building your own pc/rant/vent (1 Viewer)

[Jayden]

Yes, I am venting. My motherboard went out on my current pc. It was already outdated anyways, and I needed a bigger HD too. I am looking into buying a new pc verses building it myself or rebuilding it.

I am ranting because my husband's friend keeps questioning why I want a lot of ram, or a decent graphics card (on the motherboard is fine, nothing seperate) or a quad processor. ( I secretly think he doesn't want to see a woman with that powerful of a pc or maybe just doesn't want me to have one better than his)

I work a lot with graphics making my own. I use Photoshop CS2 and love using all the brushes etc. I also like to watch TV on my computer, and download lots of music, but I constantly burn and delete. My son wants me to teach him how to make and edit videos. I don't game, but I am sure my son would like to a little bit.

I found a PC that has a nice 500 GB HD with a quad processor and 4 GB memory. Which is exactly what I want. This costs $1000.00 after rebates and before tax. I KNOW this could be built for a lot less than that.

Tell me why I don't want a quad processor and just a dual.
Tell me why I shouldn't waste $$ on 4GB of memory.
Don't tell me why I need a smaller HD, because that is not happening. I already have 120 GB of graphics to dump on to my external once I can access my old HD's.

Also would you go with Vista or XP? If so what version.

 

[Leastbay]

What speed is the memory? I sometimes see companies build computers and list it with so much ram but it is a slower speed then it should be. Alot of motherboards have problems with 4 gigs of ram. If youre running a 32bit windows your computer cant use it all anyway. 2 gigs of ram will be fine for almost anything and cause less problems. Which video card are you looking at? I highly recommend an 8800GT. If your other parts are subpar, it will be a waste to go with the quad core.

 

[klm2656]

Jayden, $1K is actually pretty cheap for what you are describing. I do a lot of video processing, and I can tell you the more processing power and ram, the happier you will be.
Re-encoding video requires lots of processing power. I upgraded from a P4 3.6GHZ to the Intel dual core 2.4 GHZ and the time to re-encode mpeg2 video dropped nearly 3x. I use Canopus Procoder3, VirtualDub, and Divx Convert typically, and the newer processors are much faster.
Big money on video card is more of an issue if you are into gaming. I don't recommend using on board video for gaming or video processing, but gaming requires more video card.
Bottom line is buy as much computer as you can afford , but if you build it yourself, you can get more for your money by building to suit your needs. Check out neweggdotcom.

 

[Jayden]

This is the one I have been looking at.

Click HERE!

 

[Jayden]

What speed is the memory? I sometimes see companies build computers and list it with so much ram but it is a slower speed then it should be. Alot of motherboards have problems with 4 gigs of ram. If youre running a 32bit windows your computer cant use it all anyway. 2 gigs of ram will be fine for almost anything and cause less problems. Which video card are you looking at? I highly recommend an 8800GT. If your other parts are subpar, it will be a waste to go with the quad core.

I didn't know there were different speeds of Memory.

What is a 32bit windows?

 

[Leastbay]

thats 32 bit windows, 64bit has more memory addresses, 32bit has a max memory limit of 3gb, that includes your video card and sound card memory. You would subtract your video and sound ram or whatever other memory your computer has from the 3gb. so if you have a 512gb video card and 4 gb of ram you can only use 2.5 gb of ram. also this computer doesnt show the ram speed, there are many different ones. I saw a gateway system similar with an intel quad but in the details it had 533mhz ram which is fairly slow. This looks like it right here, looks like it comes with 667 or 800 mhz ram. if you look at just the motherboards for the Phenoms, they are rated for 1066mhz ram. Also the video cards dont seem well matched with the phenom. The computer will bottleneck at the memory or the video card. A slower dual core chip would be more balanced with this HP computer.

http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/s...v1=High+performance&series_name=m9100z_series

 

[Leastbay]

I didn't know there were different speeds of Memory.

What is a 32bit windows?

http://www.windows-vista-update.com/Windows_Vista_64_bit.html

 

[Saint77]

Jayden, check out newegg.com for parts pricing on things like memory, hard drives, etc, once you do that, you may understand why building one gets you more quality per dollar then buying off the shelf. I wont talk you out of a gigantic drive though, it wouldn't make any sense in your case. If it were me, Terabyte drives fit the bill.

