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General discussion

Need help in buying a desktop

by november-rain Mar 18, 2010 4:30PM PDT

Budget: around USD 850 (total)

Looking for:
A PC with a Full HD monitor (around 22-inches) and if possible, a discrete graphics card (256MB VRAM is enough but optional) with a total budget of around USD 850.

Needs to have at least:
Windows 7 Home Premium OS, 2GB-4GB RAM, 250GB-500GB (or more) HDD storage, Intel or AMD processors will be fine with me - just as long they can run Windows 7 and HD videos with no problem.

Additional details: This PC will be used primarily for surfing the web, playing facebook games, watching videos on the full HD monitor and streaming video from the PC to a 42-inches HD LCD monitor.

Inquiry: Are discrete cards really necessary if I want to play 720p or 1080p video without any lag with media players like VLC? or will an integrated graphics card do the job just fine?

I will be buying a PC by mid or late April so I'm asking for opinions now. Thanks for the feedback.

Discussion is locked

2 Posts

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just about any $600 pc at your local retailer shoud be fine

by ramarc Mar 19, 2010 10:18AM PDT

dell xps 8100 starts at $650 and you can usually find a sale that includes a 22" monitor for $750 or less. hp and gateway usually have similar desktops for similar pricing.
dell site

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Still looking for other options

by november-rain Mar 19, 2010 4:47PM PDT

I'm buying my PC from Singapore, and the cheapest Dell XPS 8100 costs around USD 1000 (from www.dell.com.sg), and it doesn't even include a monitor. Currently the best deal I found is a Dell Inspiron 545s, which includes the following specs for a price of around USD 870:

Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor E8500 (3.16GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB)
Genuine Windows(R) 7 Home Premium 64bit (English)
Dell(TM) ST2210 21.5? Full HD Widescreen Monitor
4GB (4X1GB) DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz Memory
16X DVD+/-RW with Dual Layer Write Capabilities
NVIDIA

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