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pabosher

Buying a New PC

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The dual core that's in mine was apparently the most overclockable of it's day, if that's any help to identify it.

Maybe I should just do that! There's a huuuuuge heatsink on it.

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Ah, yeh. I think I've got that. PC is in sections at the moment, as have just moved house. I will check it out though. Cheers :)

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OK... so here's what I picked with very little research (as in selectively from "most purchased" parts of an electronics store):

-Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4 GHz

-Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO B3 Intel P67 LGA1155

-Graphics card: Gigabyte GV-R695D5-2GD-B Radeon HD6950 2GB GDDR5

-Kingston Valueram 4GB (2x2Gt) 1333MHz DDR3, CL9

Some questions:

  1. Would I see a difference if I invested 50 euros or so more on HD6970? From what I gather it has about a hundred Stream-processors more than does HD6950 and slightly higher memory clock speed.
  2. Should I have more/faster RAM? Is it likely to be a bottleneck?
  3. What would be a reasonable output power range for the power supplies? Is 600-650W likely to be enough?
  4. Does anyone know a reasonably priced case that doesn't look like crap and is guaranteed to house the graphics card (which, apparently, is fucking huge)?

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The hard disk will always be your bottleneck while you stick with spindles. SSDs are the way to go if you want tit-ripping speeds, but dig deep for a useful size, otherwise you will be stuck with just putting the OS and pagefile on there.

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I decided that I have excess money I have to spend somehow. I'm willing to spend a bit more on a PC that runs everything I throw at it well (within reason) and that I don't have to upgrade the following year. Say, 1200 euros or a bit more. Or less, in case it doesn't make sense to pay more.

This is what I got:

Intel Core i7 2600 (non-clockable)

Gigabyte P67A-UD4 mobo

NVIDIA 560 Ti

Cooler Master HAF 932 case

Corsair 750W PSU

Kingston DDR3 2 x 4GB = 8GB RAM

WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD

cheap Samsung DVD Writer

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

totalling about 1280 €

It's pretty damn good. Plays recent games like Portal 2 with maxed details (though I haven't tried something like Crysis 2), but my max resolution is 1280x1024. And it doesn't actually heat the room much. When the CPU is idle, the amazing airflow of that case makes the room seem colder near the PC. It's a big case though.

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That is one sexy machine you have there! I'm pretty sure that'll play games for a long time to come. Should be able to handle Crysis 2 at max settings just fine. :tup:

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So here's my current shopping list:

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K

Motherboard: Asus P8P67 PRO B3

Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2

Memory: Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX 8 GB

Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon HD6970 2GB

Harddrive: OCZ Vertex 2 - 60GB 2.5" SSD SATA II

Harddrive: Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATAII 64MB

Optical drive: Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP Blu-ray Combo

Case: Fractal Design Define R3

Power Supply: Corsair CX600W

Totaling couple of euros short of 1300€.

Anything really stupid about this plan? I'm still considering whether I should just buy HD6950 instead and save about 100€. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it is that big a deal looking at the total cost of the project.

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Just as a heads up, I've had only terrible experiences with OCZ SSDs. They seem to just stop working for no reason. If possible, I'd look into getting another brand, like Intel. As I said, this is based only on personal experience.

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Good to know. Thanks!

I saw some kind of chart a while ago that listed OCZ quite high on product problems, but figured that it can't be that bad since they are so popular. Shame really, because the performance to price ratio seemed to be really good.

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I think I recall that Anandtech has pretty good SSD coverage, because Anand is a bit of a junkie. That said, I've heard of issues from practically every SSD manufacturer, so I wouldn't really judge by brand rather by individual product (controller revisions also mean that a brand's quality can jump from generation to generation pretty quickly).

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Bought a new laptop last week, ASUS Eee PC 1215P. So far it's ok, the purpose of this laptop was to be small, have a good battery time, but also usable for more than just browsing/emailing. Sadly, it's quite shit for gaming. Not even minecraft or darwinia produce a decent framerate. It doesn't matter a lot, considering I would only bring this laptop with me to places where I probably won't play games much anyway. It set me back 370 euros, so it's not that bad.

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It's actually surprisingly difficult to run Minecraft on non-gaming laptops, in my experience. I've used a laptop that will run Torchlight on more or less full settings at a solid 50+ FPS, but stutters and shakes on Minecraft on low.

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Necro bump!

I'm hopefully going to be offered a job tomorrow which will require me to work almost entirely from home. So I need to buy an entire office :) probably pick up a desk and chair from ikea. I'll sit on everything to make sure I get something comfortable.

Money is/isn't a factor.... We don't like skimping, BUT, this job is a rolling 6 month contract so potentially I could be out of work in 6 months and then end up in an office job again with no need of a computer at home.

I'm an email designer/developer, so all I need it for will be Photoshop and dreamweaver. I flirted with the idea of getting one of those 5K 27" Mac's as that's what I was using in my last job, then I woke up and realised that would be the stupidest idea ever, they're like £1600. Don't really want to blow an entire months wages on my office. PC is the way to go as I can upgrade it if needs be.

These guys are only 10mins up the round from me, I guess I can go in there a discuss with them what I need

http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/workstations/

Also, monitors, mice and keyboards?

d6a1143f571184db25f94613edd43b40af6d3a62

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Definitely pop into Novatech if they are close by and anywhere close to as good as they were a few years ago.

 

Also ask which of their computers are free of conflict minerals?

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I'm hopefully going to be offered a job tomorrow which will require me to work almost entirely from home. So I need to buy an entire office :) probably pick up a desk and chair from ikea. I'll sit on everything to make sure I get something comfortable.

 

 

Not strictly ontopic, but Ikea's Markus saw me through a long stint of working from home.

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Everything I've gotten from Ikea has been great and lasted me a long time. I would recommend shopping around office stores for a nice chair though. My computing life improved greatly when I splurged on a quality big and tall chair. Even though I'm not tall and only a little big, there's an extra sturdiness and padding there that was well worth it.

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I bought this Origami Desk and I've really liked it. Easily holds two 24" monitors with room to spare. Could probably do 2 27"s? Also incredibly simple to put together.

 

I can't complain about Ikea, though.

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Not strictly ontopic, but Ikea's Markus saw me through a long stint of working from home.

 

I am imagining that you had a friendly Ikea employee named Markus come by at night and make you dinner and do some cleaning, maybe leave a few fresh flowers in the vase on your table every Sunday, just because he was a nice guy and wanted to help you succeed. Ikea's Markus is a really swell guy.

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For slightly more than ikea price I recommend the go cart desk from cb2. $150, sturdy, clean lines. Good size but if you want a huge one they make a bigger one too.

I found myself in the need for a Windows laptop this week. I'm an unapologetic Mac fanboy but I quite like Windows 10 and the laptop. I got one of the new Acer Aspire E15 with an i5 for $379. Popping in a 2nd 4gb stick today and an SSD I had laying around.

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I shouldn't need a particularly big/fancy desk. As long as it has space to swing a mouse. ni need for any draws or what have you, as long as it's a comfortable height and flat, I'm easy.

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Funny you should say that. Upon hearing that I 'might' be working from home my wife has become obsessed about getting a dog. Our own little D dog

We want a alaskan klee kai (mini husky)... I just found out bloody miley Cyrus has one.

But there's like no breeders of them in this country apparently :/

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