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13 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Any recommendations on cheap/entry level gaming pc?

Was recommended the Dell G3, which is around the $700 range from Amazon or direct from Dell. 

Figured I'd ask here for opinions.

Entry level is just that, entry level.  The bundles end up "cheaper" than Build your own's, because of the way they're bundled.  There's going to be a shit component in there somewhere (usually cooling or lack of USB's or some other "you won't notice it now but the motherboard is undersized" issue).  So it's good for normal entry-level gaming.  But you're gonna have to build your own to get the stuff right and up to console or higher specs.

 

 

Meanwhile, the good thing about cord cutting TV wise is when a service doesn't work out very well (like, say, DirecTV NOW), you can swap out.  

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Yeah, the only semi-reliable way to get a gaming PC that A) is bundled and B) doesn't end up just shitting the bed on you or disappointing would be to go with a starter bundle from the likes of EVGA (since they make solid GPUs and power supplies, they're typically going to have a good idea of WTF they're talking about).  Way pricier than $700 (potentially), but you don't have to do all the planning yourself.   Probably still requires the basics of assembling, but I always liked the working-with-my-hands aspect of things.

Granted, this may not be the advice you're looking for.

Of course, while looking this up, I found myself a gadget on their site, so, there went $20.

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Wasnt looking for anything too revved up. Just that my 3-4 year old laptop is just old enough to have not run a couple games recently. 

Figured getting something new that also could handle games might be a good idea. 

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It depends on what you want to play.  I mean, I got a 3 year old Laptop that plays the last Gen AC games (up to Rogue) just fine when turned down, and plays the Mass Effect trilogy fine.  But I can't play The Sims anymore because it the simulation caculations obliterate my processor.  So it varies.  Depending on what you want, getting one of the "Gaming" bundles could be more than you need if you're looking at cost effectiveness.

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  • 1 month later...
On 9/17/2017 at 3:19 AM, Brian Fowler said:

And here I just remembered the Samsung Galaxy View from like a year and half ago. Mid-tier specs, 18.4"(!) screen.

And now, like three years after it came out, Samsung have finally refreshed the Galaxy View. Although the new Galaxy View 2 is actually a bit smaller, all the way down to a still crazy 17.3" screen. Specs look, once again, solidly midgrade (I'm really surprised they stuck with 1080 for the resolution, even if that's probably good enough) and it's pricey and only available on AT&T as far as carriers go.

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  • 1 month later...

I finally went in the rest of the way and decided to revamp my entire PC.

I bought a new, larger SSD and an EVGA GTX 1080 about a year ago, but my system has been plagued with reboots and generally strange behavior ever since (really before that, but it got worse once these were installed).  My best guess is that, because I cloned the drive, the settings were never quite right, and it just shits itself every other time I boot it up.  Plus, the MB/CPU/RAM sticks are all 5+ years old, so they're kind of at the tail end of their lifespan regardless.  So I'm going to do a clean(ish) re-install of Windows and see if I can get it to behave itself. 

Unfortunately, that means tying Windows 10 to an online account, and I'm not quite certain how well that whole process is really going to go.  There are websites that describe the process is enough detail, but...meh, that doesn't mean I'll find myself enjoying it.  If anyone's done this and had issues, feel free to share.

But, now I have a Ryzen 7 2700 on the way, with one of the better-reviewed Gigabyte MBs, and a funky cube-shaped case that COOLER MASTER makes.  And I get to spend Saturday finding out if I planned this thing out correctly (probably - that's what PC Part Picker is for, right?).

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Yeah. The issue with doing anything majorly hardware related is that it requires a clean install of Windows afterwards, because the hardware settings from the old hardware setup stay in the registry (and copy over with the cloning) and the only way to really get them cleared out is to reset Windows to Zero.

 

I had to do it after rebuilding my Laptop after a fried motherboard and if my HDD hadn't had also started to fail, it would've went fine.  But yeah, backup your data, make a bootable USB stick of Windows 10, and clean install, and that should clean up 99% of those issues after you update the rest of the drivers.

The process is pretty much fool proof, the only issue really stems from making sure your PC stays behaving enough to make the USB Drive.

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Let me be Smug Linux Guy for a moment and point out that this is only a problem if you actually use Windows.:) When I bought a new PC a few years ago, I gave up years of dual-booting and went Ubuntu-only. I haven't missed anything. The only hiccup is that I now need to bring my work laptop home if I want to play Magic Online, but that's hardly a major issue.

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Yeah, tbarrie, you were right.

Totally a Smug Linux Guy response.

