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Computer purchasing

Ok i wanna buy a new PC, this one has already passed it's lifeline.

Now i seem to remember that someone said that building your own PC, chosing which CPU, and so on goes it into the PC actually comes out better and cheaper in the end.. is this right?

Btw is Dell a nice company, i see heaps of offers by them but hear so many complaints from people who purchased from them... these complaints were from USA customers, not aussies so it might be different??

Now is Celeron CPUs any good? or are they weak? Pentium is the best choice??

Cause when it says 2.6GHz Celeron, how much GHz is that of Pentium? isn't it like weaker?

there was this offer that had, Aspire T310 with 17' Monitor, Celeron 2.6Ghz, 256mb RAM, 40gigs HDD, CDR/DVD combo for like 984 bucks... is that worth it?

Cheers,

basically, the Ghz shows how fast the processor can actually do commands... however the type of processor eg pentium, celeron, amd, etc defines how much load that the processor can handle

it pretty much runs like cars do

Celeron = Ford Laser (cheap and ecenomic)
AMD = rx-7 non-turbo (affordable and still has ok grunt)
Pentium 4 = Porsche (more expensive, but worth the money)

i wont get into all the other factors inside computers, but basically thats what you really need to know about differentiating processors

Well i suggest you go AMD, its cheaper than a Pentium 4, but if you want to do Digital Video Edition you might wanna do Pentium way...

Btw =M=, AMD's run on higher cycles, therefore are faster even though they have less Ghz.

I say get AMD, Asus nForce2 motherboard, a nice cooling system for the CPU and nice case, all in all AMD system will be cheaper for you

Well it all depends to what you want to do with it... Graphical Designing, Gaming, Education, Video editing, Entertainment system or whatever.
As I build computers just as a hobby of mine, I recommend just building it yourself as you know what you want, as sometimes a package might sound good in some areas but there some little things that makes the whole system run good in only particular areas but bad in others.
AMD = High Temps. (i just recommend a good heatsink fan like the Thermaltake bit more expensive but its well worth it [As i blown 1 amd with a crap heatsink fan, but now i got a Thermaltake it runs with current temps. as a Pentium..
if not go for the pentium bit more expensive but you wont have to worry about the thing blowing up hehe. Unless you overclock but thats another story.

Going with the prepackaged Dell etc. sounds good but next time you want to upgrade you can't just upgrade specific parts in the system, well you kind of can, but you're restricted. Making you just buy a whole new system.

Get something that next time you upgrade in a couple of years time you wont have to just buy a whole new system you can just buy the bits and pieces and still be up to date. Unless you want a new system and have two computers if that tickles you fancy in the future

Need more help just msg. me.

My main piece of advice - INTEGRATED = BAD!!! It might be cheaper to get integrated sound, video, etc... but its a very bad idea!! About the only thing you want integrated on to the motherboard is maybe a network card and modem!!!

Also be aware that when you buy packages from the likes of HP (and prolly Dell - havent looked into there stuff) most of what you get is integrated! Makes it very hard to upgrade in the future....

i agree with the integrated comments... although you can upgrade. Im running an asus motherboard with integrated sound and i just disabled it and am now running a SoundBlaster Audigy

If you post some needs/wants we should be able to get you sorted. Also, do you posess the skills to build your own pc?

If not, we should be able to point you in the direction of a good shop who can sort you out.

psygnosis, i know your gonna be doing some producing so grab a P4... its been discussed heaps that p4 has advantages over AMD for music production.. check do a search on the production forum.

sound card.... M-Audio Audiophile... cant go wrong.. expensive but the best

Video card ... not my field i dunno

hard drives.... if your hardcore producing your gonna want a scsi hard drive, as non-scsi hard drives no matter what the rpm always bottle neck when working with large wav files.....

downside is sdsi hard drives are expensive... the scsi card is cheap bout $200 ish but for a 80gb scsi hard drive your looking at a little over $1000 but well worth the money.. i say get one of those and a normal one for your installation.

monitors .....dual 17" LCD is the way to go as you need it with cubase etc...


thast all i can think of atm.


so list us what your thinking atm?

Psy.. tell me what you need from the machine and what your budget is and I'll see what I can do.

For video card i cant recommend strongly enough going Nvidia!!

