New PC advice

Soulstarr · (#1 (**permalink**))

Ok my computer is dying a slow and painful death and I'm hoping to get a new one once finances permit.

I was thinking of getting a Dell. Any opinions on that one, or alternatives? Having one custom made is NOT an option this time around.

Also what are the specifications I should be looking for?

Saida.M · (#2 (**permalink**))

Assuming you want a Desktop:

When buying a new PC one of the main things I'd consider would be the hard drive and memory.

I'd try and think of the future as far as you can, then hopefully when newer stuff come out your PC may be able tocope withit. A good size case may help cover that, (a mid/tall tower), as opposed to a mini one.

At the moment the latest hard drives are SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment). There are SCSI but I won't go into that.

Go for-min. 160 GB (Hard Drive).And for Memory, - go for DDR SDRAM min. 1GB.

Most specs. refer to the speed of how fast they can transfer data. Usually these specs. are important to gamers. So it really depends on what you want to do with your PC.

If youonly want to surf the internet and do the odd word processing then lower specs. and low price PC's should be for you. But as I said earlier you may want to consider the future.

Gamers tend to wantpowerful graphic/sound cards and PSUs.

Soulstarr · (#3 (**permalink**))

athaba wrote:

Quote:

Assuming you want a Desktop:

When buying a new PC one of the main things I'd consider would be the hard drive and memory.

I'd try and think of the future as far as you can, then hopefully when newer stuff come out your PC may be able tocope withit. A good size case may help cover that, (a mid/tall tower), as opposed to a mini one.

At the moment the latest hard drives are SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment). There are SCSI but I won't go into that.

Go for-min. 160 GB (Hard Drive).And for Memory, - go for DDR SDRAM min. 1GB.

Most specs. refer to the speed of how fast they can transfer data. Usually these specs. are important to gamers. So it really depends on what you want to do with your PC.

If youonly want to surf the internet and do the odd word processing then lower specs. and low price PC's should be for you. But as I said earlier you may want to consider the future.

Gamers tend to wantpowerful graphic/sound cards and PSUs.

Quote:

I'm not into gaming but I think the graphics aspect would be important. What i tend to use my computer for is most of microsoft office, Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Music (mainly Itunes) and surfing the web. The future developments aspect was a big concern of mine. Any idea of what brand I should be buying?

Saida.M · (#4 (**permalink**))

It may be cheaper and easierSoulstarr to add more memory and a new hard drive,to your existing PC, than to fork out fora brand new one. Or add a new motherboard.

Saida.M · (#5 (**permalink**))

Off the top of my head Soulstarr I seem to remember something about SOME parts of Dell products can only be replaced by other Dell stuff, but I'd have to read up more on that.

In the meantime, apparently the newer size motherboard wouldbeBTX size, whereas now it's an ATX. That is the only thing I'd personally consider for the future aspect of a new PC and that would be covered by the case size. Unless the computer undergoes a completequantum leap in terms of size and shape, future PC's would probably only require newer memory and hard disks or motherboards. That is why thesize of the case would be my main consideration for now.

There is no one brand I'd recommend as it's the specs. that would be most important and of course the rep. of the company whom you buy it from.

If you want to run the software you stated,than the afromentioned specs. should cover it. It'll be a matter of price as to whether you'd want to go higher.

Soulstarr · (#6 (**permalink**))

I've heard that thig about Dell replacing Dell too but according to my friend, thats not the case anymore. either that or it won't be the case for too much longer. The only reason I was gonna go for one is bacuse my friend has had hers for about 18 months and she is the only person I know who doesn't complain about her computer!

Thanks for the advice tho. Will definately take the info into account when purchase time comes. Lord only knows when that will be lol!

Shemsi en Tehuti · (#7 (**permalink**))

Do you guys have the store Best Buy there? The warranty is the most important thing to me. Unless I am putting it together myself, I would get it from a store like that and pay a little extra for the extended warranty.

