I am basing this on research at least a year out of date, but for around $500, you should be able to get:
1. Quad-core CPU (which will be useful for video format conversion, and also is not expensive in modernity) 2. 4GB of RAM (which is the weirdest spec in that it was totally standard for a while, and then RAM prices went up and suddenly cheap computers started coming with 2GB again, but absolutely insist on at least 4GB) 3. Enough hard drive space to not be relevant (I think .5TB is a basic minimum these days)
About the only thing that cheap computers won't come with is a non-integrated video card, which sometimes means that they'll only have VGA outputs instead of DVI/DisplayPort/HDMI. The easiest solution is to buy a decent low-end graphics card (a Radeon 5770 is probably the thing to get right now, although at $150 maybe it's too high-end) or move the one over from your current computer if you have PCI Express and a reasonable graphics card. Trying to bump up the configuration to include discrete graphics from Dell or whatever tends to get you into "gaming PC" territory, which you don't want.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-08-14 03:11 am (UTC)1. Quad-core CPU (which will be useful for video format conversion, and also is not expensive in modernity)
2. 4GB of RAM (which is the weirdest spec in that it was totally standard for a while, and then RAM prices went up and suddenly cheap computers started coming with 2GB again, but absolutely insist on at least 4GB)
3. Enough hard drive space to not be relevant (I think .5TB is a basic minimum these days)
About the only thing that cheap computers won't come with is a non-integrated video card, which sometimes means that they'll only have VGA outputs instead of DVI/DisplayPort/HDMI. The easiest solution is to buy a decent low-end graphics card (a Radeon 5770 is probably the thing to get right now, although at $150 maybe it's too high-end) or move the one over from your current computer if you have PCI Express and a reasonable graphics card. Trying to bump up the configuration to include discrete graphics from Dell or whatever tends to get you into "gaming PC" territory, which you don't want.