PC Buying Tips

I get a lot of reader mail seeking advice on buying a PC, so here are my quick-and-dirty suggestions on what to look for before you buy. Of course, these are only my views on this controversial issue. If after all this information you still can not decide on what to get just follow me and we will have a look at some profiles of PC's 

Make Sure There's an 4 x AGP Slot?

I can't stress this enough--check whether the PC has an AGP slot. Some PCs come with AGP graphics integrated on the motherboard or into the core-logic chipset. As a cost-saving and/or space-saving measure, these PCs often don't include an AGP slot. Because PCI graphics cards are going by the wayside, there may be no way to upgrade the graphics on these PCs in the future.

Nothing beats a mouse with a scroll wheel. For one thing, it makes scrolling through a page much easier when you're doing word processing or browsing the Web. More importantly, it's a key to success in games such as Half-Life and Quake III, where you can use the wheel to switch weapons quickly. Next-generation real-time strategy games, such as Homeworld, will also take advantage of the wheel for zooming in and out of the 3D game space.

You should get a PC with at least 128MB of memory, but you might want to order a PC with 64MB of memory and buy the additional memory separately. Some PC makers charge an unreasonable premium on memory. Because new PCs universally use DIMMs, upgrading memory is an extremely simple process. Visit CNET Shopper.com to find out the latest market price of memory.

It has taken forever, but multidisc games are finally starting to appear in DVD format. Unless you want to spend your time swapping discs, opt for a PC with a DVD drive. Unless you're planning to watch a lot of DVD movies, though, you probably don't need a hardware decoder card; new PCs are fast enough to do their own DVD decoding. The ultimate system has a DVD drive and a recordable CD-ROM drive--now that's luxury.

You save a lot of money by buying a PC that has a CPU speed a notch or two slower than the fastest speed available. If you're comfortable playing around with your PC, getting a slightly slower CPU now and upgrading it in a year or so is the best way to go (see our Do It Yourself story on Upgrading Your CPU). If you're not willing to muck around inside your system, you might want to get a faster CPU; it will definitely lengthen the life of your PC.

The monitor is the one piece of PC equipment that you won't need to upgrade in two years, so go ahead and invest in a large (preferably 19 inch), good-quality monitor. In a year or two when new graphics cards make 1,280-by-1,024-pixel resolution the standard for games, you'll be glad you did.

Right now, I recommend a RIVA TNT2, Matrox G400, or Voodoo 3, in that order.

Get a good 3D sound card. I recommend either Creative's Sound Blaster Live or a card based on Aureal's Vortex 2 chip. You should also seriously consider getting high-quality speakers with a subwoofer; as with buying a monitor, this investment will last for a while.

The latest Ultra ATA drives offer about the same performance on general-purpose applications as SCSI drives, but at a much lower price. Unless you're doing video editing or running a file server, you probably don't need SCSI.

In this era of LAN parties, home networking, and cable modems, getting a network card preinstalled on your PC might not be a bad idea. Make sure, though, that the PC maker is giving you a fair price.

Good luck out there. You'll need it.