$1100 to spend (has to be tigerdirect.com)

[dragonhighlord1]

I have $1100 to spend at Tigerdirect for my tower, I already have 2 monitors(lg 22", cyborg keyboard, naga mouse, bose speakers and headset, so i think I just need the tower part, it seems build your own is much better then one of their pre-builts. So what would you get?
__________________
Less is More, and Perfect is good enough

[stille_nacht]

alienware custom Towers tend to be very good for the price.

also, specifically for the graphics card, i highly recommend GForce GTX 460, very good bang for the buck.

[TigrisMorte]

While they are a fine company, Tigerdirect would not be my first rec. for a system.
If you are not going to "roll your own", go Alienware. Just my .02

[UCBlack]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...225&CatId=4928

Short description: iBUYPOWER Gamer Extreme 572SLC Gaming PC - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz, 4GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, DVDRW, ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB VRAM, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, Blue

$869.99

ibuypower, same as cyberpowerpc. I've had 4 different machines, including my two current ones, from there. LOVE THEM! I am sure you can add more ram with the difference in what you have vs what this costs.

[bradleyforrest]

Just out of curiosity, why does it have to be TigerDirect? Why not NewEgg?

I don't like Alienware, myself. They seem overpriced for what you get.

[asphodeli]

Might wanna list out your current rig's configuration so that people could give better advice, OP

[RJBsComputer]

spend about $300 to $350 on an Asus Motherboard....gaming or graphic based
spend about $300 to $350 on an Intel Core 7i quad chip
No less then 2GB Ram
1100 watts to 1500 watts psu
two 500 GB HD
2 graphic cards....agree with stille_nacht
get lowest costing case that fits MB and has good vent and fan set-up

[countesscrow]

I have $1100 to spend at Tigerdirect for my tower, I already have 2 monitors(lg 22", cyborg keyboard, naga mouse, bose speakers and headset, so i think I just need the tower part, it seems build your own is much better then one of their pre-builts. So what would you get?
__________________
Less is More, and Perfect is good enough

Also not a Tigerdirect fan!

I would build my own, however if thats not possible I would use these guys.

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

[Gol]

I'd -1 TigerDirect if I could.

If you need a pre-built system, go with Alienware or Dell. If you can build it yourself, buy all the parts from NewEgg.

edit: Just looked at cyberpowerpc.com - looks good to me, though I've never heard of them (because I always build my own)

edit 2: I take that back. Find a vendor capable of doing a RAID 5 config. It boggles me that so many places refuse to do them.

[Hirosue]

buy 1,100 $1 items ,doesnt matter whatever they are.

Think of all the fun you could have unwrapping that many things.

next question ?

[Halock]

Bought and built many rigs from tigerdirect parts, i'v never had a problem with them :O

Havent looked at what the best bang for buck is in the past few months, but wiht your budget you'll get a very good setup. Go heavy on the card and processor, no less than 4 gigs of ram, me personally woudlnt spend much on the actual tower case, im happy with a card board box, but one that fits everything nicely with removable bays is pretty nice if you like to tinker and stuff.

Do your research on the graphics cards, especially nvidia stuff, as they release a bunch of cards that all sound the same but can have drastically different specs for similar prices.

[Big_Russ]

1. No need to spend money on Alienware if you are comfortable building your own.

2. In my opinion AMD gives the best bang for the buck, especially for gaming rigs.

3. If you do anything besides gaming that is processor intensive, consider the i7. I have and i7 920 and use it to compile video. Excellent chip.

4. With 2 and 3 being said, I'd wait a month for a fixed Sandybridge system. There is a bug with the SATA II ports in the chipset right now that Intel says will be fixed by the end of February. Once that is fixed, it will be an awesome processor. Faster than an i7 and much, much cheaper.

5. I use GSKill memory and have been for 4 years now. Never had an issue with a stick. Easily overclocked. I don't know that I would fork over the money for the fastest memory--I'm not convinced that it is really necessary. However, I am using thi-channel with the 1366 motherboard. Might make more of a difference with dual-channel, I don't know.

6. Graphics cards are too opinionated to comment on. If you are an Nvidia kind of guy, the 460 is a very good card. The new 580 is extremely price, but very, very fast. If you are an ATI person, then get the 6870. Very, very good card for around $200.