As for Dells, I wouldn't recommend them. I use one everyday at work, but they tend to be too pricey for home PCs. Even if you do get a decent price on one, you then are paying way too much altogetherwith anextended warranty.

The same thing is in all computers, so I tend not to be partial to any brands as long as it has what I want in it. If it were me, I wouldn't get anything less than a 100 GB harddrive (or 2 harddrives totally at least 120 GB), and 1 GB of DDR RAM on a motherboard expandable up to at least 2 GB for the future. Be mindful that you do not need to get all of this in the original PC. My last PC I bought it on sale for $300 (came with 40GB HD & 256 MB RAM), but I upgraded everything I wanted in it (2 harddrives, 1GB RAM, etc.). It came out cheaper that way...

umbrarchist · (#8 (**permalink**))

I just got a PC with these specs off ebay for $150 including shipping.

Brand: Gateway
Memory (RAM): 512 MB
Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4
Hard Drive Capacity: 40 GB
Operating System: Windows XP Home
Processor Speed: 1.8 GHz
Primary Drive: CD-RW
Bundled Items: Keyboard, Network Card
Condition: Used

Some retailers are still asking $75 for the video card that comes with the machine I bid $122 for. I'm an old timer and 128 megabytes just for video still amazes me.

A significant potential problem with used computers is the mileage on the hard drive. Anywhere from 2000 to 6000 hours might be put on a hard drive in a year. So you should assume you might want to put a new drive in any used machine you get if you take that option. Maybe make the old drive the slave and use it for MP3s that are always backed up.

What you do with the machine is significant in your purchasing decision. The computer companies want us to get our egos involved and brag about how fast and how big everything is. You know how men are about their equipment. ROFL I regard this as a psychological scam to get money out of your pocket.

I am not a gamer and I am not going to store a lot of video on my machine so buying a drive just to have a lot of empty space makes no sense but it is getting difficult to buy anything smaller than 120 gigabytes these days.

800 * 60 * 8 * 5 * 50 = 96,000,000

If you could type 80 words per minute and we assume that comes to an average of 10 characters per word including the space, typing 60 minutes an hour, 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, with 2 weeks vacation you could type almost 100 megabytes per year. So in 100 years you could fill a 10 gigabyte drive. So we need music and video to fill the huge drives that are available today.

So personally I believe in comparing what you need and want to do to the computing power required to accomplish that rather pursuing the latest, greatest and coolest, because computers are the new way to blow your cash. I would rather have a used $300 computer and a $1700 oriental rug than a new $2000 computer. In two years the rug would be worth more than both computers combined. It just won't crash as often.

If you consider the used route you may be better off buying from a local used computer store than ebay unless you know a competent computer geek. Try to test befor you buy though.

memtest86 is nice. It will tell you the clock speed, the size and speeds of the L1 and L2 caches and the amount and speed of memory. It will test all of the memory if you let it run but it takes 20 minutes on my fastes machine and could be hours on a slow machine with lots of memory.

http://www.memtest86.com/

umbrarchist

umbrarchist · (#9 (**permalink**))

athaba is right about that SATA business. Most machines more than two years old will be PATA not SATA, parallel not serial. You would have to get a PCI SATA interface card to put SATA drives into an old computer.

A SATA controller could be $35.
An 80 Gig SATA drive could be $65

So updating that computer could cost another $100 but it would then have 120 gigabytes and the new SATA drive could be 2 or 3 times as fast as the old PATA drive.

The speed of the drive has a noticable effect on the responsiveness of the computer, sometimes more noticable then the effect of increasing CPU speed. The electronics of an olde 1.8 GHz machine is so much faster than the hard drive that the memory and CPU are often waiting on the drive. So a new 3 GHz machine may just be waiting faster on the drive.

umbra

umbrarchist · (#10 (**permalink**))

Code:

Ok my computer is dying a slow and painful death

Could you explain how you computer is dying? What is the clock speed? What operating system? How much memory? What is it doing wrong?

umbra