards is and I'm not sure if Gigabyte is better or Zotac. I've always liked the look of Zotac cards The main reason for that specific card is that it's not overly expensive and it seems averagely-good AND its also sold by CafeVIVA (i know the wanting to buy from a physical store limits a lot of the choice, which is lame).
BOTTOM LINE: need it to run AutoCAD - which this setup will definitely. It just needs 4gb RAM, average graphics card and, to be safe, a quad core processor.
I would like it to be able to run games at medium-ish settings (high on some). Would like it to last so that it can still play games on low in a few years. Our monitors are 23" and run at 1920x1080.
My questions:
1) Anything in the ready built setup that you would change?
2) PSU need to be bigger (500W) for GTX550?
3) is the 192-bit going to be a problem (soon/long term)?
4) the amount and kind of RAM good enough?
5) ivy-bridge and that specific i5 good?
6) What about AMD? Should i look at AMD cards and AMD CPUs? AMD CPUs seem to be a lot cheaper and the motherboards too...but I know that they aren't as good. But to save a lot, is it worth it? AMD cards seem to be cheaper too.
7) will the case be big enough for the card?
8) are there better graphics cards for cheaper? am i over paying for what i get from the GTX550?
9) is the motherboard average/good?
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