Hi all! Ok so I have two step daughters (12 and 10) that all of a sudden have this massive urge to play the latest fad that being Minecraft. So they each want a PC to play this. Now normally I would never buy pre-built PC's because that is a bad word in my books. I also would never buy AMD because that is another bad word in my book. So what did I do? I did both! I went out and bought both girls each an Acer Aspire AX3400 pre-built PC that comes with: AMD AthonII X3 2.7GHz Tri-core 3GB DDR3 1066 640GB HDD GeForce 9200 intergrated 20" LCD (1600x900 resolution) Keyboard&mouse Wireless N Windows7 Home Premium 64 Price: $365.00 CAD Not a bad price for a complete system and it runs really well actually. Not too sure how well the Geforce 9200 will hold up but there is room for a LP dedicated video card later on. Anyone else have or used a tri-core?
Just shows you where the market is right now. Seems most PC tech is going sideways. You can buy it for just about the same price as you can build it. "Budget system" wise anyways. Plus you get a warranty as well. Just not the satisfaction of a job well done.
And not your choice of components... but then again that doesn't matter when you buy it for your step daughters :d
I think when your step daughters find some new hiper-uber-candy-looking game you will have to buy something more powerful than this 9200. There won't be much to choose from LP cards, but still, some entry to sub-mid cards should be available. Just remember that very often PSUs in pre-build PCs are tailored to specific system and don't leave much room for upgrades. As for tri-core, I have built some low-budget rigs with those CPUs, mainly for web browsing, movies and some very light gaming. Owners are very happy with them, especially with low price But for now the king of low-budget gaming rig is A8-3850 from AMD. I stress gaming in there. Nothing beats 4 cores with the fastest integrated GPU for that price. And a possibility to make CF with cheap-ass 80-100$ card to almost double GPU-power.
True. I don't know whats out there for Low profile video cards so I will have to look around. As for the PSU you're right about that as well. Acer kicks in a 250 watt so they will be limited. Did the tri-core never really sell well?
They were selling really well - not much more expensive than dual-core and there always was a possibility that with right motherboard you will unlock 4th core and/or additional cache. And most of those CPU did unlock So you could get 4-core rig for 50% of what you will have to pay for Intel setup. AMD is a king of low-budget and this is the part of the market where this company shines 250W still should be able to run 30-40W card, depending how strong 12V rail is. But you won't find much more power-hungry card for LP anyway. I know that there are many entry-level Radeon 4xxx and 5xxx series for LP so you should check that. they should offer substantial boost over 9200 IGP.
prebuilt ... DOES NOT COMPUTE .... kernel panic. AMD's not bad at all, not sure why you would put them together with prebuilts. Personally, if I really had no choice and HAD to buy a prebuilt, I would walk into Canada Computers for one of their prebuilts instead. EDIT: Even better, would have given them an APU instead like the A6-3450. Wouldn't need to get a budget card later since its IGP's better than most budget cards anyways. Though, I don't think the E-350 would fare well with Minecraft since Minecraft is rather CPU intensive considering it's a Java game lol. deltatux
I did get it at Canada computers! They sell AMD pre-builts. That is what a pre-built is unless you mean in store pre-built? At any rate I could not build a similar PC with monitor for as cheap as this Acer pre-built. Trust me if I could have, I would have...
Here is the exact computer at Canada Computers. Only difference is I paid $365.00 CAD: http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=7_127&item_id=034484
For kicks and gigles this system gives a windows performance index score (WPI) of 4.2 which isn't that bad considering it is using an onboard IGP.
That is a pretty good PC for so little money. It's exactly in the budget market that pre-built becomes the sensible thing to buy.
Agreed. It is literally $65 bucks more then a PS3 selling at Wal-Mart. Why would anyone buy a PS3 when they can have a complete PC for pretty much the same price?
HEATHEN! Then again, you did this as a present, to be nice to the girls. Good on you, maybe a little TOO kind. //Svein
my seagate rma hard drive just came in. e8400@4ghz, 8gb ddr2 1068, p5q m/b. either a 260 or 295 is going in it. this is going to be my sons pc. replacing a godawful p-4 socket 478 pc with a 9600gt. no prebuilt junk for my son. I love him too much for that.