That system though isnt 999, its 1179 before mail in rebates.

To me, it boils down to this. If its got what you want, and you need it now, little fuss, then buy box, if you can be patient, and wait a day or two more while the system is assembled, then build.

Memory and drives these days are dirt cheap (well, most of it is anyway, some of the older stuff is still up there due to production )

 

[RazorOye]

This is the one I have been looking at.

Click HERE!

There doesn't seem to be much information on that page.

I am not seeing a graphics card listed aside from the TV Tuner. And if you are going to be using it for graphics and digital editing, you'd want to make sure the graphics card is a little on the beefy side.

Does the included card even support high-definition? If so, what types at what resolution?

The 8800 is pretty pricey at the time and it comes down to how much you game. If not much, you can scale back to the nVidia 7900 - faster than the 8600 in terms of performance albeit without DX-10 capabilities. But it is cheaper than the 8800 and faster than the 8600. Yesterday I picked up an eVGA 7900GT KO and am very very pleased with it - and I talked the guy at the shop to knock 50 bucks off the sale price for me to boot. So it all comes down to what you need the graphics card for and what price range you are looking to spend.

4GB is quite a bit and Leastbay is right to have you look at the speeds. I've got 2GB of premium RAM and my computer is more responsive and less sluggish and temperamental than a friend who has Vista and just indulged himself by getting 2 additional GB to match the pair he already had in his system.

Just having a lot of RAM is not always the way to go.

I am not sure what size monitor you have or what type or what the native resolution is so you'd want to make sure that the video card can push the pixels at the native resolution of your current monitor since that system you linked has no monitor.

Quad core is fine - but I would recommend the Intel models over the AMD at the moment, and I say this with AMD chips powering 3 of the 4 computers I have here. AMD has been getting trounced by Intel and I'd be more comfortable with a 775 motherboard and at about the same price point as that processor, I'd go with a dual core 6600 or spend a bit more - if you want quad - the quad 6600.

The deal you linked might be a good one, but it's really hard to tell since there's not a lot of information on the site.

So if you are still thinking of that system, I would go in with a list of a few questions before I committed to buying it.

 

[saintfan-n-alex]

ram and video cards can be added\upgraded - cpus not as easily so if you are on a strict budget apply the money on sys board, cpu and hard drive - you can get by with lesser ram and on board video until you can upgrade - if no budget concerns then go all out.

i have yet to hear anyone say they like vista, XP is better than vista currently - personally i like win2k.

 

[Leastbay]

I prefer Vista, I will never go back to XP.

 

[saintfan-n-alex]

also a good sound card is something to consider if you are doing movies etc

 

[Saint77]

One reason most laptops now ship with 2GB RAM rather than the 1GB RAM they had a year ago is that most laptops now ship with Vista, not XP.

Vista may be pretty, but it's a monstrous resource hog, and from the reviews I've seen it's mostly wasted on eye-candy.

Additionally, the DRM 'features' in Vista allegedly include deliberate degradation of graphics, said to occur, with no warning to the user, in the event of problems with validation, licensing, etc.

For all the above reasons, plus the fact that it's still far too new by MS standards, I wouldn't touch Vista with a bargepole. XP does everything you need and does it with lower hardware requirements and fewer potential pitfalls. There's a reason corporate uptake is slow, slow, slow - little to no benefit.

I dont mind Vista, I suppose, but all my machines run XP Pro, except one, only because I got a copy of Vista bidness from Dell.

 

[Leastbay]

the problems with Vista have been fixed, people just dont like change, same thing happened from 95 to 98 and 98 to XP

 

[Saint77]

I don't think change is the problem. each of the versions you list was a marked functional improvement over it's predecessor (note that 2000 is missing ). That's not the case with Vista, at least from the end user's view. I'm sure Microsoft's licensing Dept and the major media corporations are delighted, though.

As for the fixes, some of the end user problems, most notably DRM and anti-piracy, and to a lesser extent pointless changes to the user interface, are in there by design, so they are not going to be fixed. The resource-hoggishness of Vista has led to reports that many games run faster under XP, given equal hardware.

Thats it in a nutshell for me. , especially the first paragraph. In overall every day use, I just dont see a huge need for what I do to warrant having Vista. The jump from the 9x kernal to XP was bigger IMO.