Advice on new pc?

Okay so my dad wants to get a new computer and was looking at this: [www.ebuyer.com] from having a little look i would be inclined to suggest that he could probly do quite a bit better than that? or at least by buying individual components but i am not really sure?

He doesn't want to spend over £500 really but obviously i whatever is the best value. Don't need a monitor or keyboard / mouse and all that, just the actual computer. Would probly need windows 7 of some variety but oem shall be fine.

Thing is both me and him are not up to speed on what is good anymore and i was never an expert in these things.

He seems to reckon that buying individual parts is no longer that much cheaper than buying a stock pc as it was years ago but i am not sure he is correct on this matter? Basically, we are not adverse to buying parts - the only positive of buying a whole package i guess is that if it goes wrong then you don't have to be able to prove which part took out all the rest etc.

Do motherboards still come with normal PCI (not PCIe) slots these days? At least 1 for legacy? Or have they completely died out?
I say that as he would like firewire and if it's not on the motherboard then i have a pci firewire card he can have. If not i spose we can get a cheap pcie one.
(When i eventually get a new pc myself though it would be useful to have a pci slot in order to use my sound card though).

Dunno if you can get usb 3 motherboards at a decent price yet? But again i guess it's not major but nice to have.

Basically, whatever's best value and futureproof i guess really.

Thanks

H E L L O



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2011 05:36PM by Daniel Knott.

The problem with pre-built PCs, particularly little-known brands, is that you don't know what the PSU is, so you can't gauge how long the PC will last, or indeed if it will go bang, taking out half the components with it. My only other issue is the hard drive - I don't want to buy a PC with a Hitachi or Seagate hard drive, as I've had nothing but problems with them. Generally, the manufacturers will whatever is cheapest when they make their orders, as for them, that's all that matters.

Little niggly things are smaller issues, but still issues. Take that 6gb of RAM - the only way to get 6gb of RAM (expandable to 8gb of RAM) on a socket 775 motherboard is to use 3 sticks of 2gb. That will work fine, but there'll be a performance penalty, as really you'll want dual-channel, for which you'd need evenly matched pairs (for example 2x4gb, 2x2gb, 4x1gb or 2x2gb + 2x1gb). With only 4 RAM slots (which as far as I'm aware is the maximum a socket 775 board can have) you can't get to 6gb of RAM with a slot spare and retain dual-channel. It wouldn't be a problem on a socket 1366 board, as the CPUs in them can do triple-channel. Just looking at that tells you someone's not thinking about the system, and that makes you wonder about the rest of it, the bit the specs don't tell you.

Obviously with a home-built one, you know what you're putting in, so the PSU you buy is going to last, and if it does fail, it's not going to fry the rest of your system. It's a confidence thing really.

Most motherboards come with PCI ports still, though I personally wish they'd just kill off most legacy ports (or at least left them off the high-end stuff.

I'm not sure home-built PCs have been cheaper for a few years now, but that's because you don't buy the cheapest parts you can - you buy the parts that suit you.

Still, I've just totted-up an identical-spec system (minus the £3 keyboard & mouse, and with the brands I'd buy) and it came to £476 ex delivery.


Still, I've cooked up this (I'm just using Scan as I know what they have - most parts will be available from any decent etailer).

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black (£83.94)
CPU heatsink: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus (yes the CPU comes with a heatsink, but it's a bit crap) (18.83)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H (which has firewire around the back, and an internal port so you should be able to have a firewire port on the front of the case too) (£54.95)
RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 XMS3 (4gb is enough for most decent systems, though ironically 6gb is the sweet-spot at the moment, but read above for the impracticalities of that) (£64.99)
Graphics card: Sapphire HD 6770 1GB (I guess as the Zoostorm system has a dedicated card you want decent gaming performance?) (£89.98)
Case: Coolermaster Elite 334 (yes, it looks a bit naff, but the case I love is £80) (£29.94)
PSU: 520W Seasonic M12II-520 (currently not in stock, but I'm sure it will be back soon) (£71.98)
Hard drive: 1TB Western Digital WD1001FALS Cavalier Black (£39.56)
DVD R/W: Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE (£14.66)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (£69.68)

Total: £519.68 ex del.

Over budget, but it's a nicely rounded system, you know exactly what you've got and can customise it for you. We could trim it down if necessary.