They are the technics of the video card world!!!

stick with an AMD.. good all round processor, may need a decent heat sink, but after that u're pretty much set.

There's a motherboard management system called N-Force2, it's probably the one u want, no matter how basic you PC gets. Other things u'll have to consider on you motherboard are things like: How many RAM slots it has and the max amount each can take, how many PCI slots it has, Dual Bios, Any onboard sound or Vidoe (generally onboard network card and or modem and or sound is fine)

RAM is determined (like the rest of the bits of the system) by what applications u need the comp for. General rule get at least 256MB+.

Other costly thing will be your graphics card. Modern games and vidoe/image editing need a lot of power. This is pretty much endless, u can spend over a grand on a card. Look at review/recommendations to make your decision. anything around the $200 mark will be decent.

sound card again depends on your use for the computer.

Monitor, 17" is fine. look at the 15" LCD monitors, and the 17" LCDs if you have the extra cash.

Get at least 40GB of Hard Disk. HDD are really cheap now, so more and faster drive is not that much more.

CD/DVD/CD burner/ DVD burner.. again, what u want.

And any PIC devices.

Don't get too carried away with all this, u can spend a lot of money very quickly. Probably the only thing u'd really want to spend a bit of money on is a good case and a really good motherboard, this will ensure u can accommodate a substantial upgrade if needed in the future.

Hope this helps...

I'm using a dell atm. i used to be a build your own computer person but i was impressed with the dell laptops ive had so ended up getting a desktop from them, i am very impressed, i ended up getting a fairly expensive system, Nothing integrated, and its definatly worth the price, the pc is built supurbly even the unused hdd power plugs have little caps over them. So far have not had a problem with it, but a couple of problems with the laptop and dell came over the next day, replaced the faulty component and left. Its also nice to be assured that the hardware is well tested together and works, nothing worse than compatability issues. If u can afford to spend a little bit extra i'd recomend dell

i've used p4 and amd on single and dual processor units, and i think amd is better, pentiums tend to hang a lot. but then again, it really depends on what you use it for. i do a lot of 3d graphics/raytracing which is VERY cpu intensive.

whether to go build from scratch or dell, it really depends on who the build from scratch people are. got mine from:

http://www.xentechcomputers.com/

(built from scratch) and have no problems whatsoever and support is really good too. they really know their stuff. and my comp runs like a lubed cat.

i also own a gateway (they're not selling in aus anymore) and have no complaints about that. their support and after sale stuff was great and they were big competition for dell a while back.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

really dont buy more than you need, dont buy any less. it really depends on what you use it for.

I agree that integrated is bad and you shouldnt really go near it. But the majority of the other posts in here i disagree with.

quote:

Originally posted by -=M=- basically, the Ghz shows how fast the processor can actually do commands... however the type of processor eg pentium, celeron, amd, etc defines how much load that the processor can handle it pretty much runs like cars do Celeron = Ford Laser (cheap and ecenomic) AMD = rx-7 non-turbo (affordable and still has ok grunt) Pentium 4 = Porsche (more expensive, but worth the money) i wont get into all the other factors inside computers, but basically thats what you really need to know about differentiating processors

please do get into all the other factors inside computers, please.

quote:

Originally posted by lethal For video card i cant recommend strongly enough going Nvidia!! They are the technics of the video card world!!!

Two or three years ago yes. But if you want to play the next generation games nicely, then you will need an ATI 9800pro at least, a 9800 XT if you can afford it. If those are out of your budget then try and pick up and 9600 XT. Ati's naming conventions are a big funny, XT = best, Pro = Next best, SE = budget Model. Stay away from SE's, and stay away from nvidia cards.

Disclaimer: Im not an ati fanboy, in one computer ive got a 9800pro and in the other geforce. Check out toms hardware/hard ocp/anandtech/whatever for benchmarks if you disagree.

quote:

Originally posted by PulseFusion really dont buy more than you need, dont buy any less. it really depends on what you use it for.

This advice is good if you plan to upgrade at least once every year, but if you cant afford buying new computers, or computer parts every year then buy the 2nd best of everything right now, and you should be good for a while to come, probably 2 years or so. I say 2nd best because you will pay through the nose if you want the best.

quote:

Originally posted by Master_Yoda Don't get too carried away with all this, u can spend a lot of money very quickly. Probably the only thing u'd really want to spend a bit of money on is a good case and a really good motherboard, this will ensure u can accommodate a substantial upgrade if needed in the future.

