How much $$ is a good CoH computer?

Well.. my old 2005 HP just kinda died. I'm saving up for a new one right now. My old HP could only run CoH on performance with the lowest 3d resolution.
How much does a computer cost that can at least run CoH on Performance with the highest 3d resolution?
I'm thinking i have a budget around $500.

Might want to save a little longer.

Look for something without integrated gfx. Check out new egg, but really, if you spend a little more, it will last a lot longer.

You might want to ask in the Tech support forum, a poster who mostly resides there, Father X-Mas, i think, has guides on what kinds of computers you can get at different price-ranges.

As for the highest possible graphics settings (3d, AA, Ultra mode, etc), a video card to do that ALONE would cost over 500 bucks. Just sayin'. But you can get a mid-range card that will give you decent graphics but without some of the bells and whistles for less than half that.

If you're willing to put the computer together yourself, you can salvage parts from your old computer (CD/Dvd drive, case, and Hard drive, maybe). A new Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Video card and power supply can be easily had for under 500, but once you start getting into other essentials (such as the aforementioned disk-drive and case) it's harder to stay on a $500 budget.

You can also check out this article: http://techreport.com/articles.x/20722 It has a budget box starting at 600, but if you're willing to go a bit lower than the specs they go for (or re-use old parts), you can likely stay on-target and not spend too much.

Note though that the cost doesn't include Operating System (Windows), so you'll need to figure something out there.

Start saving your money. $500 is not nearly enough to run this game as you want. I built my own pc two years ago and spent $900 on it and the game runs great. I don't max the settings, I get 60 FPS unless its a major battle and it drops into the 20's, I hardly ever get rubberbanding and I have uber fast load times. Check out the guide by Father X-Mas on how to build a PC as it was what I followed and it was the best choice I have ever made when it comes to a computer.

Father Xmas also posts here. Great guy. Links in his signature to a $750 and $1350 (IIRC) price point computer. That includes windows 7 and everything you need for a working computer tower.

I saved 60-100 on mine reusing my hard drive. If your computer has a removable graphics card you may be able to reuse that until you can afford a new card. If you can post the model number of your old computer they folks here can probably tear it down and mention what is salvageable for you.

Note : going off Xmas's guide the graphics card was probably the most singularly expensive thing I bought - but so far it's been an awesome card and let's me turn all doohickies on and upna notch or two. game so shiney now (hd 6700ish iirc, from a g6600 no letters)

I have just recently (March) purchased a new laptop for $850 with integrated graphics that runs great on the middle settings, and will run OK on the top settings (though a little choppy).

It's a Fujitsu Lifebook AH530, with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 550v graphics. I just went to Fry's and opened all the "Windows Performance Score" on all the machines and picked the one that had the highest score and was less than $1000 (and wasn't a return).

My Windows score is 5.9 over all, CPU is 6.8 and 3D graphics is 6.5. I have Windows Home Premium w/ 4 GB of RAM. Get something close to that and you should be OK.

Thanks for all the help..
Yeah my old computer was really crappy.. only had like 1.5 RAM and a crappy GeForce.
Well, looks like i am going to start mowing more lawns and walking more dogs this summer >.<. Only 15 and can't get a job yet.

Aw snap man, sorry to hear that. Seeing as that's the case, you probably can't order stuff online (unless you give your parents your cash and they do it for you) anyway. That's kind of the main advantage to do-it-yourself, saving money buying parts online. You might still be able to find a computer parts store in your area, but you're not gonna save as much money doing it that way.

If you're so inclined, look at BestBuy's online site and see if they have any in-store deals that look good. Post the relevant link here and we'll tell you if a given computer would be a good investment or not.

On the plus side, you'll see ads all over for $10 off your first $50+ order for new customers to newegg. Also, apparently newegg has also offended best buy with their new commercial and contest.

This seems pretty decent and cheap.. even if it is refurbished. By the way, I'm only running on the 2nd graphics lvl, performance i think. The one after minimum
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Fac...&skuId=2181128

Just wanted to put another plug in for Father Xmas's guides and helpful shopping lists. Two months ago I used his low-end list to order and build new machines for my wife and myself. After rebates and sale prices, it came out to around 650/machine, and they don't feel low-end at all. I had to play on my 15-month-old laptop this week because the AC was out and the room with the nice computers got too hot with them on, and boy did I miss all the shininess of the new systems...

With careful shopping (watch slickdeals.net, they tend to do notifications about particularly good newegg sales) you can probably get a really good CoH machine for below what I paid, provided you're willing to put it together yourself.

The graphics card in that model is a few years old. You might see a slight increase in your available graphics quality. It's also "only" a single-core processor, which will slow down your performance. Lots of RAM and a big HD and a good Video card don't mean squat if the processor is slow. (This is a hardware concept known as "A bottleneck", where something in your computer will invariably slow down everything else. A computer is only as good as its slowest or weakest component!)