Just one note - the hard drive. I personally always have at least 2 hard drives - one smaller one (<500gb) for Windows & programs, and another larger one for documents, data, videos, music, whatever. It's just less messy if your Windows installation dies for some reason, and less things to remember to backup if you do reinstall. I'll recommend something along those lines if you want me to. You'll want an external drive for backups too. You can get an ejectable drive bay which goes next to the DVD drive, and allows you to add or remove hard drives at will, even with the power on - perfect for backups, without the need for power cables and USB cables, though you'd need another hard drive for it too of course.

Okay he says that he doesn't mind spending more just wants to get something good. I'll go through it with him later.

Yer, don't pay too much attention to the zoostorm pc and specs really, as i think he just saw it and thought about getting it. Just suggest things based on your own thoughts in terms of best value/performance

Certainly the extra ram should be a benefit as he says he wants it mainly for video editing. A well balanced system is generally what he's after though so i don't see a point in skimping on the graphics card and even on the internet and stuff it seems things like that will start to be used more and more.

Not sure if he needs any optical drives and things or if he'll use some out of the old machine. With hard drives he might get one but certainly for 2 he just got an external one and has a spare normal one lying around. That ejectable bay looks like a nice idea though, thanks.

Hmm it says that the motherboard has an integrated graphics card - isn't this a bit of a waste of money? Or are they all like that these days?

What was all this hype about sandy bridge and amd being far behind intel now or is that kind of old news or not as big gap as it was mentioned?

Also same for ati / nvidia - with linux support and physx and all that might be worth trying nvidia. However if ati is better value for what you get then obviously that is the way to go.

Basically, the best value at a certain pricepoint will do though it's nice to understand the alternatives and reasoning behind different components

Oh yes a random question - what even are the differences between the million different options of windows (ever since vista and 7)? I've never really understood that. Though i'm guessing since you've suggested that home premium is the kind of way to go that everyone gets equivalent of just standard "xp home".

Edit: that scan site seems quite good for prices - at least compared to ebuyer and overclockers looking at graphics cards and things - know of any others that are good? Or is scan about the best?

Thanks for your help so far, i'll pass it on.

H E L L O



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2011 10:47PM by Daniel Knott.

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Daniel Knott
Hmm it says that the motherboard has an integrated graphics card - isn't this a bit of a waste of money? Or are they all like that these days?

It's cheaper than the version without onboard graphics. It's the way things are headed now - with the introduction of the (combined graphics and CPU chips) 95% of boards will have onboard graphics next year. The remaining 5% will be the high performance parts that are out of the budget range for most. The onboard graphics only gets used if there's no discreet graphics card, and in some cases they will combine to improve performance.

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Daniel Knott
What was all this hype about sandy bridge and amd being far behind intel now or is that kind of old news or not as big gap as it was mentioned?

AMD are a bit behind Sandy Bridge, but then just the motherboard and CPU for Sandy Bridge would cost around £220 (versus the £140 above). They are good processors (I set one up 3 or 4 weeks ago) but they aren't £80 better. Still, Intel are generally better for video editing, so if he does a lot of it, then it would be justified, but if it's something he does occasionally on the side, it might not be worth the extra.

Personally, I'd be happy with the quad-core AMD unless my job contained a lot of video editing (I don't do an awful lot of it - I mainly do photo editing, which isn't usually taxing for the CPU). For the record, I've got a Core i7 920 at home and a Q6600 at work, and unless you benchmarked the two, or compared encoding times in some way, you'd be hard pushed to know which is which. For me, the cores are more important than the speed at which they run. On that note, interestingly, AMD have a 6-core CPU at the same price as the cheapest Core i5 Sandy Bridge - I'll look into relative encoding times before recommending something, but I'd imagine they end up quite close.

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Daniel Knott
Also same for ati / nvidia - with linux support and physx and all that might be worth trying nvidia. However if ati is better value for what you get then obviously that is the way to go.

I'm out of the loop with Linux - I only use it for FOG (a tool for deploying Windows) - but I'd imagine the general consensus is the same as it was a few years ago - Nvidia are better. Most feel that ATI are slightly better value across the board at the moment, but you're talking a few pounds here and there, and if you know Nvidia, or want the confidence they'll work in Linux, it would certainly be worth those extra few pounds. Will the computer be used for gaming at all?

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Daniel Knott
Oh yes a random question - what even are the differences between the million different options of windows (ever since vista and 7)? I've never really understood that. Though i'm guessing since you've suggested that home premium is the kind of way to go that everyone gets equivalent of just standard "xp home".