7. Power supply--I have a Thermaltake 900w modular. Just buy a good name brand with somewhwere in the neighborhood of 800-1000w. IMO unless you are running 3 graphics cards there is no real reason to go to 1500w. I would strongly suggest a modular power supply, though. It really, really makes cable management easy.

[CR-Shadowborn]

1. No need to spend money on Alienware if you are comfortable building your own.

2. In my opinion AMD gives the best bang for the buck, especially for gaming rigs.

3. If you do anything besides gaming that is processor intensive, consider the i7. I have and i7 920 and use it to compile video. Excellent chip.

4. With 2 and 3 being said, I'd wait a month for a fixed Sandybridge system. There is a bug with the SATA II ports in the chipset right now that Intel says will be fixed by the end of February. Once that is fixed, it will be an awesome processor. Faster than an i7 and much, much cheaper.

5. I use GSKill memory and have been for 4 years now. Never had an issue with a stick. Easily overclocked. I don't know that I would fork over the money for the fastest memory--I'm not convinced that it is really necessary. However, I am using thi-channel with the 1366 motherboard. Might make more of a difference with dual-channel, I don't know.

6. Graphics cards are too opinionated to comment on. If you are an Nvidia kind of guy, the 460 is a very good card. The new 580 is extremely price, but very, very fast. If you are an ATI person, then get the 6870. Very, very good card for around $200.

7. Power supply--I have a Thermaltake 900w modular. Just buy a good name brand with somewhwere in the neighborhood of 800-1000w. IMO unless you are running 3 graphics cards there is no real reason to go to 1500w. I would strongly suggest a modular power supply, though. It really, really makes cable management easy.

+1 best response yet

tigerdiect.com usually has some great deals on bare bones kits that can be fleshed out nicely for a really decent price. We just built a gaming rig for our teenager for christmas that he would marry and sleep with if he could for about $800 they also have very fast shipping if you live in the US.

[Cam_Neely]

not quite what you asked, but if you you are using it as a gaming computer (is there any other type of computer you wanna drop $1,100 on? ) I would suggest this if you have a few bucks left over.

http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPa...duct_Id=390404

[TheKeg]

I, like Shadow, agree with BigRuss on his points.

I just recently built my comp and love it. I highly recommend the GTX460. Really awesome bang for the buck and you can get many varieties that come factory overclocked. I ordered everything from NewEgg.com though. They have always had the lower price for items I was looking for (or for total order). I have bought a few things from Buy.com, MWave.com and Zipzoomfly.com, but that was because they happened to have the item in stock when no one else did. I generally don't like their websites though because they tend to be not as intuitive or as structured as NewEgg.

Something else I've not seen anyone mention is Tom's Hardware. It's an excellent site for comparisons and reviews, they even feature a System Builders article that gets updated a few times a year. The most recent one for your price range is located here. It's from December, so you're likely to see another set of builds in the next month or so, but it's a good starting point for what you might look for.

RAM: I've used GSkill, Corsair, Kingston, PNY and AData and I've not had issues with any of them. Mind though, I don't overclock any of my parts so I can not speak on that part of their ability. But straight from the factory I've never received a dead stick or had any problems from any of those makers.

My on major piece of advice is DO NOT skimp on the power supply. I got lucky on several older builds with cheaper supplies, but didn't on my last build. Screwed up a few parts do to unstable rail voltages. Go modular if you have a smaller case or don't have the room to tuck the extra wires. I got my first modular supply for my newest build and it really cleans up the look inside the PC and allows for smoother/better airflow.

[hermespan]

Just out of curiosity, why does it have to be TigerDirect? Why not NewEgg?

I don't like Alienware, myself. They seem overpriced for what you get.

Alienware = Dell = overpriced.

Right off the bat, the parts you are getting are a minimum of 9 months old, however they are charging you prices of the newest latest greatest parts. The case designs look good, but it's hard to beat an Antec 900 case for actual airflow. It's impossible to move too much air through your case.

You can build your own machine with 9 month old parts for half the price of the alienware with a better power supply, better case airflow and better motherboard. All you need to really worry about is making sure the CPU and memory are compatible with your mobo.

Before you spend a dime at Tiger Direct, do some comparison shopping at newegg. It's been my experience that TD is kind of like the K-Mart of computer parts, newegg is more like the Neimann Marcus of computer parts. You can get _anything_ there and the prices are excellent.