Overall, I'd say that's roughly the system i had a few years ago (except mine had a bit less RAM and much less HD space). Played CoH fine but it won't be very good for raids or Ultra Mode.

And, take the following with a grain of salt: I tend to avoid refurbished. Everything computer part I ever got refurbished gave me problems, especially video cards. I swear half the time "Refurbished" means they made sure it turned on for 3 seconds then put it in a box and shipped it back out. However, some people have much better luck. I'd just hate to see you out over 350 bucks over something that gives you constant problems within a week. Still, it has a 90 day parts and labor warranty. If you have the means (time, transportation, etc) to get it back to a store the moment you run into problems, either for repair or exchange, that should take some of the edge off.

Also, I'm not sure if refurbished models are available in stores =/

If you're don't mind settling for a refurbished computer, you may consider keeping an eye out on http://www.woot.com/ .

NOTE: Woot!'s gimmick is that they only sell 1 (one) item a day accompanied with a pretty funny (usually) write up. Sometimes the item is new, sometimes it's refurbished. Maybe once a month, they might clear out their warehouse and spend the day selling off a series of limited quantity items. Woot! was bought by Amazon last year, if that'll give it better rep in your eyes. Anyway, their stuff usually is very cheap.

Today (06/11) they actually had a refurbished HP desktop on sale. There's only 1.25 hours left today, so I won't go into detail about it. Anyway, my point is, that you could take the opportunity if/when it comes up again on Woot! to score a cheap, fairly recent, mainstream-level computer. I haven't seen any gaming-level computers ever. However, it'll generally have modern components (I assume you know enough about computers to skip the older stuff when those appear) and the only extra things you might need to buy to upgrade it to gaming quality is a better power supply and graphics card.


Edit: just so you know, I have bought 2 refurbished computers from Woot! last year. One was a HP desktop for sis. So far, no complaints from her, but then again, she's not particularly techie. The second was an all-in-one Gateway computer for mom. She only uses it to play simple games and streaming videos. Again, no problems so far. As for myself, I recently bought a new system (mostly to play COH) from Cyberpower PC.

No time to talk tonight but the links are in my sig and commentary at the end of the guide thread.

I paid just over $500 for mine last year and I'm ok with it. Yes, the video card is integrated, but I can get a better one later on and likely pop in a better power supply as well. I got mine from newegg and it's a Cyberpower PC. If anything on it has been annoying, the keyboard is rather cheap. I need to switch back to my old one.

Settings, aren't maxed, but my old PC ran near minimum so anything is vastly better. I get decent water effects as well.

I paid $700 for an off the wal-mart shelf Inspirion that I'm quite pleased with. Nothing fancy but it meant I could save up some for a better graphics card down the line. Ran the Freedom invasion event without much trouble.

Another dash back through this thread.

If you don't care about ultramode settings and high resolution then it's very possible to get a $500 or less PC for the job. But you really need to be on the lookout.

Generally for that price range it's better to go with an AMD based PC because the integrated graphics that are found on Intel CPUs and motherboard chipsets are very limited when it comes to gaming. True the current Sandy Bridge CPUs have considerably better integrated graphics than previous attempts but most are still outclassed by AMD/ATI's or nVidia's integrated graphics. Only problem with nVidia's integrated graphics is they are only found on older motherboards that use Intel Socket 775.

You don't really need more than 4GB on a system but memory is cheap and more impressive to the average Joe than a better class of CPU or video, integrated or even a low end card such as the ATI HD 5450 or the nVidia GT 520 which are still a step up from integrated.

Here are a couple I found on NewEgg. I did include a few Intel Sandy Bridge i3-2100 based systems with their integrated graphics simply because compared to the AMD duel cores, the i3-2100 is considerably faster so when you can afford a video card with the likely power supply replacement, CPU performance wouldn't likely be a problem.

Honestly if you feel confident building your own system then your best bet is to watch Fry's for sales and buy your parts a piece at a time. That's what I did and I have a very good system and it cost me around around $500. That doesn't include the monitor, power supply or case which came from my old system.

The reason for this is Fry's will have incredible sales and sell parts at their cost or lower. For instance they will put a really high speed processor on sale because they know that people who come in and buy that processor will 90% of the time wind up buying a new motherboard and ram and case and etc... to go with it. It may take you a couple months to get all the parts this way but by the time you are done you will have paid wholesale cost for your system. They won't lower the price of the video cards this way but they almost always have returned (which are almost always unused) video cards for a significant discount. Even more so if they are even a single generation old.

If you pay close enough attention to sales, grab your best prices for the big price items (CPU, Video Card(s) specifically), then you can definitely do it for $500, but honestly, if you can get another $250 together, your system will be able to keep up with the game changes for a good while longer.