There are only really 3 versions of Windows 7. Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. Professional contains everything HP does but adds corporate features, like the ability to join a Windows domain, has Windows XP mode (allows you to run incompatible programs in an XP virtual machine, without needing an XP license as I remember) and additional backup options out of the box. Ultimate is Professional, but adds more encryption options and additional language support... frankly it's pointless to the vast majority.

It's probably easier to link to Microsoft's comparison table.

The other versions are for emerging markets and such. You'll struggle to find them available in the UK.

For the record, there were a multitude of Windows XP versions too. Home, Pro (the common 2), Media Center Edition, Tablet Edition and XP64 (which technically wasn't XP, but was marketed as XP).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2011 11:06PM by gav.

Hmm the amd will probably be fine then - to be honest i don't really know much about sandy bridge, i just heard it was a big leap forward and didn't really know why.

We've never really had an nvidia card before and i don't know if he'll put linux on there. The computer might be used for games as i imagine it will be a shared family computer.

Ah i didn't realise the other versions were for emerging markets - so really it's not as confusing at it would first seem.

Been also asking here: [www.ttlg.com] to see a comparison of opinion. From what i can tell, your stuff seems higher specification except that the ram is slower but more plentiful (i imagine more is better in this case rather than faster) and the motherboard they suggest has more slots and is slightly higher-range.

Not sure how the two graphics cards compare?

H E L L O

Not being registered there I can't read the thread.

Fast RAM doesn't make much difference, but if the cost difference is minor, then you might as well go for the faster stuff anyway.

As for the motherboard, I just picked the cheapest decent board. Among the major manufacturers (I tend to stick with ASUS and Gigabyte generally) They're all much of a muchness, so grab the one which has the best socket layout for you.

What are the two graphics cards?

Oh i wonder when they changed that so it didn't allow guests to read that forum. Odd.
Oh i've just realised, my link was wrong - you can read it - all the info is there:
[www.ttlg.com]

But yer the motherboard they suggested has firewire and usb 3 so might be worth it if he's willing to pay more and it's got a few more slots too.

Card was a gtx 550 ti. [www.ebuyer.com] Dunno how that compares to ati ones or even gtx 460 [www.scan.co.uk]

H E L L O



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2011 11:30PM by Daniel Knott.

The 550 TI is short of the 460. Not much in it in most games, but the 460 is the better card (and it's cheaper going by items in stock at Scan at the moment). If you go for a 460 make sure you get the 1GB model, as it's one of those few times the extra onboard RAM does make a difference, though only a small one. Currently it's actually cheaper than the 768mb one at Scan too.

As for ATI the 6770 is a tiny bit slower than the 550 TI (but £30 cheaper) and the 6850 is above both the 550 TI and the 460 (but is £10 more than the 460).

You mention Scan's delivery, and you're right. They do it by weight, so the bigger the order, the more you pay. If you're a member of certain forums (such as Hexus.net or AVForums.com) you can get free shipping, and it's next day too (though on Hexus I think you need a minimum of 20 or 30 non-spam posts, and presumably AVForums are similar). If not, then what I'd do is get any items that are significantly cheaper through Scan, and get the similarly-priced or heavier items through Ebuyer, taking advantage of their free shipping.

Ah that's interesting - i have an account on avforums but probably not posted enough. I shall see. Nice for the future though. Thanks for that.

He's started to get more into it now he's read the suggestions and told me he feels he will probably blow the budget now to get better so it will last longer hahahaha oh dear. So it's a dangerous situation. I imagine i'll have to talk him down a bit if things arent worth the cost.
At least he's looking at it now though, so he can start making an actual choice.

Once he shows me what he's found i'll tot it up and see how much and then see what you think. Will also give me more of an idea of what he thinks he wants.

Basically i think it was upgrades to the motherboard chipset and getting a x6 core phenom 2. I don't really know if there is any point with the latter at least though, considering that you're lucky if an application uses more than 1 core. I know stuff starts to use more now but i dunno, just a feeling i get.

Thanks for all the help so far.

H E L L O

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Daniel Knott
Basically i think it was upgrades to the motherboard chipset and getting a x6 core phenom 2. I don't really know if there is any point with the latter at least though, considering that you're lucky if an application uses more than 1 core. I know stuff starts to use more now but i dunno, just a feeling i get.

In terms of tasks which reap large rewards from multi-cores, it's pretty much limited to video encoding. Of the encoding programs I use, Premiere (and Adobe Media Encoder) use all available cores, as does Handbrake. Most half-decent media encoders should be able to use multiple cores by now.