Anywho, the new system is up and running.  Went with a Ryzen 7 2700, which probably isn't that much of a big improvement over my FX-8350, but now I'm out of the low end of "recommended specs" on new games.  Plus, the power draw is almost half (the Vishera CPUs were 125W FFS!). The biggest change was almost certainly the motherboard, as the old one was a 2013 model and could only handle DDR3/1333 memory standard, as opposed to the DDR4/3200 I have plugged in here.  Since nuking the SSD back into emptiness, it seems like the hang-up issues are gone; granted, I've booted it up maybe 4 times so far, so I could just be lucky, but I think it's going to behave itself.

On the downside, it took me way too long to get around to nuking the drive, so that added something like 3 hours to the process, and I had to actually buy a copy of Windows 10 to get that to run at all - the "link online account and reinstall with new hardware" thing just gakked up a hairball when I tried it.  But, I had 4+ years of it for free, so I don't exactly feel terrible about this.  The other downside was I decided to forgo a tower build and bought a LAN box instead; it's nice, and I like how it looks, but the MB is not playing nice at all with the X-Dock, so two of my four HDDs are not being recognized at all.  I think it's going to come down to just yanking my Blu-Ray drive, putting in some adapters, and plugging the HDDs into the 5.25" slots instead.  I don't need a Blu-Ray player (because Xbone), and I don't need a disc drive anyway (and I have externals even if I did).  So...bleh.  I suppose I could pick up a new external HDD at some point, too, but I just don't know if I can be bothered to have another external device floating around.

Not my best build experience - that would have been the computer I replaced - but not my worst (Radeon All-in-Wonder graphics cards circa 1999; nightmares).  But I don't think I'll do this again unless I can get a particularly good deal, or a big chunk of it pre-assembled.

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  • 2 months later...

So I’m looking at replacing my 10ish year old laptop.  I have limited funds.  I mainly use it for going online (here, Twitter, hockey stuff etc); word processing and spreadsheets (Its a sickness...).   Not into gaming or video editing or anything too strenuous   

Costco is selling a Acer Aspire One Chromebook with an 11 inch screen for $249 (Canadian); while another place has a 14 inch screen Lenovo Chromebook for the same price. 

Anyone have strong feelings or warning against one or both? Online reviews seem fairly positive for both.  

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/10/2019 at 2:50 PM, John Austin said:

I think Apple is killing it today with their new announcements. Yeah you have the luxury high priced items but some of the lower costs iPhone and iPads look nice too.

It’s an easy pass if you have one of last years models, not even a 5G model, but that should come next year.

If you have a 6s or 7 then it could work, but if you have an xr there isn’t much of an upgrade to make it worth dropping the cash/financing yet another phone.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alright, so this is going to be a weird ask. I'm in the market for a laptop for my daughter. She's 9 and will be 10 in the spring. Now, I could probably go with any cheap laptop because I want her to be able to do her own Google searches, type out her homework, and access her school's learning tools. However, she's going to want to play Minecraft on this thing even though she can already play it on the Switch.

How good of a laptop do you need to play Minecraft? I really want to stay in between $300 to $400 also.

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Quote

 

•CPU: Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz

•RAM: 2GB

•GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics or AMD (formerly ATI) Radeon HD Graphics with OpenGL 2.1

•GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT or AMD Radeon HD 2400 with OpenGL 3.1

•HDD: At least 200MB for Game Core and Other Files

•Java 6 Release 45

 

That's the minimum recommended specs for Minecraft.  A laptop in the $300-$400 should handle that without much of an issue, since most laptops in that range have an integrated graphics cards.

I just dropped $200 on Chromebook for my 11 year old for just school work and YouTube.  But you can't do Minecraft on a Chromebook, so that's out for you.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/25/2019 at 1:47 AM, Tabe said:

What you want to do is look at refurbs on Newegg. Found a friend of mine an i5 with 8 gigs of RAM and a 256 gig SSD and a DVD drive for 279.

It's probably too late but I was going to suggest exactly this. The Newegg powersearch is a... powerful feature.

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  • 4 months later...

so AT&T finally threw the last curve at me, and now I'm looking out when I finally get my wife's phone paid off.  

Long story short, I had my phone screen repaired through the extra warranty, they broke the phone a bit more, and replaced it with an unlocked phone.  

But AT&T uses IMEI whitelisting for some big features (Wi-Fi Calling, VoLTE, Video) and I'm SOL even if I flash AT&T's firmware onto the phone, because the IMEI on my unlocked Phone isn't AT&T branded and they won't Whitelist it, even though I've been a customer of theirs for 20 years..  They're the only carrier that does this.  Fuck 'em, I'm out.

Edited by Raziel
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It all depends on your location, but I've been really happy with T-Mobile. I was a longtime Verizon customer but switched over to TMO and haven't noticed any loss in reception at all. To be fair, I live on Long Island but I have a couple of friends who have AT&T and there are often situations/places where I'll have solid service and they have nothing, and it'll be areas that are not exactly what you'd describe as rural. I'd check TMO's coverage map in your area and if it looks good, it's worth a shot.

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  • 1 month later...

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