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Yah! Finally done my new build. Got myself a sweet, super fast PC now. Ahh feels so good to be back in the tech and out of the stone ages.

I'm actually in the market for a new PC. Mine is about eight years old.
Any suggestions for what to buy?

What's your budget?

Main thing to stay away from is big box store PC's. They are poorly designed and pratically thrown together. Some of the worst are Compaq's, Hewlett Packards and anything from Costco.

Find a local tech that builds them from scatch, someone with a good rep, someone that doesn't install a bunch of bullshit on them (just the OS)

I just did my complete build for about $1000.00 Canadian... but I build them myself and I already had a fancy case.

Go AMD is you have a tight budget or if your a gamer, go Intel if your more of a video/software editing kind of guy and have extra bucks to spend.

I definitely want to keep it under $1000 USD. Ideally I'd like to stay under $750, but I did cash in several unused vacation days, so I have a few bucks to spend. I mean, after eight years I deserve to spend a bit.
My problem is I don't know what questions to ask. I'd like to use the machine for online gaming, watching video, and sometimes for Photoshop, so clearly I am going to need a decent video card and a fairly fast processor, but beyond that I am clueless. Actually, before that I am clueless because I don't know what constitutes a decent video card and fairly fast processor.

OK, sounds like you need almost exactly what I built. I do much the same, some fairly high end PC games as well, but I'm not what I would call an expert gamer. I do play allot of RPG's, action games and FPS games so I wanted a decent vid card for sure. I went pretty much mid-high video card, with a nice modern 8 core CPU setup and build around that.

I'm a stickler for performance and bang for your buck. ALL of the products I listed below consistently review 4.5 or 5 out of 5 stars on various credible tech sites or through public reviews on amazon. I research for days I usually go Intel/nVidia for my builds, but over the last 10 years AMD made huge leaps and bounds and bought out ATI and now their stuff is really nice.


Here is what I purchased (but remember I used to work in a tech shop and built my own);

This Motherboard is top of it's class, it's typically a high end gaming board, comes with a billion options (can have up to 32 gigs of RAM)
ASUS M5A99X Evo R2.0 ATX AM3+ DDR3 AMD 990X 3PCI-E16 2PCI-E1 1PCI USB3.0 SATA3 GBLAN Motherboard $153.47

The Brain. If your PC is older then 5 years, then your CPU is crap. I can't believe how fast the CPU's are now. This CPU is 8 cores (that's 8 CPU's in one). Dominates for multitasking. You can quite litterally play a game, install programs, have Photoshop open, mail open all at the same time with little performance loss.
AMD FX-8320 8 Core 3.5/4.0GHZ Processor AM3+ 16MB Cache 125W Retail Box $173.90

My Vid Card, I fairly high end card that can play most modern games are medium or high graphics default. I got this card specifically because it's super quite and requires little power for what it offers in return. This card is also over-clockable right out of the box with software. Stays very cool thank to aluminium heat sink and copper pipes, dual fans etc.
Gigabyte Radeon HD R7 260X 1188MHZ 2GB 6.5GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card $152.33

Hard Drive... typical nowadays. Yet note the size, 2 Terabytes!!! yahoo!
Seagate SV35 Series 2TB SATA3 7200RPM 64MB Cache Surveillance Hard Drive $104.63

Not the best RAM on the market, but pretty dam close. Definitely the best brand for reliability and speed. A spent allot more here then I had too, but I wanted RAM I would never have to replace for the next 10 years.
16GB KIT 2X8GB 1600MHZ DDR3 DIMM XMP CL10 HYPERX BLACK SERIES $220.80

Total with tax: $915.27 (we have 12% sales tax here in BC)

Ontop of this you will need;

A Case with a good modern powersupply (430 watt or better)

If you can find someone to build that for you or find a place to buy a comparable PC to these specs you'll have a very nice computer for many years to come

Thank you, sir.

Your welcome ...anytime

12% sales tax? That's highway robbery! SD is 6.5%!

Well, that's why everything in Canada appears to be free, when in truth taxes pays for everything. Health care for example. Nothing is free!

Each province in Canada has different amounts of tax. I believe Nova Scotia is 20% ... yikes! BC is 7% PST and 5% GST equaling 12%. The 7% PST is Provincial sales tax and is applied to all sales taxes, not labor though. SO if I buy these parts in Canada I pay the full 12%. If I work on someone's house (labor) I can only charge them 5% GST (goods and services tax).

It's a bullshit scam for the most part, but we do live in the best part of Canada, have the least issues, produce the most money of all the provinces (short of Alberta I believe), have the best opportunities etc. Yet we pay dearly for it. My buddies in Alberta call British Columbia (BC) > Bring Cash... at it is mighty expensive to live here. If you don't pull in at least 27k a year, your considered below poverty Most people hover around 36-40 k, while decent jobs are around 70k

I travel to the states about once a year to Oregon where they have 0% tax... I buy tons of shit and bring it on back home 100% exempt from duty as well. It's my fav place to visit