Thanks again for the help. I appreciate that you took the time to explain why the package wasn't as good, helps me learn what's what.

What's your current suggestion for a SSD?

On the subject of monitors: A pair of 28" monitors with 1920x1200 resolution should be plenty for multitabling (12-15 tables?) and maybe having a movie off to the side, right?

I was thinking Hannspree HZ281HPB 28" Class Widescreen LCD Monitor but I don't want to get them and be disappointed.

At one point I had my eye on the Dell Ultrasharps, but triple the price seems a bit steep.

My household has two desktop computers. I have a high end machine I built earlier this year, and my wife uses the old computer, which truly does live up to the designation of "old" (8 year old P4 machine). My wife is tired of how much space the old machine takes up, and has asked me to get her a slim form factor computer for her.

I have never really looked into slim form factor computers, and am not 100% sure what I am looking for. the only real requirements I have is I would like it to be a Win7 machine, and have a reasonable HDD size. She is literally never gaming on this machine. Any input on what I should be looking at?

I am in the US, and budget isn't a big concern, but I'm not really expecting to spend a whole lot, as I'm sure the primary use of this machine in the foreseeable future is Farmville.

jvs

I or someone else will answer these last posts in more depth when able, but for now I'll just say avoid any displays made by Hannspree (aka Hanns-G, aka I-Inc). If you want something nicer then grab a well-reviewed monitor with an IPS panel instead of one with a TN panel. For me the Dell Ultrasharps are the best options when on sale.

Believe me on this, I've owned a 28" I-Inc ih282 and have 24" Dell Ultrasharps and have seen other people's experiences over the long term with them. Do yourself a favor and just get this right the first time.

I was kind of worried about this one. The only real issue is the price - paying $500 for two monitors, vs. paying $2,000 for two equivalently sized ultrasharps. Then I get this feeling like if I'm going to commit $1K+ to a monitor, I should just break down and get the 30 inch ultrasharps, and suddenly I've gone from batting around a $500 price tag to $2500. I guess if I did commit to a 30 inch monitor I could try it with just a single monitor instead of using two, then get a second one later.

The frustrating part here is that there seems to be pretty much zero middle ground.

It's kind of liberating to just say "**** it" and order the monitor I really want, on the other hand, the idea of paying more for a single monitor than I've ever paid for an entire computer before now does make me throw up in my mouth a bit.

Anyone have thoughts on where to get a Dell Ultrasharp in Canada? I'm looking around, but amazon.ca doesn't have them, nor does newegg or tigerdirect. I can buy them from Dell Canada if I want to pay the full $1500 CAD for it, but... yikes.

just get 2 24s and play less tables, win win.

Starvingwriter:

It sounds like you just want a very typical PC with a $100-ish video card. I have the same monitor setup you're talking about and running an EVGA GTS450 card with two DVI outputs. My monitors are actually 23" not 24" (U2311), those are a lot less expensive, you can get them for a little over $200 when Dell has a sale. You kind of get what you pay for as far as that goes and you'll have to work that out for yourself. Better resolution, IPS panels & general quality cost more, just how it is. Maybe you should just find yourself a couple 1080s cheap and make do with them?

SSDs you have options. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...lity,2998.html

Still not clear on your storage needs. How many GB's are you currently occupying on your system? If you're a guy that doesn't store a lot of big files you might be fine with just a 120GB SSD for a drive. Or a 64GB paired with a regular 1TB-type drive.

Buy the smallest/cheapest new computer with Windows 7 you can find and 3GB RAM, it will work and be a huge upgrade she'll be happy with. You can't go wrong with hard drive space compared to what she's used to, they're basically all 500GB+ anymore. Probably $300 or so.

If you want really small, the Mac Mini is $600 and will do the trick.

I've been thinking a lot on it, and I think I'm just going to tear the bandaid off and get a single 30" Dell Ultrasharp. It's more than I originally hoped to spend, but I've decided the last thing I want is to spend 500-600 on monitors, not be happy with the setup, and eventually getting the ultrasharps anyway. After first playing on a laptop and then on a hodgepodge of crappy monitors, I'm hoping a single 30" will be enough. If it's not, at least I'll be able to add on later without having to junk my original purchase.

Going with a SSD + HD combo (see below) I wonder if this is the best choice:

Crucial CT064M4SSD2 m4 2.5" Solid State Drive - 64GB

Unfortunately this is hard to guess at the moment as I'm kind of "between computers" (my old crappy one died a few months back, and I've been using a loaner since then because I'm moving from Korea to Canada this week and didn't want to buy a new setup right before a big move).

My wife was concerned that if a SSD goes down, it's totally unrecoverable, whereas a traditional HD, there's a chance of getting the data back. That, coupled with the fact that although the computer is for work, she will invariably be dropping endless digital photos, music, etc. on it, makes me think a SSD + large HD combo is probbly best. Is 64GB "enough" in that case?

One last question. I've heard installing graphics cards is easy. If I build a setup similar to the one I've discussed, then later decide I want to buy Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3 or whatever the shiny game of the month is, will it be fairly simple to "add on" the video card, or will I be saving myself signficant time and energy by putting it on from the beginning?

On that note, I wonder if integrated graphics can handle the 30" ultrasharp, or if I need a graphics card for it, anyway.

I was wondering if someone could give me some monitor recommendations.

