Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Flying Dice]

Okay, here's my situation. I'm finished with my undergraduate studies and am doing my graduate work online, so my need for a laptop has diminished down to just about nothing.

If I had all the time in the world, I would build myself a desktop on the cheap. Unfortunately that's not how things worked out. My laptop's started freezing constantly without regard to whether it's running something or idle (or what it's running), and I've narrowed it down to Error 7 (good ol' bad block on the HDD). I'm still running fixes because I'm not sure if it's a physical problem with the drive or one of the myriad of software issues that have apparently cropped up around Win8.1 (most likely one which -- I'm not sure, the reports are mostly in broken English and the responses aren't much better -- is some sort of problem that makes all unfilled blocks read as if they're bad), but that doesn't really matter, seeing as how I have classes starting in less than a month.

In short, I need a computer. I also want to go ahead and invest in a gaming rig that'll be pretty good without breaking the bank. What I'm looking at is the Asus G10AJUS010S. It runs at ~$1,500 US (plus the cost of a cheap monitor), has consistently favorable reviews and no systemic issues that I've been able to uncover, and has the following relevant specs:

CPU: Intel i7 3.6GHz
GPU: GTX 970 (Yes, I'm aware of the whole 3.5GB thing, it's not worth an extra $400 to me to upgrade to something with a 980.)
RAM: 16GB
HDD: 2TB
SSD: 128GB
Power: 500W adapter

Q: Taking into consideration that I'm valuing speed (I can have this on my desk and running in less than a week) and my pressing issues, am I overlooking anything that would make this a serious waste of money?

[kilakan]

So you are buying a pre-built asus rig instead of building your own?  You could save a ton of money by doing that and it's not too hard as most parts come with manuals on what does what/where you plug what in/ect these days.

 500w is a tad low for a good gaming rig, if you are nearing capacity on the PS than you risk it burning out and possibly frying the system/generating a TON of extra heat.

I also wanted to mention that your idea of not breaking the bank is very strange at ~1.500 usd...  Another cost to consider is operating system if you had intended on using windows.

[Bohandas]

Well whatever you do, make sure you don't get a computer with the Windows 8 or Windows 10 operating system, they're not designed for desktop computers; go with Windows 7, Windows XP, or Linux

[Thief^]

Well whatever you do, make sure you don't get a computer with the Windows 8 or Windows 10 operating system, they're not designed for desktop computers; go with Windows 7, Windows XP, or Linux

Nonsense. Windows 10 is definitely a desktop OS. It's a free upgrade from 8 (and 7), so feel free to get a Windows 8 PC and run through the free upgrade process even if you don't like 8.

And for fucks sake don't use XP. It has more security holes than security, at this point, because Microsoft ceased supplying security updates over a year ago (and regular updates were ceased in 2009). It also won't run a lot of modern games - several recent releases require 64-bit Windows 7 or newer.

As games start to come out using DirectX 12, you will need to use Windows 10 (maybe 8 ). Windows 7 will never get DirectX 12 because Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 back in January, meaning no more non-security updates for it.

EDIT:

500w is a tad low for a good gaming rig, if you are nearing capacity on the PS than you risk it burning out and possibly frying the system/generating a TON of extra heat.

500W is plenty for a single-gpu pc, especially with an i7 and 970, they're very power-efficient compared to previous generations. The i7 is 85W max and the 970 is 145W - total 230W (if not overclocked). Even allowing 150W* for the rest of the PC, that still leaves 120W of the psu's capacity unused, even at maximum load. It'll be fine.

*which is ludicrously generous, spinning hdds only use 10W at worst and optical drives peak at 30W for blu-ray writers, less for dvd

[PyroDesu]

That pre-built looks suspiciously... well-balanced. Could use a bit beefier of an SSD, perhaps, and the CPU really ought to have a few more GHz for the tier of computer you're talking about, but overall, it's not bad. Could be built cheaper (and possibly higher-quality - without seeing pics of the internals and exact part stuff, I can't really comment on that), that's a given - but you've already stated that you don't want to wait for parts to ship in and whatnot (although if you were more worried about time taken choosing bits, I would redirect you here).

Then again, ASUS has always been a good manufacturer, in my books. Solid, quality products.

As for OS, avoid 8. 10 is, so far, decent (me and my family are trying it on a variety of computers, desktop and laptop, and so far so good, with only a few bugs - though the computer I'm writing this on is still 7). Get an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) copy if you do buy OS separately (no bloatware!), and for the love of god, make sure you put it on that SSD.

[Aklyon]

From a quick search for that model leading to best buy, it sounds like its a win8.1 computer that comes with some amount of bloatware, which is pretty eh with both 7 & 10 being a thing. If you weren't worried about speed I'd say its rather pricy compared to what you could probably build, but otherwise I'd agree with pyrodesu, it is oddly balanced for a prebuilt computer.