As i said above, buy good now, then dont upgrade for a while. However, with cases and motherboards, i wouldnt recommend buying the greatest now. Soon video cards will be using PCI-express, a faster pci port. So chances are if you want to upgrade to a good graphics card in the future, itll be a pci express one, not agp. Another problem with motherboards at the moment, is that 64bit processors have just arrived and support for them isnt that crash hot. But it will get better in time, and in time everything will have support for 64 bit processors.

quote:

Originally posted by waXology hard drives.... if your hardcore producing your gonna want a scsi hard drive, as non-scsi hard drives no matter what the rpm always bottle neck when working with large wav files..... monitors .....dual 17" LCD is the way to go as you need it with cubase etc...

I dont know much about producing, but unless you will be working on wav's that are 10's of gigs big, getting scsi is just not worth it. To really benefit from scsi that much you need to set them up in a raid 0 array, which means buying more than one. Which means more money.

As for the monitors, having 2 would be good, but i really doubt its a necessity.

I run a pentium 2.4c with 1gb of ram and a 9800pro like i said, i bought it about 9 months ago, and i dont see my self upgrading until next next generation games. One more thing, if you can afford it buy name brand ram, and i would recommend at least 512mb.

Psygnosis-

If you are buying a PC to produce music ( which is what I do) I would stay away from the Celeron and buy a top of the range Pentium or AMD processor.

I would also seriously consider buying decent sound card that will take the load off your CPU... Dont go to a computer shop to buy your sound card... go to a place that sells music hardware.

Also if you are using all soft synths ( VSTiS ), its also a good idea to buy some decent ram... about 1 gig of it... If you can, buy a matched pair and run the ram in dual channel mode. Your motherboard has to support this feature however.


Hope this helped.

listen to escee, he knows what he's talking about

oh and i wish i could afford another 17" LCD

ATi all the way!
As I got the radeon 9800 Pro [256mg]
kicks butt, no complaints here.
Dont get the XT, its like 5% improvement + a 150-200 buks more. If you still want a high end card that not the top but still up there go with the 9800 pro, if you can afford it though =).

on the monitor thing.

i have 19" monitor and i use cubase.. i get so frustrated becasue i need more room.. personally dual monitors for producing is worth it... most producers have it as do most studios as per standard.

Oh damn this is gonna take longer than i thought lol, thanx ppl

well my budget is 2000 for the PC, i'm not really looking to get a very advanced Computer but something that will run many of the applications like Music Production programs and games and so on without actually resulting a error.

I think the main reason getting this computer is for Music production (wax knows eheh), so definetly am looking for the best Sound card and very powerful CPU. Definetly looking at the Pentium 4 or anything that can run faster. So wax is the M-Audio Audiophile the best? will check go check this out cause currently i got a Sound Blaster Live which is pretty mediocre now, and it's lost plenty of sound quality so need a new one.

NiNo LoCo, is that for ALL Dell packages? damn that sux then , so which is best.. getting the AMD with the fan or just the pentium?

lethal, which Nvidia is currently the top? really looking at a decent card... don't really want graphix looking too realistic or anything but something that can hold pixels well and actually look nice, currently have a Nvidia Riva TNT2, and with the new games it just can't actually visualise many parts.

Matt_P, i don't really have any experience in actually building a PC

Master_Yoda, the RAM of my current PC is 384MB and still is slow, i've looked at the catalogues and stuff for memory chips and they seem quite cheap. They had a offer for 1024MB ram chip for like 150-200 bucks.. seems like two 512MB chips.

The harddrives, i heard that some of the HDDs that have big spaces actually stuff up faster, is this true? The current HDD is only 20gigs but its like 7 years old lol so the bad sectors are starting to show now... so bigger ones don't stuff up?

Pulse, thanx for the link, will look through there now, yeh trying to build one from scracth, heard too many probs with packages.


Cheers escees, thats gonna make me think for a while

Onion, yeh this PC would be for music production and other kinda entertainment so really need the best sound card, good CPU and so more..

