$600 Computer?

[Lord Poe]

I am looking to either upgrade or upgrade to a newer computer suitable for lossless video capture, and making DVDs. A friend of mine offered me $600 bucks for my current computer (Bought in 2001). Here are the stats:



It has a CD burner, and firewire ports, and a new graphics accelerator card (PNY Verto).

Would this be a good deal, or should I upgrade the one I have?

[Alyeska]

Getting $600 for a 3 year old computer is damned good.

[Howedar]

Dump it NOW unless you're planning on keeping this friend

[Enigma]

I am looking to either upgrade or upgrade to a newer computer suitable for lossless video capture, and making DVDs. A friend of mine offered me $600 bucks for my current computer (Bought in 2001). Here are the stats:

[+img]http://h4h.com/louis/compinfo.png[/img]

It has a CD burner, and firewire ports, and a new graphics accelerator card (PNY Verto).

Would this be a good deal, or should I upgrade the one I have?

Take the money!

I bought my computer for about $700CAD and here's what I got:

Athlon 2400+
256MB RAM
Two hard drives totalling 100GB
Radeon 9200+
Two CD Burners

[Lord Poe]

Thanks, guys!

[Azazel]

I am looking to either upgrade or upgrade to a newer computer suitable for lossless video capture, and making DVDs. A friend of mine offered me $600 bucks for my current computer (Bought in 2001). Here are the stats:



It has a CD burner, and firewire ports, and a new graphics accelerator card (PNY Verto).

Would this be a good deal, or should I upgrade the one I have?

I'd say that if you can get rid of it for $600, do it. I made my cpu for about $600 and its strong enough even now to run doom 3 on a high setting when it comes out.

[Lord Poe]

I'd say that if you can get rid of it for $600, do it. I made my cpu for about $600 and its strong enough even now to run doom 3 on a high setting when it comes out.

Sounds impressive! What exactly should I look for in a multimedia computer for lots of video capturing, editing, special effects, and DVD burning?

[Praxis]

I'll buy from you for $300... bout what it's worth

Sell it!

[Praxis]

I'd say that if you can get rid of it for $600, do it. I made my cpu for about $600 and its strong enough even now to run doom 3 on a high setting when it comes out.

Sounds impressive! What exactly should I look for in a multimedia computer for lots of video capturing, editing, special effects, and DVD burning?

I highly suggest ibuypower.com ... seriously, their prices are just a tad bit more than building the computer yourself, in some cases, and you can get Windows bundled with it (I can see from the shots you're a windows user) for cheaper than a self built computer!

I suggest you start from the Athlon XP configurer http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp.net/store/ ... aspx?mid=1

$731 will get you...

A very cool case with see through side panels
Athlon XP 2800+ (better than 2.8 ghz Pentium 4)
500 watt power supply (good for gaming)
CPU fan, CPU heatsink, + 2 extra fans (counting fan on power supply, thats 4 fans total)
Built in LAN
USB 2.0
AGP 8x
512 MB DDR RAM
256 MB Radeon 9600 XT (thats right, XT) w/TV-out and DVI
80 gig hard drive
DVD-RW (whoo!)
600 watt 3 peice speaker system
Floppy drive
keyboard
mouse

Not bad at all

[Pu-239]

I'd say that if you can get rid of it for $600, do it. I made my cpu for about $600 and its strong enough even now to run doom 3 on a high setting when it comes out.

Sounds impressive! What exactly should I look for in a multimedia computer for lots of video capturing, editing, special effects, and DVD burning?

I highly suggest ibuypower.com ... seriously, their prices are just a tad bit more than building the computer yourself, in some cases, and you can get Windows bundled with it (I can see from the shots you're a windows user) for cheaper than a self built computer!

I suggest you start from the Athlon XP configurer http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp.net/store/ ... aspx?mid=1

$731 will get you...

A very cool case with see through side panels
Athlon XP 2800+ (better than 2.8 ghz Pentium 4)
500 watt power supply (good for gaming)
CPU fan, CPU heatsink, + 2 extra fans (counting fan on power supply, thats 4 fans total)
Built in LAN
USB 2.0
AGP 8x
512 MB DDR RAM
256 MB Radeon 9600 XT (thats right, XT) w/TV-out and DVI
80 gig hard drive
DVD-RW (whoo!)
600 watt 3 peice speaker system
Floppy drive
keyboard
mouse

Not bad at all

Couldn't you get a low end Athlon 64 for a little more? Also, he's multimedia oriented, so hyperthreading on Intel would help.

My PC has worse specs than that (though 4 times the amount of RAM).

[Pu-239]

I retract my above statement, since you can *always* get something better for a little more.

[Praxis]

The Athlon 64s started at around $799...
The P4's cost fifty to a hundred more than than the Athlons in most cases...

[Vertigo1]

Praxis, you might want to mention the brand names when you post specs.

Getting back on topic here, heres something I whipped up real quick off of newegg.com (I deal with them all the time and they are VERY reliable.)

Foxconn CasEdge Case with 400W Power Supply - $88
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ "Barton", 333MHz FSB, 512K Cache Processor - Retail - $121
ASUS "A7N8X" nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset - $83
2x Crucial 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-2700 - OEM - $186.00 (You WILL need atleast 1GB for video editing...trust me, I know.)
AOpen nVIDIA GeForce FX5700LE Video Card, 128MB DDR - $87
Maxtor 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model 6Y120P0, OEM Drive Only - $86.49
NEC 8X Black Dual Layer DVD+/-RW Drive, Model ND-2510A BLK, OEM BULK - $74.99 (DAAAAAMN good deal on that sucker!)
Leadtek PCI TV/FM Tuner Card, REMOTE, Model "WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe" -RETAIL - $43.89
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack SP1a - OEM - $141 (Its $84 for the student/teacher version...which is the same thing, only cheaper.)

Grand total: $ 911.37

Just FYI, you will not need anything more than a 400W power supply with a rig like this. There is no way in hell it will even come close to eating up 400W of power unless you slapped in a dual processor rig with a shitload of fans and lights. I have a very similar system running on a Foxconn 350W power supply with no problems whatsoever.

Now you can obviously trim it a little by going for a cheaper case, but I'd stick to the Foxconn line if I were you. They tend to have lower priced power stuff that give you the best bang for your buck.

Note: I've never been asked for my student ID number when buying academic software (yes, I am an actual college student) so try for the student edition if you can.

[Pu-239]

I've heard SDRAM is actually more costly than DDR nowadays, and I have large quantities of it laying around... is this true? (probably won't sell any of it, since I will always have a use for old computers).

[Vertigo1]

I've heard SDRAM is actually more costly than DDR nowadays, and I have large quantities of it laying around... is this true? (probably won't sell any of it, since I will always have a use for old computers).

Thats quite true. It costs just a little more than the equivilent ammount of DDR. I'm just glad I've got 640MB of PC133 stuck into an old system. (using that system for testing purposes)

[Lord Poe]

Thanks for the specs, Vertigo1

[Vertigo1]

Thanks for the specs, Vertigo1

Yeah, even if you don't go for what I posted above, don't accept less than 1GB of RAM. I've got half a gig in my system right now and it takes me 20 - 25 minutes to render a 23 minute SVCD formate mpeg from an mpeg2 stream. (For the record, I have an Athlon XP 2800+ chip, and both sticks of RAM are in dual channel mode.)

btw, I intentionally left out a monitor, keyboard, and mouse because you can get those locally alot cheaper than online.