Computer Guru question

[MIHunter]

2 years ago we bought our son a cheap computer for Christmas, for school and stuff. About a year ago, through poor decisions he broke it. And he's been saving for a new one since. My / his question is, what is a decent (probably $500 range), gaming type computer? I now that good gaming computers are $1,000 +. He mainly plays minecraft, & black ops.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[TimH]

IMO, considering the OS is going to be Windows 8, then I would just go to Best Buy or some place like it and pick one that has a nice feel to you with a waranty that you are happy with in your price range. Let the store technician know you want something suitable for his type of games and he/she will probably recommend one for you. I wouldn't waste too much time on trying to figure out all the differences. A higher end video card and at least 8 gig of RAM would be a good place to start with any manufacturers model. The last three computers I bought for my mom were at Frye's and one was a Sony, one was an Acer and one was a Dell. They were all the same except in how they looked cosmetically. No sense racking your brain over the internals IMO.

[hellbndr23]

Like physically broke the computer or got a wicked virus and killed it?

[MIHunter]

Physically broke it

[Turtlewax]

Take a look at tigerdirect.Com


They have a few in your price range. Cybertron aren't bad for their price. You can always upgrade the video card later if you need more. Good luck.

[TimH]

Physically broke it

What physically broke on it?

[MIHunter]

He had a tendency to hit his laptop when he got mad. The diagnosis we were told was the motherboard was shot due to shock.

[BowOnly81]

Toshiba makes a good one, Acer is crap.

[sir shovelhands]

Woot.com is your friend. They had dells with I7-4770s and decent radeons cards up the other day for $520.

[sir shovelhands]

Also avoid AMD chips like the plague. Everything after the phenom II was garbage (bulldozer and piledriver architecture), and this is coming from someone who has an FX-9590. Super disappointing chip.

[black42]

look at newegg. they have good deals all the time. my oldest son built a nice system for just under 1k last may

[dbaio1]

I keep a few laptops around the house for convenience sake. I recently purchased a sub $300 ASUS laptop and its been a great machine so far. I have a hard time paying top dollar for something that will be outdated in 6-9 months tops, not to mention significantly lower in price in less time than that. Supply, Demand and Technology improvement speed have put laptops and such into a 2 year max lifecycle span for me.

Good luck.

update: purchased at Bestbuy.

[MIHunter]

Thanks everyone

[686PPP]

Rakuten.com formally buy.com has lots of off lease. I've bought a few be prepared to buy a battery.