I'm looking for a 24" monitor to be used mostly for gaming and poker. It should be 1920x1080 resolution of course. My budget is around $200. I've been browsing through sites like newegg but I really have no idea what puts one TN monitor ahead of another. One thing that comes to mind is customer service. I don't want to buy a brand that has a reputation for being very bad with returns, but I have no idea if one brand stands out from the others in that regard.

Kind of an odd argument, both types can give you some heads up before failure but that's not something to count on in either case. If a HDD drive just fkat-out fails it's costly to extract the data. Backing up your data is really the only acceptable answer if you're worried about losing stuff.

Almost always. You load Windows and run your programs from it, plenty of room to work with. Then you add a big cheap drive for the bulky slow things. Now, you just need a backup for both, which is an external or another internal drive.

You undo a screw and push it into a slot, put screw back in. Then take a PCI-E cable from the power supply and plug it in. Hook monitor to the desired output on the back of the card, done. Well you might have to install some drivers from the disc or online, but you get the idea.

I believe HD3000 can, yes, but don't count on playing any games with it

Consider buying a 23" of the exact same resolution. Here's a popular one by Acer and it's cheap, I've used their 22" models in a lot of builds and had one myself for a bit. Standard TN panel but it's serviceable.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824009266

If you're not getting anything fancy though I wouldn't worry much about returns or warranties. When my 28" broke it wasn't even worth shipping back, if that's a priority go shopping locally at Best Buy or something.

I highly recommend Dell ultrasharp monitors.

When I was still playing poker in 2007 I bought 2 1600*1200 ultrasharps second hand (they were very rare back then and €500 each in store) from a friend of mine who played higher and went for dual apples.

I have replaced them but kept them and I use them whenever I need them now, I actually used them as temporary screens at work when we had delay in a delivery for a new employee.

This is 4! years after I bought them second hand, so probably 6 after initial purchase and they still run like day one.

Most important is resolution. I have a 27" at home with 1920*1200 resolution. It is nice, but it would not help me at all with poker - if you want to multitable you really want to have more pixels. I would buy 2 23" or 24", as you will total have 3840*2400 pixels which is more than what a single 30" can give you, and thus more tables.

Building a computer.
Im getting a Sata 6.0 compatible motherboard. Should I pay extra for all my other stuff to be Sata 6.0 instead of 3.0? I know my SDD should be 6.0, but what about basic stuff like HDD, Disk Drive, and other hardware?

Currently running a 6 year old desktop that a friend helped me build that I want to replace between now and Christmas -- an old as balls Athlon 64 3200+, ASUS m/b, 6600GT, 3GB RAM with a pair of HDD's for OS and storage, still running XP. It served me well but it's just underpowered for the games of today.

Intended use is no poker at all, just the standard browsing/home use/movies/tv and gaming PC (not interested in overclocking). If I had to draw a more firm line for budget, I would be happy to keep it under $1000 (shopping in Canada). Already have a Samsung 216BW monitor running 1680x1050, which I'll keep around for now but in the future, I'll probably upgrade to a pair of 23"'s from Dell or something when they have a sale to move to 1920x1080. Low noise is not a priority as long as it's not ridiculously loud, I'm more concerned with keeping it less dusty and cool. Other priorties include having an 120GB SSD, having a few USB3.0 and SATA3 ports. Here's what I've got in mind:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Quad Core Processor 3.2GHZ AM3 8MB Cache 125W Retail Box
SSD: Crucial M4 SSD Micron C400 128GB 2.5IN Solid State Disk Flash Drive SATA3 6Gbps
GPU: Powercolor Radeon HD 6850 775MHZ 1GB 4.0GHZ GDDR5 2XDVI DisplayPort HDMI PCI-E Video Card
M/B: Gigabyte GA-870A-USB3 AMD870 AMDSB850 ATX AM3 DDR3 2PCI-E16 3PCI RAID USB3.0 CrossFireX Motherboard
RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Silverline Stiletto 8GB 2X4GB PC3-10666 DDR3-1333 9-9-9-24 Dual Channel Memory Kit
Case: Coolermaster Elite 310 Black W/ Blue Trim ATX Mid Tower Case 4X5.25 6X3.5INT 1X3.5EXT No PSU Window
CPU Heatsink: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus Direct Touch 4 Heatpipe Heatsink AM2 AM3 LGA1366 LGA1155 LGA1156 120MM
DVD Drive: LG GH24LS70 24X SATA Lightscribe Internal DVD Writer Burner DVDRW Optical Drive Black OEM
P/S: Antec Earthwatts Green 650W Power Supply ATX12V V2.2 EPS12V Active PFC 80PLUS 120MM Fan
O/S: Windows 7 Home

With current rebates on NCIX and deals and such that package above comes out to almost exactly $900. Possibly throw in a tray converter to use for the SSD, a spare HDD for storage (or maybe I'll just bring over my current storage drive) and maybe an extra 120mm fan or two for some more air flow but that's another $50-$100 or so which I'm not too worried about spending. Possible areas of savings I could cut down on would be the video card (the one I picked out had good reviews and is recommended, and looks like a decent deal) and reducing the SSD to a 64GB version, but I feel like with a few games on it, the 64 will fill up quite fast and the 128 offers a bit better performance as well.

Thoughts?