hi, i have an option to trade my aspire 5100 laptop for this machine. would this make a good gaming machine with a few tweaks?. if so, what tweaks (cheapest is better) would you recomend? i dont know much about intel as ive been out of the computer world for several years. would you make the trade? or save up and build yer own?..

Includes the following:
2 flat panel Monitors one 15" and one 17"
1 gig of ram - single Dimm will support 4 gig with 3 open slots
1ea 80 gig drive
1ea 160 gig drive
1ea 200 gig drive
1ea PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 [CD-ROM drive]
SAA7130 TV tuner Card - Video Capture
Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet
Supports both Serial and IDE drives
Windows XP (will run Vista)
ATI Radeon X1050 With Dual monitor support
Office Enterprise 2007
Microsoft - Office FrontPage 2003
Roxio - Creator Basic v9
Symantec AntiVirus
Some additional Info: Intel® Pentium® processor with Hyper-Threading Technology Will run Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, x64 Edition Vista Red Hat Enterprise WS 3, Support for future Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) processors Intel 925X Express chipset Integrated Gbit LAN by Broadcom 800 MHz processor front side bus 3 PCI-Express slots/4 PCI slots Dual channel DDR-2 memory at 533 MHz Four channel SATA Controller with RAID 0 or 1 SoundMax Digital AC97 integrated audio with internal speaker
This machine is extreemly fast. I built this machine and no longer have a need for it... Will trade for Laptop...

thanks for any input.

-Aaron

 I would recommend saving some dough and geting a new system. Sounds like this system might be 3yrs or older. There is an incredible amount of new technology out now. You can get an entry level Intel Core 2 Quad Processor for about $185.00 USD. etc. Tiger direct has great deals on barebone systems, which come with MOBO and CPU or MOBO and RAM etc. Thats a great way to get newer technology at a bundle discount.

P.S. I have an outdated system too and also looking foward to upgrading hopefully soon, but you know what they say.. "patience is virtue" Wait a month and prices will drop down even more on items you wish to buy.

Under budget contraints a 2 core will do just fine, like the e7200 that can be had for $120 and be able to OC to impressive highs. Or go AMD for even for budget conscious users - an Athlon 5000+ is available for $50 and up depending on the deal; AMD-based mobos are cheaper too. You can build a fairly powerful rig that costs less than $500 like that - ram for $20-40, mobo for $50-60, video card for $100-150 (88XX series, 9600GT, 38XX series, 4850), PSU for $40-50, hard drives from $40 depending on size, optical drive for $20.

I recently built one for a friend - Athlon 6400, 2GB ocz ddr667, ECS 780G w/ integrated HD3200, 400w Rosewill stallion (powered and played on my 4850 that I plugged in perfectly fine; you don't need 500+w for that) for $200. Plays his warcraft 3 just fine and if needed, could add another $100 or $150 for a nice boost to games.

Also, is your laptop old (sorry, can't be bothered to search)? I mean, do the dollar values of the desktop and laptop match would be the big question. Laptops generally have higher resale values on say.. CL so keep that in mind.

Not sure what the exact specs are that you configured your laptop with. But I did a quick search and hit the first link. Scanned for specs and I would keep the laptop.

Also, I personally don't like trades since I am not sure how well the other person handled the hardware.

You should definitely save up and build your own. It is more fun too!

By the way, I just assumed you would be a gamer. What exactly do you want out of your (future) desktop? Games, multimedia, etc? Because depending on your needs, the price of building your own desktop can vary greatly.

 i would like a gaming machine, i figure if it will play the most modern games with ease then it will do anything i would ever want to do with a pc.. so, mostly gaming.. the faster the cheaper the better..

-- btw, this deal isnt available any longer, i passed it up and plan on building one as cheap as i can, probably within the next couple to three months, any information to help me get the fastest machine for as little as possible would be appreciated.. like i said, ive been out of the hardware scene for years now,  and dont really know anything about the new technology...

my laptop is pretty decent, just not good for gaming, there are alot of things i could change about it, but it works for now, i acctually changed the 2ghz turion for a 1.8ghz x2 turion, not sure if that was an upgrade but some things seem to load a little faster. radeon mobile x1100.. its nothing great but its alright for a laptop..

this is what im thinking, at the moment anyway..    could i do better for $530?

Combo with AMD CPU
  Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (2 x 3.2GHz - 2000FSB - 2MB Cache 90nm)
  ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI
    4GB DDR2 800MHz
(Dual Channel Kit) 
  80GB 7200RPM SATA II U300 - Hard Drive

Samsung - 20x Lightscribe Double Layer DVD+/-RW

but thats not counting a case, power supply and a monitor.. wich i would need...

ayagle:

this is what im thinking, at the moment anyway..    could i do better for $530?

Combo with AMD CPU
  Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (2 x 3.2GHz - 2000FSB - 2MB Cache 90nm)
  ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI
    4GB DDR2 800MHz
(Dual Channel Kit) 
  80GB 7200RPM SATA II U300 - Hard Drive

Samsung - 20x Lightscribe Double Layer DVD+/-RW

but thats not counting a case, power supply and a monitor.. wich i would need...

Is $530 your total budget? Or is it just what you allotted for the components you listed (CPU, mobo, RAM, HDD, optical drive)?

Oh, you would also need a video card if you want to play current games.

 $530 is what i can get the listed components for.. would like to go cheaper if i could, the motherboard comes with an hd3200 that can be set up with hybrid crossfire, so i was going to add a different card eventually..  i realize this is an intel forum, but my original post was about an intel system...     thats just what i found on one site for a combo deal, i wonder if i could go cheaper and get just as much performance..

thanks again for any help

Quick look around Newegg and came up with this:

CPU

Intel core 2 Duo E7200 - $124.99

Motherboard

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L - $84.99

RAM

G.Skill 2x2GB - $79.00

Hard Drive

Seagate 250GB - $59.99

Optical Drive

LiteOn - $21.65

Total price = $370.62 (if I did my math correctly).

I know you originally picked a 80GB hard drive. If you are perfectly fine with that capacity, you can get that instead to save even more money.

As for the RAM, I picked a 2x2GB kit just because you did. Though I'm not sure if you really need 4GB total of RAM. But you know your needs better than anyone else and the choice is yours to make since it is your money.

Concerning the motherboard. I'm not sure on the choice because you picked out a mATX motherboard. Not sure if you wanted it because you planned on using a small case/LAN box or just because of the combo deal.

This was just a quick listing of the components you already selected to show that it can be done for less. By no means is this the lowest or the best selection. You can swap or even ignore the whole list if it doesn't meet your needs or expectations.