Go to motherboard company websites (Asus, Gigabyte, etc) and familiarize yourself with the feature sets of their latest offerings, then go motherboard shopping.

Absolutely avoid intel's "Sandy Bridge" chipset (P67, H67 motherboards to be exact). It's broken. There's a class action lawsuit against intel over it. That's the only caveat I'm aware of with the current crop of chipsets. You'd best believe retailers will do anything to get rid of this stock. There's a silicon defect that causes the SATA 3 port performance to degrade over time. Your disks will run slower and slower.

Intel is producing new motherboards with the defect fixed but they aren't due to be at retailers until later this month. Look for B3 stepping chipsets with the silicon fix if you want to go intel. Wait til early march to buy one and be sure you aren't getting a broken one.

http://www.techeye.net/chips/intels-...-domino-effect

[lethargos]

Get a 300$ laptop, crank graphical details up. Next grab loads of beer, spend rest on ddo points, get drunk and blame it all on lag. © "I got teh rez cakes"

[PopeJual]

I don't play games other than CivIV, CivV and DDO on my computer, so my answer won't give you an uber gaming rig, but if it were me, I'd spend $600 on either a moderately decent laptop or a very nice tower PC and then use the remaining $500 to buy another computer in 2-3 years.

I'm kind of a cheapskate, though.

[Dartwick]

Some thoughts.

The OS. Most people on forums suggest builds that dont include paying for an OS. If you dont have some means to not pay for it then you need to inclide it. This is one of the ways that buying a Dell saves you more money than people suppose.

Ive had good luck with both NewEgg and Tigerdirect. I check both any time Im making a purchase.

Building your own if youre willing to take what was state of the art 6 months ago is the best bargain. If youre standards are lower then a Dell or a Delll with a graphics card you instal yourself might be the best deal.

[Hambo]

1. No need to spend money on Alienware if you are comfortable building your own.

2. In my opinion AMD gives the best bang for the buck, especially for gaming rigs.

3. If you do anything besides gaming that is processor intensive, consider the i7. I have and i7 920 and use it to compile video. Excellent chip.

4. With 2 and 3 being said, I'd wait a month for a fixed Sandybridge system. There is a bug with the SATA II ports in the chipset right now that Intel says will be fixed by the end of February. Once that is fixed, it will be an awesome processor. Faster than an i7 and much, much cheaper.

5. I use GSKill memory and have been for 4 years now. Never had an issue with a stick. Easily overclocked. I don't know that I would fork over the money for the fastest memory--I'm not convinced that it is really necessary. However, I am using thi-channel with the 1366 motherboard. Might make more of a difference with dual-channel, I don't know.

6. Graphics cards are too opinionated to comment on. If you are an Nvidia kind of guy, the 460 is a very good card. The new 580 is extremely price, but very, very fast. If you are an ATI person, then get the 6870. Very, very good card for around $200.

7. Power supply--I have a Thermaltake 900w modular. Just buy a good name brand with somewhwere in the neighborhood of 800-1000w. IMO unless you are running 3 graphics cards there is no real reason to go to 1500w. I would strongly suggest a modular power supply, though. It really, really makes cable management easy.

I like the ASUS Crosshair Extreme IV mainboard... with a Phenom II X6 (6 core) it supports 2Ghz bus speed DDR3 ram. I don't know Tigerdirect's prices but I've seen the ASUS Main for $299 and the fastest Phenom II X6 1100 chip for $240-ish. The next chip down (-200Mhz) was about $190. You could also use any of the other Phenom II chips if your'e ok with somewhat slower ram (1600Mhz)... from a 3.2 Ghz dual core ($90) to a 3.6 Ghz quad core (about $170) and upgrade later on.

The mainboard has 2 bios flashes, so if you're into overclocking you can keep a "safe" config and a hot config, selectable from a back panel button.

It also has an optional Bluetooth interface (included but removable), supports 10 SATA drives, 14 USB (2 ver 3.0), 2 IEEE 1394 (firewire) and can be tweaked from either a PC or smartphone, via USB or Bluetooth, while the system is running.

It also supports multiple PCI-e video cards but they don't have to be identical. A popular config is a certain ATI card and a certain Nvidia card, one for rendering speed and the other for Physx support.

The prices you see above are included just for ballpark figures. TigerDirect may differ, but at least I understand the concept that store credit is only good at one store