My friend, ever on the quest for a bargain gaming computer, saw this on sale today on the Net for $800. She needs to know if this is a good buy and wanted me to ask here. She’ll be out most of the day but will need some answers by 9pm EDT so she can decide by midnight. Thanks for your help. As I’ve established in previous such questions here, I know little to nothing about what to tell her.
Lenovo IdeaCentre B500 08873AU
All in one desktop system
Brilliant HD LED 23" widescreen panel
1920 x 1080 screen resolution
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400S / 2.66 GH
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
Nvidia GeForce GT 240M graphics card
1333 MHz data bus speed
4 GB of DDR3 RAM
1TB storage capacity
Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth wireless connectivity
DVD-Writer / BD-ROM - Serial ATA
DDR3 SDRAM - Non-ECC
1066 MHz memory speed
Motion-sensing game support
Dual channel memory architecture
Built-in stereo speakers
Digital and analog TV tuner
Wireless Bluetooth keyboard and laser mouse
Connect it to your TV and output to a larger screen
4-in-1 media center remote included
If she’s going to be gaming with it, she definitely does not want an all-in-one computer like that. She won’t be able to upgrade her graphics card or other components, significantly limiting the computer’s useful lifespan.
Yep, if you are looking for the most gamin bang for your buck you want to stick with a plain old desktop computer. The traditional desktop minimizes cost, because you don’t have to pay for the technologies involved in packing a modern computer into an all-in-one/ laptop form factor, and desktops allow for upgrading individual components far more readily than any other form factor.
“Bargain” and “gaming computer” are not really compatible categories if you want the latest and greatest, a lot of the time however when a person says “gaming” they may not actually mean some bleeding edge, graphics intensive game. There are lots of different “games”, Find out what her games are, then look at the hardware level requirements needed for playing them.
In many cases a new 400. desktop (on sale) with a reasonably powerful last generation video card (like an Nvidia 8800 or similar from ebay for 100 or so ) can be had for around $ 500 (PC + video) then add a new 23" monitor for $200 or so.
Lenovo is a fine company but the computer you referenced is the absolute antithesis of a gaming PC. It’s more an medium to medium low powered ease of use “appliance” PC for people so are not all that tech savvy, and is not what she needs or wants.
Most “gamers” have lots of side channel chats about their hardware and are pretty savvy about what goodies they want in a box. That she was even looking at and considering this PC tells me you really, really need to define what she means by “gaming PC”.
Specifically, that machine is using a graphics card that was designed for laptops. It’s not as powerful as even the desktop version of that card and it’ll be harder to replace. If her price is $800, she can do a lot better with a full size desktop with room to expand.
Just to clarify, in case she’s taking my previous post seriously, if those are really the games she wants to play the hardware requirements are very low, and virtually any new PC, including the all in one Lenovo she liked, should run them fine. The larger issue is to make sure those old XP era games will run on a Windows 7 platform. The Win 7 OS does have several windows 86 gaming compatibility modes.
Apparently there are expansion packs that may add additional hardware requirements beyond the set mentioned previously, but nothing special. Any new, mid level desktop PC should run this game with ease.
Then maybe a gaming laptop. Asus and Acer have some cheaper ones. Dell, Apple, and others have more expensive ones. Upgrades will always be an issue (she’ll basically have to replace the whole laptop when the time comes), and it won’t necessarily be very portable, but…
