Hey guys

Genie · Post by **Genie** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 3:23 pm

I think I finally have a cash flow splurge coming in soon and plan on dishing out around 500 bucks for a new PC. I'd like to know what you guys think as to how I should go about getting a new pc. Lemme tell you what I need tbh, then i'll take criticism and comments.

I need to get a new case for starters
New motherboard and chipset/cpu
New ram-type and about 512-1gb of it.
A new harddrive (decently cheap, I usually only need about 30gb of space)

Ive got a semi decent video card, so I am not shopping for one of those right now. I also dont technically need drives (cd-type) unless I upgrade to a dvd-r or lightscribe, but then again, I dont need.

thoughts?

Post by **Kadian** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:32 am

This will get you a sweet set-up, it's about $550 with shipping, so if you had to save a few bucks you could look for a case locally, because they are expensive to ship.

What you get:
-80GB SATA hard drive 7200x speed
-AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5600+ (2.8GHz)
-1GB DDR2 ram (upgradable to 4GB with this MB)
-Decent looking black case w/430 Power Supply, there are others in the same price range to chose from.

I put this all together on mwave.com

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=490060

Post by **Kadian** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:51 am

Some other advice,

There is no reason to go below an 80GB hard drive, because you would only save about $5 going down to a 40GB from what I've seen .

Go with the SATA hard drive, they are faster and don't end up costing more in the long run, because most motherboards have SATA connections now you will have to pay more for a motherboard with multiple IDE connections in addition to the SATA connections that are becoming the standard.

DO NOT go below 1GB ram, I have 1.5GB which does good, 2 would be better, but 1 is a minimum imo.

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:58 am

cases are a fun thing to buy...
either you go for cheap, cause you dont care
or you pay for something decent, wich simplifies your life
antec makes great ones, and i must say, when i have to work inside my puter i appreciate the small touches
having a larger HD also means you wont slow down if you get near your max capacity

it might be easier to give advice, if we knew why your changing

also modthebox.com is great for all pc advice, the forum is great and they have a ton of reviews

Post by **Kadian** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:01 pm

I did one more in case you wanna go cheaper, this one is basically the same, except it is a 5200+ (2.6GHz) rather than the 5600+ (2.8GHz), but I increased the ram to 2GB. It's still a sweet machine, just more RAM and a slightly slower processor. You probably couldn't tell the difference in speed because of the RAM, but you'd save about $40-$50 overall.

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=490131

I would definitally go with the 5200+ 1GB cache processor over the 5400+ which is actually a 2.8GHz processor, but only has 512kb cache.

Genie · Post by **Genie** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:36 am

Hey thanks Kad, looks good.

Do ya'll recommend anything else?

Genie · Post by **Genie** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:39 am

shiram wrote: it might be easier to give advice, if we knew why your changing

My PC is old man, real old...
AMD Duron 1k and im still using pc 133 ram sticks

Plus, Im getting a bonus at work where we didnt think we would, its about 580 bucks before taxes.

Genie · Post by **Genie** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 7:59 pm

So does anyone else have any advice for me?

Better yet, any sites or places you guys think I should look in to?

Genie · Post by **Genie** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:25 pm

So does anyone else have any advice for me?

Better yet, any sites or places you guys think I should look in to?

Shaz · Post by **Shaz** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:16 pm

Kadian's advice and system seems very solid to me, so no new advice here.

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:54 am

apparently, right now, intel as got the better processors...
Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme series, to be specific

Post by **Kadian** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:22 pm

True, Intel has a better processor, you could get a "Extreme" 2.93 GHz dual core with a 4MB cache for the fair price of just $970

Their standard dual core (not the extreme series) also sells for quite a bit more, but has a few more features (bigger cache mainly). That's always been the case when it comes to AMD vs Intel.

Post by **Kadian** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:02 pm

Kadian wrote:This will get you a sweet set-up, it's about $550 with shipping, so if you had to save a few bucks you could look for a case locally, because they are expensive to ship.

What you get:
-80GB SATA hard drive 7200x speed
-AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 5600+ (2.8GHz)
-1GB DDR2 ram (upgradable to 4GB with this MB)
-Decent looking black case w/430 Power Supply, there are others in the same price range to chose from.

I put this all together on mwave.com

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=490060

Just for the heck of it I redid this setup to see how much it is with the lower AMD prices, it went from $518 down to $442 in the 2 months since I wrote this. Just something to think about if anyone is looking for a new computer.