Are you comfortable building one?

There's unfortunately been a couple news stories now about the 27" $300 korean monitors, get one while they still exist. Look on eBay for FSM-270YG or Catleap, and pick a seller with good feedback. They're built on secondhand panels, now that the secret's out prices probably go up and/or the sellers run out.

And hell, build your own PC. Anyone who can turn a screw can build a PC.

That computer is awesome!  The graphics card especially is amazing!

Get a solid state drive.  For DDO it works.

My computer recently went kerblooie.  The new computer that I'm ending up with is
my dad's power supply that he was going to put in his one computer but never got around to,
the extra motherboard that he bought because his died but it turned out to be bad memory, so he has an extra motherboard,
the 3rd 4GB memory stick that a friend of mine bought because he didn't know that you had to buy either 1 stick or an even number of sticks, and
an AMD Phenom II 965 x4 3.something GHz whatever blah blah that was $90 because I had to actually buy a chip.

I rolled a critical hit on my scavange attempt.  I am a big fan of building from parts.  If you can get your hands on relatively recent "spare parts", anything that you end up with at that price will make you happy since it is so much better than whatever you have.  Just make sure you buy a new hard drive each time you get a new computer because hard drives do go bad after a few years and losing all of your data really sucks even if you do have a backup (which almost no one actually does).

popejubal wrote on Jul 28^th, 2012 at 9:18pm:


I actually keep what some would consider redundant backup.  I always have one drive for OS and programs, and one drive for program installation files/documents/media/pics/anything I want to keep.  And I also have an external on which I keep a copy of that second drive.  So if anything ever happens to my OS drive, all I have to do is replace the drive and the OS, and reinstall my drivers and programs, but I don't actually lose anything.  If anything ever happens to my second drive, I replace it and import everything from my external, so I still don't actually lose anything unless I haven't backed up in a while (which I try to do once a month or so, just start the process before I leave to go somewhere and when I get back it's done).

I prefer this approach over partitions because if the drive actually goes kaput, having a partition doesn't matter, you still lose it.  If the backup is on a completely different drive and the first drive goes bad, it's a different story.
So one drive for OS, one drive for all *my* stuff, and one drive for backup of my stuff.  The second internal drive for my stuff is the one that people would call redundant, as a partition would work for that.  But I like having that extra drive.  It just makes it easier if the OS drive takes a shit.  Then I don't need to start from scratch and import everything from the backup.  All I have to do is the system stuff and programs.

cdr wrote on Jul 29^th, 2012 at 11:24pm:


Or if you want to switch to a green one.

Depends on what you can spend

Just go to best buy and get the one with an i7, a good graphix card that isnt on the oh shit list on the DDO forum, 8 GB RAM, dvd drive and crossover tech so you can get a second video card.

Solid stat HD would be nice. 1900xwhatever monitor would also be nice. soundcard would be nice but no REAL need at first since most integrated sound is decent enough. And if you do go to best buy, make sure you ask if they will add the second vid, soundcard, ram, etc... in store instead of sending out.

If you have about $2500, go have a monster built at a local custom store.

Mine- OS is on Raid on SAT0 and SATA1 so all I have to do is pop in a drive and Im up in 15 min. Programs, music, videos - on SATA2 and then a I have a hotswap drive I pop in once a week to back up the drive on SATA2.

AtomicMew wrote on Jul 31^st, 2012 at 1:36am:

OP said he doesnt know how to build one. I would have suggested a custom from newegg but if it needs work, Im sure he would prefer local vs mail in. And best buy can do most everything in house. As can a local custom shop. but the custom shops cost. So no... Im not fucking kidding you.

And $2500 for a nice machine isnt unreasonable. the new Nvidia cards are still at 1k/ea. Depends on what he wants and what he has to spend. But just keep putting out do it yourself info that wont help OP. Hell, if ya wanna go REALLY cheap and dont care if you run DDO hi or lo-rez, get one from WalMart.

Remember Armageddon? *Russian components, American components... all made in Taiwan.*

Xynot2 wrote on Jul 31^st, 2012 at 1:46am:

I never suggested any DIY computer building in this thread.  The machine I linked to is a pre-built HP based on AMDs new chipset.  The only one who is not helping the OP is you because of your phenomenal ability to not read, considering you suggested spending $2500 when the OP clearly stated he didn't want to spend more than $800.

cdr wrote on Jul 30^th, 2012 at 6:04pm:


Yep, in the winter it's nice to have a lower efficiency PS, in the summer not so much.

Nerdychaz wrote on Jul 27^th, 2012 at 6:34pm:


If you're really set on Dell and not building one yourself (or getting a mate to give you a hand putting it all together, it really isn't that hard, nowadays most components can only fit into one specific location) i'd go with the &
$700 XPS 8500 http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=fxdopu48&model_id=xps-8500...; mostly because its the only desktop i can see there that doesn't have on-board shithouse GPU's. Throw in a decent monitor and you're looking at a bit under 900.

Granted for the same money you can probably build something better, but if you need prebuilt i'd go with the Dell XPS stuff. Whatever brand you decide to go with (assuming you go prebuilt) avoid the slimline desktops, they almost always have crap onboard graphics cards or low power slim cards which are only marginally better.

One advantage of DIYing though is that components like power supplies, cases, optical drives can be carried up when you rebuild/upgrade. Upgrading prebuilt boxes, if you need to, is often more difficult cause they can, and most do, use proprietary connections and layouts on the cables, motherboard case mounts etc. and the power supply is often just enough for the stock components.

Anyway, just my 2c.