New pc time...

[Goatboy]

Hi,

I have good reason to believe my 4 year old laptop is about to keel over during the next few weeks. A vertical row of dead pixels popped up on my screen last night. Last time this happened it quickly spread until I was stuck with multiple dead rows of pixels in the middle of the screen. Luckily back then it was still under warranty and I got some great service from Toshiba. Now, there's no warranty and the thing is old and slow. Even though dead rows of pixels don't mean the laptop is really dead, it's a pain in the ass to look at for longer than 5 minutes. I think it's time to get a new pc.

Problem is, I have no idea what today's standards are anymore.
And tempting as it is to go overboard... I need to keep it modest to some degree. But you still want to get the best value for your money, right. Always a toughie.

- I want a proper pc, not a laptop.
- Assembling it myself isn't a problem. I just don't know which types and brands work together these days.
- I need to be able to run Photoshop without crumbling. I'm not doing any heavy professional stuff, but it just needs to run smoothly for web graphics purposes.
- I'd like to be able to run games like WoW, WAR, Eve, Blood Bowl, etc on good settings. I've been looking at shit graphics for ages now. Even though I'm not much of a gamer anymore, I'd just like to have something that fits the bill again. Doesn't need to be ultra new top of the line.
- It needs to be relatively quiet and still stay cool. I have the Antec P180 case at work and like it. I'm willing to spend the € 110 that the P180 costs at the moment. As far as I'm aware its heat distribution is quite good.
- At the moment I don't see the point in getting a tiny monitor to save money. It'd also be shit for Photoshop and general stuff.
A 22 inch Acer 5ms 1980x1080 for € 140 is what I'm looking at.

I have my keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc sorted.

So I guess I'm basically looking for advice on:

• Motherboard - no clue.
• Processor(s) - how many, brand, no clue.
• Memory - how much, brand, etc.
• Videocard - brand, memory, no clue.
• Harddrive 1x, as my boot drive and selected program drive. So doesn't have to be ginormous.
I have an external drive right now that I want to stick in as my second drive for storage purposes and games.
• Power supply
• Standard DVD something drive. Burning DVD's would be good, but not a necessity. Haven't done it in ages.
• Memory card reader for SD cards and such.

Any tips?
I'm considering standard systems from places like Dell and regular stores... but I'm not sure.

WHELP! >_<

[Keggi]

your going to get alot of different answers on this lol.

you need to go for duel or quad core proccesors

4 gig of ram if your running vista

and go for a power supply of 600watts and above for upgrades

video card single 512meg ram as a bare mimimum nowadays

im sure there are ppl here that can go into more and better detail than me

[Jarkko]

Go to the closest computer-shop, put €2000 on the desk and say you want a computer. Usually you get something nice.

[Warcold]

This is what i bought September of last year:

10273 Arctic Cooling MX-2 High compound koelpasta 1 € 7,95
12368 Asus EAH4850 512MB (512MB, DDR3, PCI-e, HDMI, Dual DVI) EAH4850/HTDI/512M/A 1 € 158,95
10677 Cooler Master CM 590 (ATX, NO PSU, Zwart) RC-590-KKN1-GP 1 € 57,50
9650 Cooler Master Real Power M520, 520W (ATX 12V V 2.3) 1 € 58,40
10502 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (S775, 2x3,16 GHz, 6MB, 1333MHz FSB, Boxed) 1 € 153,20
10860 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium EN OEM 1 pack, 64-bits 1 € 90,20
11625 MSI P45 Platinum (ATX, LGA775, DDRII, PCI-e, Lan, Sound) 1 € 141,70
10885 OCZ 4GB DDR2 (2x 2GB) PC6400 800Mhz (OCZ OCZ2RPR800C44GK) 1 € 88,95
10123 Samsung 1TB HD103UJ (SATA II 7200RPM 32MB) Volop op voorraad !!! 1 € 107,95
10127 Samsung SHS202J/BEBE 20x (Dual Layer, Zwart) OEM 1 € 19,95
11428 Samsung T220 Monitor (22", 2MS, 1680x1050, 20000:1) 1 € 255,95
9648 Scythe Mugen Infinity SCINF-1000 (Socket 478/775/754/939/940/AM2) 1 € 34,95
Exclusief € 987,94
BTW € 187,71
Totaalprijs € 1.175,65


Pretty content with it, although I would, in retrospective, make sure the mobo and GPU chipsets are of the same basic manufacturer (nvidia, or the other one, cant remember).
What i did at the time was spend 15 EUR on some hardware magazine, and checked out some of the tests it featured.
Ofc, my setup is >6 months old already...

I also recommend checking out Tweakers.net's best buy guide: http://tweakers.net/reviews/1173/tweakers-punt-net-best-buy-guide-editie-maart-2009.html . The rest of the site has nice reviews too.
All in all, I am pretty content with my setup, photoflop runs pretty smooth with my 4GB. The Scythe Mugen is quiet and cools very well, but is HUGE. No probs with my HD and now I've tackled my nasty videocard prob I am pretty pleased with it, although it causes the occasional BSoD (hence the recommendation to go for the same chipset for mobo and GPU).

[Warcold]

How huge is huge you may wonder?

This:

[Mangala]

I copied your post elsewhere and here is a response:

It's hard to be exact without an idea of the budget involved, but a good system for non-intensive gaming/graphics use would be something like:

CPU: Phenom II X3 720
Mobo: Gigabyte MA790X-UD4
RAM: 4x2GB DDR2-800, Corsair/Crucial,etc.
Hard drive: 640GB WD Caviar Blue (even if 640 gig is overkill it's a good buy as the smaller drives use less dense platters and thus are slower)
Video: Radeon HD4770 512MB
PSU: Anything by Antec, Corsair, Hiper, etc, that's at least 450W
Monitor: Dell 2209WA (the best 22" that doesn't cost stupid money)

Can't help with vendors unfortunately, but this is all common stuff and not hard to find.

