What to look for when shopping around for new pc

[Gee]

Originally Posted by zeropointbug

Combo deal at Newegg.com
-Intel i5 750
-Seagate 1500GB HHD
-G.Skill 4GB RAM
-Gigabyte motherboard
-700W PSU
-NZXT LEXA PC enclosure (case)

extras (but required)

-POWERCOLOR 5670 Video Card (for media)
-Zalman CNPS 9700 CPU heatsink
-Windows 7 Home Premium


With that great deal of a combo, along with the 9700 CPU heatsink, you can overclock the i5 processor from 2.66GHz to roughly 3.6GHz no problem on the stock Vcore (CPU voltage). This system will do anything you want it to do, even play games, albeit with lower settings. Plenty of HD space, processing power and RAM.

$830

Oh, I forgot to mention you have to build this system, which you may not want to do, so if you have any friends who can do it for you, go for it.

I'll look into a setup like this. I guess one thing that comes to mind is with the new mother boards can older card pci cards like an additional video card still be used? The memory is probably different then what is used on this mb. I was a little confused with the different types of cards which I didn't really pay much attention to prior to this either. APG, PCI, PCI-E, etc. Does anyone have a link to a place that might help me understand the different ones or how to identify them? Is the PCI slot outdated and not used on the new mother boards anymore?

Under the system properties on my pc it has intel Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz 4.78GHz, 3.25 GB of RAM. Is that 2 cpus? One a 3.20Ghz and one a 4.78GHz. I would of thought they would be the same speed. Visually, there is one huge heatsink with the fan shroud over it. A smaller black heat sink seperate from that one. I will have to check out the ram. I know I have 4 - 1mb chips of RAM installed but it's only showing 3.25gb of ram. How does this system compare to what's available? Slightly better then the abacus? Decent but on the verge or fossil fuel. Upgradable to improve it maybe video card with more memory?