Buying a Midrange PC: What to Look For

I got a number of comments and emails from people regarding my recent post on buying a cheap PC. Specifically, readers were interested in spending a little more... to get a little more.

If you're looking to upgrade your power from a bare-bones system, here's what to look for. The resulting machine should run you somewhere in the vicinity of $800 to $1,200, depending on sales, brand, and rebates. That's definitely not enough to break the bank while providing a system that will last you at least two to three years.

• RAM. As with the cheap PC, this is a critical upgrade. 1GB of RAM is minimum now if you want to run serious applications and support the nicest features of Windows Vista.
• Hard Drive. There's no reason to get anything less than a 250GB hard drive, which will offer plenty of room for music, movies, and game installation files.
• CPU. Here's the big switch: You need a beefier CPU than, say, a Celeron or a low-speed Pentium 4. For my money, you can't get a better bang for your buck than getting an AMD Athlon64 X2, though an Intel Pentium D dual core CPU is also a fine choice. Either way, don't worry much about the clock speed. One in the middle or even toward the bottom of the spectrum is fine.
• Video Card. Don't skimp on integrated graphics. You want a modern video card, though it doesn't need to be the absolute top of the line. Good choices for a midrange computer would be cards from the NVidia GeForce 7600 line or the ATI Radeon X1600 series. You can scale these up or down a model, depending on the price you can find and the availability of products from your chosen vendor.
• Optical Drive. While we're waiting for blue-laser optical drives, make sure your computer includes a dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive, and add a second optical drive (which can be a CD-RW/DVD-ROM) if available. This makes copying discs much easier.
• Other Considerations. Make sure your system includes plenty of USB ports and at least one FireWire port. An integrated media reader is also helpful if you take digital pictures (and who doesn't). As with cheap PCs, you'll find add-on monitors available, too. As the price of a system goes up, the quality of the bundled monitor usually goes up as well, but make sure you research the specific display you're considering independently of the PC before you click the BUY button.

As a test case, I configured an HP d4100e desktop using the guidance above. The system I ended up with features Windows XP Media Center, an AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+, 1GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, dual-layer DVD burner, secondary DVD-ROM, media reader, ATI Radeon X 1600XT, and a modem (only 10 bucks extra). Total price is $1,160: A little high, though it gets me integrated TV features. Other vendors would probably offer a nearly identical machine for less. Remember to poke around extensively before you settle on a specific machine.

Good luck!