Always build your own PC.  It's cheaper and you learn all you need to know about the hardware in the research stages.  If you've never done it, buckle down, and read the directions, and go forth! It's easy once you get over a bit of nerves (I fried an old mobo on my 2nd playing around with electronics, oops).  Although the rootkits, viruses is all in your use not the hardware.

Newegg, tigerdirect for reasonable prices (Especially if you wait for..well, a special).  I got my 285 GTX Evga from newegg VERY cheap, with COD5, which I gave to my nephew.

huh? also if you can't build your own pc atleast go with a reseller that doesnt load anything such as cyberpower or monarch. By the way you were not clear if you've a PCI-E or AGP version of the 8600 card I'm assuming PCI-E as at some point you said PCI but that doesnt mean much of anything. The card I'm linking is a PCI-E based card.

ALSO I did your research for you the Radeon 4770 will work just fine on a 300 watt power supply. Also ZipZoomFly is the least expensive of any of the resellers that I'd trust.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10010427&prodlist=froogle

here's where I did my research that's a serrious step up from that Nvidia card you've got AND it costs the exact same: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3553&p=9

Neither of these cards will snap into the current PCIe slot if the tower itself has *only* a 300W-PS... which is why i want to find a new NVidia 8600GS for that specific Mobo since the other one worked perfectly fine for at least a full year and got fried as soon as i snapped the above ATI-Wonder-200 junk in a PCI slot.

These Radeons might be good or even much better than what i had, i NO LONGER care about their stuff. It's that NVidia card or nothing.

We don't have any Newegg stores in Québec. But, sure i could certainly build my own PC -- do you hand over the whole darn cash? Why should i have to throw the whole f**en 600$ tower (250$ for X223W monitor, etc) in the garbage now? Cuz, it was bound to fail?

Which reminds me, i took an extra year of repairs & service for 70$... problem is, these unknown technicians would most probably blast the 500Gig Sata drive and all its personal content, managed, installed, patiently developped.

Back it up you may suggest ... on what, cheap CDs?

Newegg is ONLINE.  You order parts and put them together, they're VERY customer friendly and good with shipping and return of defective products.  Also you could of course reuse the tower though it might be hard to make sure it all fit..and of course you can keep your monitor....and HDDs.

Another plug for Newegg and learning as you go.  I've built 3 computers so far and in the years in between everything changes and you have to learn everything again.  If you can stand it it's a great way to go because you have a lot more control over what you end up with, and the final product is usually superior and cheaper.  All of the online stores like Newegg have helpful ratings of components and at least Newegg has discussion threads on every product to help you get an idea of what is best, what components work best with others, etc.  Good luck!

My buddy just got a gameing laptop from gateway that is slammin.  You may want to consider this as it's not only powerful enough to run FPS applications it is portable to go to your friends! 

R,

Nacho

Of course you are looking at throwing down about $1600ish, but that is like half the price for a gaming laptop compared to 3-4 years ago.

I'll swoop over at NewEgg just to glimpse at what i coulda got a year ago when i had the money.

In the meantime, Staples will get a phone call later this week to discuss repairs (already paid for, i might add). As for a portable, i have a different opinion; desktops are supposed to be a LOT more useful and reliable while working 24/day without ANY battery interruptions when necessary.

Thanks anyway, people.

Ouch, crappy luck. Well, if it's any comfort, my computer has a fried mobo. Yay.

Fried mobos are mean.  Cost me $200.  Bah!

Before you touch anything, get a new PSU, it sounds like it was the one that came with the case... those are terrible for componets and is possibly the reason your card got fried...

Exactly what i was thinking at first when i opened it up... that should "teach" me never to trust a stock product off the store shelves. Shoulda seen my face when i realized the darn 300W figure was printed on that casing.

Any good solid reliable 24 pins 450+PSU sells for about 75$ in some places and i'm sure extended warranty from ACER would cover that silly lack of properly matched components for their own Mobo. Trick is to convince Staples to hand over both the new NVidia 8600GS card & such a PS under service & repair contract i *already* paid for. I just hope the PCIe slot array isn't damaged too from that overheating.

I'll never trust any PC resellers, ever again.

Agreed...  I lost a $175 ASUS Motherboard because I kept the free powersupply which came with a tower about 3 years ago.   When it comes to the powersupply and the motherboard... buy one with quality and high reviews.

Alright... it's back to the oldy P4 with XP_Pro, the 6200 and all that jazz.

Call me a turtle with a bunch of obselete junk to be bothered with for the next 1.5 week.

They better fix it, fast.

Alright, looks like it has been fixed!

They snapped a 9600GT-512mbs (much better card, indeed!) into the slot and i'm back on the desktop... strangely, for a whole week the oldy Compaq/HP Presario-V6000 laptop came to the rescue somehow but there's still very limited stuff on it & it was sooooo slow. Touch pad mousing is clumsy.

Kept the PSU, though. Bof, it's okay. As long as this tower stands, it's working good.

So, back to modding & other important tasks.