Which computer?

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Of the three I think the 1st one is your better choice. It has the best graphics card and a 3.1 GHz CPU. It also has Windows 7 instead of Windows 8
 
None of the above. Build your own. It'll cost about as much and be much, MUCH better.

Edit: Yeah, looking more at those three, I'm shocked they'd even try to call those "gaming" PCs. The "best" of the video cards there is the GeForce 630, which is only passable as a gaming card. Even putting a GeForce 610 or ATI HD 6450 in a gaming PC would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. Especially since one of the areas you should never skimp on in a gaming PC is your graphics card.

Either
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127720 (GeForce 650 2GB, $120)
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130796 (GeForce 640 2GB, $90)

are much better options, if you will consider building your own. They're both much better on the performance vs. price curve than the cards in those prebuilt computers.
 
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I agree that, if you're willing to go that route, building your own tends to be more cost effective - primarily because you can pick precisely the components that you want without paying extra for anything you don't.
If you're interested in pursuing that, I'd be happy to lend any help that I can. I built a desktop for the first time this past summer, and it was a great experience.

But EITHER WAY, here are two sites that I find very, very helpful when it comes to researching computer hardware. I particularly like the "Best Value" charts.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
http://videocardbenchmark.net/
I didn't take the time to check the charts for the CPUs and video cards from the links that you posted, but that would be one good way (of many) to compare those three options.
 
http://www.logicalincrements.com/

That should give you a general idea of what parts to get based on budget. Anything below 4 or 5 hundred dollars won't handle FTB very well and that does not include a screen, keyboard, mouse, or speakers.

The best value setup would be around the $1000 without the accessories I mentioned. The minimum for what you want would probably be the 5 or 6 hundred dollar range without the accessories.

Henry Link said:
Of the three I think the 1st one is your better choice. It has the best graphics card and a 3.1 GHz CPU. It also has Windows 7 instead of Windows 8
Click to expand...

Your right in terms of hardware, but there is nothing wrong with Windows 8 once you use it for a day or so. It can still do all the same things, its just a bit faster and has a few new features.
 
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DZCreeper said:
http://www.logicalincrements.com/

That should give you a general idea of what parts to get based on budget. Anything below 4 or 5 hundred dollars won't handle FTB very well and that does not include a screen, keyboard, mouse, or speakers.

The best value setup would be around the $1000 without the accessories I mentioned. The minimum for what you want would probably be the 5 or 6 hundred dollar range without the accessories.



Your right in terms of hardware, but there is nothing wrong with Windows 8 once you use it for a day or so. It can still do all the same things, its just a bit faster and has a few new features.
Click to expand...

The question is if you want to buy all new parts or re-use some parts in your current computer. For example, if you like your current monitor, keyboard and mouse you're throwing away money by buying a complete system, as that $200 plus (depending on quality) could go into more ram, a faster CPU, or other feature that would improve current performance.

I've been building my own IBM type PCs since the mid 80s (and CP/m systems since the late 70s) and have found that it's not hard or expensive to slowly upgrade a PC as long as you are smart about upgrade paths and not insisting on "bleeding edge" performance.

Watch out for the various "religious" arguments out there... Intel vs. AMD, Nvidia vs. ATI (now AMD), etc. They can be misleading and not tell the entire story. A top of the line CPU is only as good as the mainboard chipset that supports it. Also, there are some major price differentials out there. I just saw an Intel I7 priced at over $1000 (I don't know how realistic the price was) while an AMD 8350 was about $200.

[edit] I second the opinion about Windows 8... I've seen better performance with it than Win7 on the same hardware... I ran both on a dual-boot configured system and saw substantial improvements in frame rate on the MMO I play, in MC and with streaming video when using win8.

In my personal opinion people that don't like Win8 are either unwilling or incapable of learning a few new methods -or- how to adapt win8 to look more like win7.
 
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Honestly, in my personal opinion Minecraft/FTB isn't hard at all the run on highest settings, for example I have this computer (just bought it): http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/z-series/z510/. It can play around 80 FPS in Vanilla, and 50 FPS for FTB mod packs. I'm not sure if you're going to use the gaming desktops for any other games, but if you're getting them just for FTB than that's a waste of money.
 
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