Agree with the CPU being powerful, when i was using Reason (now using Cubase and Reason) it kept saying out of CPU power every time it was reading too much information so definetly wanting more CPU, i will also need nice computer speakers, i have these Cambridge Soundworks speakers now, but they have stuffed up, the cord actually cut into two, so i tried fixing it by soldiering the parts back together BUT this removed sooo much of the quality. These speakers were nice but until the cord broke, the quality dropped so need a speaker that can have physical power too.

Now the monitors, I'm still using my 15 inch but i guess a bigger screen would be nice but sometimes i just connect my PC to my TV or projector and make it big but yeh need a good monitor.

whats the best brands?? for a 17" +

Thanx everyone, will go searching with these info tomorrow but will take a while to understand

Cheers,

For your type of work your doing stick with a pentium. Bit more extra buks but you wont have to worry about if its fast enough or is it going to blow up hehe.

Well with big harddrives they have warrantys, now i have 150 gigs [120 WD 8mg cache & 30] and its still running all good. Im getting a 200 SATA WD one which should do well. (all these Dj sets downloaded have used up all my space =) .
Stick with Western Digital and more buffer the better, oh and higher RPMs but most current packages will sell you 7200rpms for what you are paying for. If your budget was higher you would go for SCSI (what Wax mentioned) or the 10k rpm but theses are still new to the consumer market so yeh...

Monitors, hmmm if your going with LCD get Philips 170b4.
CRT hmmmm Hitachi or Sony (if there is any around these days) else Diamand View

If you need speakers for like get the logitech z-680
http://www.pcau.com.au/l3/LOG3334.php
I got this system and its nuts, dont know why i got it for my Computer room to flippin loud hehe. For the price I recommend this to anyone

Thought of a case?? Aluminium all the way hehe well these are extras. I might be getting a tad carried away.
I'm a bit overboard with my computer, last year spent all my money on my dream PC.

quote:

well my budget is 2000 for the PC, i'm not really looking to get a very advanced Computer but something that will run many of the applications like Music Production programs and games and so on without actually resulting a error.

Youre planning on running windows arent u? youre gonna have to deal with the occasional fault, blame microsoft... everyone else does.

quote:

The harddrives, i heard that some of the HDDs that have big spaces actually stuff up faster, is this true? The current HDD is only 20gigs but its like 7 years old lol so the bad sectors are starting to show now... so bigger ones don't stuff up?

Ive never heard or experienced anything like this i wouldnt believe it its more dependant on the quality of the hdd.

quote:

Now the monitors, I'm still using my 15 inch but i guess a bigger screen would be nice but sometimes i just connect my PC to my TV or projector and make it big but yeh need a good monitor. whats the best brands?? for a 17" +

Remember youre gonna get a worthless resoluton on a tv (and probably projector unless you have a really really expensive one). The best brands are different for CRT and LCD, so it depends which one you want.

Bigger hard drives dont stuff up more than smaller ones. However hard drives of today do seem to fail more than older ones. Id guess this is because of temperature inside the case. Its a lot higher than it used to be.

This is just a guess though.

seriously, i wouldn't worry about hard drives failing, i've got five in this computer ranging from 4G to 120G and they are all running fine without fail. companies wouldn't be allowed to market a HDD that would be prone to failure... also i agree with ninoloco, Western Digital /w cache... no complaints


also, just a thought, instead of buying new speakers, why not have the whole setup in one room, computer decks, amp, speakers etc. so that you can have the decks and the computer running through the same speakers? i assume you already have some decent speakers hooked to your dex? that would make it easier to record your promos to computer as well he he... just a thought.

quote:

Originally posted by PulseFusion seriously, i wouldn't worry about hard drives failing, i've got five in this computer ranging from 4G to 120G and they are all running fine without fail. companies wouldn't be allowed to market a HDD that would be prone to failure... also i agree with ninoloco, Western Digital /w cache... no complaints

um what about IBM with their Deathstar (sorry Deskstar) lol.

true, i spose, well most companies at least anyway... WD are good.

quote:

Originally posted by Psygnosis Master_Yoda, the RAM of my current PC is 384MB and still is slow, i've looked at the catalogues and stuff for memory chips and they seem quite cheap. They had a offer for 1024MB ram chip for like 150-200 bucks.. seems like two 512MB chips.

um can you please tell me where i can get 1024MB ram for $200!! Is this DDR ram?


Also on the HD issue, i would get a 120gig 10200rpm (somethign like that ) 8mb Cache, dont worry about SCSI, way to expensive.

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