Really, if you’re constrained on money that much, I’d go with a laptop rather than a desktop. (EDIT: unless you already have peripherals and are only buying the tower)
I’d also wait until I have more money, because there’s a certain threshold not worth going below, but maybe your needs are less than mine. I got a $300 laptop in 2009 (for christmas), it was fine for me then, but even 2 some years ago I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten foot pole. Now looking to get a $900+ one because much less and I’ll regret not getting certain features later. Again, it depends on what you’re okay with having.
Couldn’t I just update the desktop for newer parts. This store called tigerdirect sells barebone kits with basic PC elements. I can just upgrade that.
True, but then you’re still sinking a lot of money in over time.
If you’re willing to do upgrades, then I’d say just build it yourself, that’s what I did, and that would probably bring the economics back in favor of the desktop.
If you’re interested, stop by /r/buildapc and newegg.
For 400 dollars, you can really have a good desktop pc (laptops always suck)
Well, if you built one yourself that is, you can easily have a good processor, i5-4440 is a processor I bought 4 weeks ago for a new PC 3.1GHz, $150, motherboard $50, case $30, HDD/SSD (you can always buy more later) $50-120, power supply (I would buy a 550W if you plan to upgrade it with a (good) graphics card, but the Intel HD Graphics 4xxx on the 4th gen processors will suffice for now) $70 and 8GB-1600 Mhz 8CL memory (~70) and you have quite a high-end very much upgrade(able/worthy) pc for around 400 bucks! :o
I use Intel HD Graphics 4xxx on my dev machine. It plays 2D games perfectly well (like the ones you find in the humble bundle). If you are wanting to write similar style of games all is good. If you want to mess with cutting edge 3d algorithms it won’t be so much fun. This desktop runs linux.
for 400 dollar(excluding monitor) you can build a medium pc that plays almost all games on medium maybe high @ 30 fps, depends on the game/age
I never spend more than 600 or 700 dollars on a new pc. but I am not a graphic whore and I value fps > fancy crap
buying a laptop at that price would yield in a much lower performance
I have 8GB of RAM, felt like it’s hitting the barrier.
Am I doing it right? ???
I would say so. At 4gb RAM I’m able to play minecraft whilst on skype and JGO. It takes about 5 minutes to crash lol.
Which must not necessarily be caused by RAM. My system does also have 4GB and can do a lot more at once, just to give a proof.
Your computer shouldn’t be crashing if its doing that little. 4GBs may not be a lot but its adequate. Something else it wrong with your computer!
I had 4GB until last week.
Remember the last gen game consoles had like 512MB
I exagerated when I said crashing. The game just stops responding, and I dont know what could be wrong. I see nothing wrong with the start up applications. I’m only using half of my HDD. I checked for viruses and defraged my system too.
You see, I partially agree and disagree with this. My computer, running with a 1.3GHz dual-core i5 and 4GB of RAM, is fine for light gaming (anything Source, Skyrim on low-medium, even DX:HR at 40-50FPS without AA or SSAO). Granted, it won’t hit the 60FPS mark on most things but for me at least, it really does not matter.
Also, consider purchasing something with an inbuilt SSD. That way, if you do hit the memory cap swapping with the virtual memory should have little to no noticeable impact on performance. But as a general rule, 2GB is not enough for anything much (especially not gaming) so I would definitely go for 4 or above if you’re using memory-hogging programs.
The computer may also have some form of integrated graphics. Integrated graphics has very little onboard VRAM (64MB in my computer) and it will reserve the system memory as VRAM. This means that you’ll have less memory to run things simultaneously while gaming.
Good. I should probably stop intentionally creating memory leaks.
I finally got my $450 bucks. Now I see this nice looking gaming pc that I’m willing to spend an extra $20 bucks on. What I wanna hear, is your opinion on 4gb RAM with a quad core AMD processor. everything but the ram would be an upgrade for me. In a couple of weeks I’ll be getting $50 - $100, so maybe then I should update my RAM. I also have the crappiest monitor in my room because I was previously using a Laptop and a 1024x740 (may be off by 10) monitor for dual screens. This http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8895082&CatId=114
is the URL for it. I’ll just have a few tabs up on google chrome, minecraft or something up, along with eclipse. Could this handle that?
