Whats a good PE Computer

Not a laptop :o)

Myself and Red generally use 2 PC's to play PE - and we always fight over the desktop.

It's looking a little dated now, but easily plays HL2 even in HDR mode, and kicks PE into touch without breaking a sweat:

1Gb DDR mem in dual channel mode (400Mhz)
AMD Athlon (32 bit) 3000+
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256Mb
Asus Mobo

I usually activate 4x anti-aliasing and 4x anisotropic filtering to run PE to get rid of all the texture glitches and sharp edges - plus the fact that PE insists on running at 1024x768 on my 1280 flat panel, giving that nasty pixel-doubling effect.

The only thing it won't do is allow us to watch tv using M$ media centre edition and play PE on the monitor at the same time - I think there's prolly not enough video ram to do this.

In comparison, our laptop:

3.2Ghz Pentium 4
Nvidia go 6800
1Gb RAM

...struggles like hell. I have to turn all the quality settings down, and using anti-aliasing or aniso is a no-no.

As for recommending recent kit? I'm a bit behind the times although I'd definitely recommend using a mid-priced video card instead of an uber one. They usually give better performance for your cash and you can always improve/quieten the cooling arrangements yourself. Stock coolers are always naff even when you pay a premium for their 'ice' versions or whatever buzzword they add. As I say, our PC is in the lounge for TV use, so I spent quite a while and buck quietening the damn thing down :o)

Good luck mate!

 

WaterCooled - nice :o)

So in that case you're gonna rip the standard coolers off everything - an even beeter reason to buy mid-range cards without the bells and whilstes - you'll be able to clock the nuts off it without too many issues :o)