[JackBullet]

Hello! I'm sure you're all delighted to have another "I know literally nothing about computers" dunce come crawling on his hands and knees, holding the splintered, dying remnants of his former machine in his shaking hands...so here I am!

So...I have a 5-year-old Dell Dimension running Windows XP. It sucks. I liked it for the first two years, but then it just became a massive problem. Looong story short, I need a new machine! My natural inclination was to go with a Mac, specifically, an iMac. But I was then told that I could have a BETTER computer for hundreds of dollars less, if I were to build or customize my own PC. Basically, I was lectured for "paying extra for the name". I have zero skill and knowledge about buying parts and actually building the thing (I mean really zero), so I figured there must be some option to customize a PC to order. Is there such a place? Here are a few criteria:

BUDGET: $700 - $900. If I'm going to spend $1,000, I feel like I should just go ahead and spring for the user-friendly, easy, lovely Mac. If I can save a few beans, I'm happy to have an excellent PC.

USAGE: Music (tons of it, ie: over 15,000 songs), CD burning (in a band, gotta burns lots of demos), video performance (not saving many video files, but DVD and streaming playback), pictures, internet browsing, and writing software (word processing, Celtx, etc...not "writing" software, but running programs for writing words). That's it! I'm easy to please! Nothing crazy. Perhaps something with light gaming capabilities. I've been wanting to give The Old Republic a try.

LONGEVITY: I don't want to go through the [bleep] I went with Dell after two years. I want this thing to be a BAMF long after purchase.

SPEED: Instant gratification, baby.

That's basically it! Any suggestions for where to look for a great build, and which components to get will be hugely appreciated. I really trust you guys, as your Malware people have saved my current computer from death many times. Thanks again, and I can't wait to start looking!

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Hello JackBullet

I have put a list of components together for you to look over http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gXX0

Take a look and any questions as to why any part has been selected please ask.

Couple of pointers for you, an AMD build would be less expensive than an Intel, I have not included an OS, do you have an OS disk such as Windows 7 64-bit? If not and it is the OS you want installed this will add circa $99.99 to the overall cost and finally as you are only playing videos back and not rendering them I have not selected a HyperThreading i7 CPU + I have only chosen 8GB of Ram as opposed to 16GB, your budget would not have allowed for this in any event.

[phillpower2]

Hello JackBullet

I have put a list of components together for you to look over http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gXX0

Take a look and any questions as to why any part has been selected please ask.

Couple of pointers for you, an AMD build would be less expensive than an Intel, I have not included an OS, do you have an OS disk such as Windows 7 64-bit? If not and it is the OS you want installed this will add circa $99.99 to the overall cost and finally as you are only playing videos back and not rendering them I have not selected a HyperThreading i7 CPU + I have only chosen 8GB of Ram as opposed to 16GB, your budget would not have allowed for this in any event.

[JackBullet]

Thank you! The price and materials look good, but how would I go about having this built? Is there a service that will put together a custom PC for you?

Also, I'm not entirely sure of the difference between memory and storage. How many gigs of space doni have for music and such? I'm assuming the 8G is is not the same thing, as I'm sure I already exceed that.

[phillpower2]

You could approach a couple of local tech stores and ask them for price quotes to use for comparison purposes or you could build your own, the latter would give you self satisfaction and save you some cash, if you have no interest in building your own then choose the first option, have a look at the guide provided courtesy of Troy and Artellos respectively http://www.geekstogo...r-own-computer/

Memory is what the system uses to temporarily store data for quick access (Ram = random access memory) think of it like a web page when you close the link the information is gone, Ram does the same as in once you close a program the temporary information is gone, storage space refers to whatever type/s of device that you use to store data that you wish to or have to keep such as the OS (operating system) drivers, pictures/media and so on, these types of device include mechanical type hard drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs) as two examples.