Preface
Thanks to some VIPs for giving me the push to finally do this, Ive been meaning to do this for the last few months, just seems like a big undertaking (in terms of maintanance). In any case, this stuff should hopefully be updated monthly.
As for pricing, while I will be trying to get the best price, that may not always be the case however look at it this way: if you can find a better price then great! The suggestions are only there as a baseline to compare to, I would expect people to do their own price searching and bargain hunting, the pricing here is only included as a guineline.
Due to the complexity for picking out systems for people all across the planet who may or many not have the same access as everyone else this guide will be broken down first by region and then by intent/budget, this way there is the least amount of scrolling around. Of course, once you do scroll down to the individual sections, it's still pretty messy but thats the price of catering to everyone.
Applicable to all sections:
- I dont pick out peripherals like mice and keyboards and that silliness
- I dont pick out monitors, speakers, printers, card readers either
- I also dont pick out operating systems or software
- So if you need these things, make sure you keep that in mind when picking the budget category.
When navigating to your prospective geographic region, the breakdown is into three groups
- Work machines Machines in this bracket emphasis the processor, RAM and harddrive the most: the video subsystem is rarely a concern as most buyers for these serious machines will be looking to have their machines run 24x7 or to be able to do some statistical analysis or something to that effect rather than play games.
- Play machines Machines in this bracket, short of going the PentiumM route (which generally will be more expensive as well as more finicky) will be an AMD dominated arena due to the performance/dollar ratio. The emphasis here will be the videocard, CPU and ram
- General purpose machines Profiled as a family PC or one which literally is a multirole system: this machine will empgasise the same things as the play-machine except the videocard requirements will be toned down significantly (but more than allow the user to play when he/she wishes)
As for regionality, in particular, European readers, all prices have VAT included.