[Macrune]

You have two issues really when looking at a new PC.

The first is getting components that are up to the job you want from them. (in your case gaming / inet browsing and Photoshop), and secondly having components that will actually work well together without the phantom black screen drop outs, random low frame rates etc that can sometimes occur.
Ive built 5 machines for various people over the past two years and the following is a list of components that run well together, arnt to expensive, and will run War (mid to high settings in keep seiges), WoW (max settings), EvE (4 clients on 2 screens at the same time) and LOTRO (almost maxed everything. The main screen i use being a 22" widescreen set on 1600 x 1280 at 32bit colour.

 Thermaltake Soprano case.. around £50 i think.
Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 -  ATX - AMD 770 - Socket AM2+ Motherboard..  £50 - £70
( i believe this has been updated with a newer version for the newer Phenom II processors and is now called the GA-MA770-UD3, though you can still get the DS3's and they are cheaper whilst still doing the job perfectly well)
AMD Phenom 9950  x4 2.6 Ghz quad core processor (black edition).. £116 - £170
nVidia 9800GTX+ 512 mb PCI-Express graphics card.. £90 - £120
360GB Seagate ST3360320AS SATA II 7200rpm 8MB Cache Hard Drive.. £30 - £45
Corsair XMS2 TwinPack 4GB DDR2 800MHz TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX.. £30 - £40
700w Ultra Silent Arctic Atx Power Supply ATX24 PCI-E.. £40 - £50

total......£406 - £545 (depending on where you buy your bits from)

Yes there are faster machines out there but these components work together and will run what you need without breaking the bank. I know this cos this is exactly what one of my machines has in and I use it all the time.
Ah and i use Vista 64bit as my operating system.

*edit*

The motherboard / cpu and gpu combo are all known for their ability for OCing. I havent done it as it runs everything fine at stock settings. Also If your are going to do alot of Photoshop you may consider doubling your ram to 8Gb. I havent had any issues with it getting anywhere near using the 4 gig (even with 4 eve clients open) but it cant hurt when opening multiple photo's.

One other thing. I know you said you have an external drive for gaming etc. How is that drive connected to your machine? firewire, usb or another method? It might be worth while spending another £35 quid on a second internal purely for the fact that the SATA II connection is alot faster than usb or firewire so it will help your load times.

Where do you live? If you are UK based there are a couple of online companys i can recommend that dont cost the earth and have a good reputation.

[Goatboy]

Wow, first of all thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply (so fast and sometimes quite elaborately!).
I wubble you all. Some great stuff to consider and think about.

Budget... hmmm... 600 euro max would be realistic given my current situation. That's around 535 pound.
I'd love to spend a zillion euro's and get the fastest machine ever. But I can't and it'd be outdated in a few months anyway.

Based in Holland, so UK stores would probably not be that wise.
I was hoping to take the external drive out of its casing and build it into the new pc case.
Thanks very much for the tried and tested sample list.

I've discarded the Antec case thing. I'll go with a standard one and pimp my pc when I'm rich. Save some money on that one.
I'd prefer to stay clear of cases with fans/openings on the side. I find a lot of noise pokes through.

I reckon my goal will be along these lines then:

Quad processor
4gb memory
Video card with 512mb memory
700W PSU

[Goatboy]

Also I'm still on XP Professional.
My cousin told me there's not a lot around that can handle Quad processors properly anyway?
Does the OS influence hardware choices at this stage?

Going to have a poke around town today and compare a bit as well. Maybe have the hardware outlet slap together a sample rig.

[Warcold]

well, if you wanna go with >3 Gb internal memory, then make sure you have a 64bit OS

that's all I (think I) know...

[Goatboy]

Are there creative ways of getting around Windows Genuine Advantage in Vista these days? 
Unless I go with a pre-install (yugh!) ready made system, buying a new OS deffo doesn't fit the budget.

And yeah... 4gb memory is the minimum I'll be getting I think.

[Warcold]

some say the 3,2 GB barrier is a fairytale, but I went with 64 bit to make sure

you could always go for your old XP and change to something 64 bit later

[Macrune]

The problem is that if you are using a 32 bit operating system it it will only 'see' 4 gig max. thats not 4 gig of ram thats 4 gig total which includes any memory on your gpu and sound card etc.
So if you have a 512mb gpu and a 126mb sound card then the system ram windows will see and use is 4 gb - 638mb = 3.362gb. That is what it will see and hence use.
In order to install and use more than that you need a 64 bit op wether it be 64bit xp or vista or windows 7 .

your other option is to go for one of the smaller op's like linux. I can't comment on them as ive only ever used windows in its various forms (and msdos prior to windows  ).

I would go for a 64 bit system. Just make sure that all the pieces of your system you purchase and put together support 64 bit op's.

Lots of online suppliers do bundles these days which consist of a motherboard, cpu and ram. Some even include a gpu in them which essentially means all you need to do is add a case, psu and op and your up and running.  Check around there's a huge choice if you are intent on self build.

heres a link to one supplier that ive used a number of times just to give you an idea. Ive linked you directly to the bundles page
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html

[Warcold]

damn mac, that avatar is the 'baddest' i've ever seen 

[Caradir]

damn mac, that avatar is the 'baddest' i've ever seen 

for some reason Metallicas "Ride the Lightning" springs to mind when i see it