Sorry guys, but there is so much BS going on in this thread, it’s painful to see as a hardware enthusiast. 
Comparing GHz-s and cores is like if you would try to compare megapixels for cameras: It really doesn’t work that way.
Yes, sure, a stronger CPU will have 4 or more cores (preferably real cores and not HT cores) and a relatively high (3+GHz) frequency but you still can’t compare CPUs just by that.
An AMD FX-4300 has 4 cores and runs on 3.8GHz, will it be faster than an Intel Core i5 3570K which also has 4 cores but only runs at 3.4GHz? No. In fact, the FX-4300 is about 1.5 times as slow as the 3570K. What you should use for comparing CPUs though is benchmark scores. A good site that I can recommend is CPUBoss for CPU comparison.
When it comes to RAM, nowadays you almost always want to have 4GB or more because your operating system alone can easily eat up 1GB+ RAM, and additional applications (like having an IDE, Steam, Skype, torrent and a web browser open) 2-3GBs. Personally I find 8GB to be the sweet spot right now (16GB is overkill unless you’re doing a lot of rendering and 3D modelling), but if that’s too pricey for you 4GB should be fine. Still, avoid 2GB or lower at all cost. Also make sure that the RAM is at least 1300MHz and has a CL9 timing.
If you want to use the rig mainly for gaming then the main component that you should worry about is your GPU. Fetch as much money into it as you can and shop around. AMD GPUs tend to provide a bit better price/performance ratio than Nvidia’s cards, but I personally tend to prefer Nvidia for their rock solid drivers, CUDA and shadowplay.
When it comes to the power supply you should buy something from the better brands (Corsair, EVGA, Cooler Master, Seasonic, FSP and a few other) with at least bronze efficiency.
There isn’t much to be said about motherboards, my recommendations depend on the socket that you would go with (LGA-1150/1155, AM3+ or something else), but usually the good brands are ASUS, ASRock, MSI, Gigabyte (probably in that order).
There are a few other components that I didn’t talk about now (case, HDD, SSD, optical drives, chasis fans, CPU coolers, etc.) but if you have any questions please go ahead.
Also, as a general rule of thumb you should never buy a prebuilt computer if you have at least the smallest idea on how to build a PC. Buying components one-by-one means way better price (you can usually spare around 15-25% just by doing this), longer warranty (there are components out there with 5 or even 10 years of warranty, but with prebuilts you usually don’t get more than 3 years), and a few other extra benefits like if your graphics cards goes wrong you can just send it back and use your integrated graphics in the meantime, while with a prebuilt you have to send back the whole thing, etc.
As I said earlier any of you guys need help with hardware or want me to build a best bang for the buck PC for his needs feel free to send me a PM or ask me here. 
Agreed, but CPUBoss just recycles other people’s content. Rather use other websites that do their own homework. Like mine
Here’s a list of CPUs and relative performances:
http://www.headline-benchmark.com/cpu-list/x/
And here is a comparison of the FX6300 and an i5-3570 which is twice the price. Bear in mind the FX6300 is almost the same price as an FX4300 but it is a vastly better CPU. If you are building an AMD box it NEVER makes sense to use an FX4300…
http://www.headline-benchmark.com/cpu/5687917531889664/6208330129211392
Dang, I must be doing somthing wrong with my laptop, at 4gb RAM and 2.37GHz CPU, Games lag like crazy, I suppose it’s because of the weak graphics card? Or the fact that I have another screen connected to my laptop?
It’s most likely the graphics card. What is it and what games are you playing? E.g. minecraft is actually not limited by the graphics card most of the time, but rather the cpu.
I would have minecraft up and skype up (in a call). After about 5 minutes, my CPU usage goes up to 100%.