Ok, my friend decided recently that he REALLY wants to start playing EverQuest... So... He needs a computer.
He knows jack about computers, so he wanted me to build him one.
I explained everything to him that he needs to know, and came up with a list of parts and a price for a decent gaming rig.
I came up with a decent machine that ended up being around $800.00 or so...
He thought it was a bit expensive, and wanted to go to Best Buy to look around...
So, we go to Best Buy and browse around the computer department for a while looking at eMachines. He's like "WHOA these are SO CHEAP and they're the same thing that you built me, just half the price".
He found one there that costed $499.00 with no rebates, but it didn't include a monitor, video card (besides integrated) and it had half the ram he needed.
I DO NOT know what kind of motherboards these things use, but it had an Athlon XP2400 processor in it.
What is the deal with these eMachines? I've heard they are horrible from some people, but then I don't know much about them.
The machine I came up with for him had nothing but quality stuff in it, and after you add the monitor, ram and video card to the eMachine, the costs are roughly the same... But he's still kind of leaning towards the eMachine... I don't want him to get stuck with something that he isn't happy with, and that's why I want to build him one... Are the eMachines worth it?
He'd like it to be upgradeable too, but then I don't know how upgradeable an eMachine would be... We opened it up, and looked inside, but I couldn't tell what kind of mobo it had. It had an AGP 2x slot, 2 RAM dimms, and not much space for other drives.
Oh... By the way... I was actually IMPRESSED by the knowledge of the guy who was helping us who worked there... He never did answer my question though about what kind of chipset the mobo had... hmmm... was he hiding something? hehe