PC Upgrade...?

[steve_earwig]

Shame Scan don't ship abroad

I seem to recall most of this one here originally came from Scan. I've also had a couple of disk drives off of ebuyer which were cheaper than Scan were doing them.

[gumby6371]

I strongly recommend ebuyer for parts, they're good on delivery and i've had excellent customer service on returns when I've not paid proper attention when ordering stuff.

As for whether to upgrade or buy a new system, it's really a question of budget. Personally I always upgrade components to the best I can justify to the bank manager/Mrs at the time, and remember a big outlay is the OS, if you upgrade you can legally use the same copy of Windows (assuming you're not a MAC or LINUX user). On new builds you (technically) should buy a new copy of Windows.

I'd start with a new board, cpu and memory, if you're worried about compatabilty look for a bundle deal, one thing to watch with a new board is graphics card connectivity, if your old machine had one fitted it was probably AGP not PCIe but if you get one with onboard and PCIe options you can upgrade later.

Intel are outperforming AMD for raw speed at the moment but that comes at a premium, if you're not a balls out gamer or don't do masses of video encoding save a few quid and get an AMD quad and save yourself £100 or so.

[highlander]

Also, don't go to laptops if you can avoid it; you really can't upgrade them save for hard disks and memory.

Having multiple desktop PCs in your house is a good way to make sure each hardware upgrade provides value for money - at the moment, I have three desktop PCs in the house - my PC, my stepson's PC, and an older server PC (listed in order of computing powah). When I upgrade my PC, the bits that come from there upgrade the stepson's PC. The bits from his PC then upgrade the server. Three upgrades for the price of one. And the bits no longer needed can either be kept as emergency spares (in case a PC dies), sold on (rare), or given away.

The server machine is just a normal desktop PC running a Windows Server OS, and is used primarily for security (domain authentication) and backups. Actually, that reminds me, I could do with upgrading the hard drives.

My own PC is based on a Gigabyte motherboard, has an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor on it, 4 GB of RAM, and an nVidia GeForce GTX260 graphics card. I built that PC a few years ago to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and it's been running very well ever since (even on Vista 64-bit!). Now that there's a new Elder Scrolls game coming out in November, I'll probably spec up a new PC for myself closer to the time.

[Gary406]

thats a bloody good pc highlander. sounds like you wont need to make a new one .

upgrade vid card maybe ?

[FarmerPug]

Also, don't go to laptops if you can avoid it.

they are not that bad, my old dell had a bigger hard drive installed (40gb to 80gb) which at the time was quite a bit. And the ram can easily be changed.
As for the rest your stuck with it.

[highlander]

If you think my PC is good, then you should see some of the true gamers' machines out there... some of them literally cost thousands of pounds to build

Mine does judder a bit here and there when playing some games at full detail. It's nothing I can't live with, but I know fine that the next Elder Scrolls game will need a system a bit beefier to run at max settings (which is something I aspire to do; the game looks STUNNING).

Besides, my stepson also wants to be able to play the game; his current rig has no chance (it's one of the first-generation Core2 Duo chips, 2 GB RAM, and an old nVidia GeForce 7200 card). He'll be getting my old mobo/CPU/RAM, which should be enough to play the game reasonably well.

Games are just getting bigger and bigger, due to the increased detail levels, and larger higher-quality textures. Therefore, you need need more and more memory, and the faster your PC can access that memory, the better.

My own PC runs with DDR2 memory, for example; I think I'd benefit from getting DDR3 memory (higher memory access speeds, necessary for transferring larger textures between the processor and memory) and the higher front-side bus speeds associated with the newer Intel processors (I think the Core i5 is the one I'd look at getting, if the Core i7 is still stupidly expensive come August time).

[Gary406]

i know mate my mate is the same.

no expense spared with him when it comes to his pc

£400 vid card
£250 cpu
£250 motherboard
£160 ram

if you ask me its daft. would never spend that much on a pc. my pc cost me about £180 to build 2 years ago and its stilll nice and smooth.

[FarmerPug]

I had a look in system prefrences for systme info, so here it is:
Intel Core i5 2.4GHz dual core. (the i7 is a stupendiously expensive option and uses a lot more power)
4gb DDR3 Ram
The graphics is nVidia Geforce gt 330M

i have played GTA on it once, and it did it quite well, although i was no good at playing the game. my old computer the dell didnt play games because it didnt have a nvidia graphics card or anything compatible with decent games.
This for all i use my laptop for is more than i need, even on a windows machine, but with the apple os its very quick.
Although i still use the old desktop from time to time, especially for cad stuff where you need a mouse.

[Gary406]

i'm just building my uncle a PC

Gigabyte motherboard
AMD Athlon II quad core 3.0ghz
4GB DDR3 1333 Ram
1TB seagate hard disk drive
Samsung dual layer dvd writer
3.5" multi card reader
all in a nice black microATX case with 450watt PSU

total price £235

add £36 to the £235 and change it to a Intel i3 dual core 3.06ghz ..

which would you buy ? im thinking maybe best to change it to the i3 spec ..

[highlander]

What's the price difference between the i3 and the i5?

[Gary406]

cheapest i3 is about £90
cheapest i5 is about £140
cheapest i7 is about £200

crazy prices. thats just for the processor nothing else

[gumby6371]

Gary, stick with the Athlon set up mate, the AM3's are plenty quick enough for the real world especially as it's not a gaming PC (no graphics card on your list).
Yes an i7 and probably an i5 will kick it's ass on a benchmark but the fact that you can encode an avi to dvd 20 seconds faster with an intel just doesn't tempt me to paying 50% more on a cpu.(From what I've seen the M/B are more expensive too).
If it needs more go, upgrade it later to a 6core (assuming you're using multi-threaded apps) and I believe you can fairly easily clock the AMD's from 3 to 4GHz on air cooling.

Btw, not wanting to go down the granny/egg sucking root but you are using a 64bit OS for that 4 gig of ram aren't you? Plus if the system is likely to have a dedicated graphics card at some point you might want to boost the PSU a little, I recommend the Antec Earthwatts range, my 500 watt is virtually silent and runs my Gigabyte GTX460 superoverclocked edition card without breaking a sweat and that requires 2 * 8 pin power connectors on its own.

[Gary406]

if he will upgrade in the futute to a graphics card it will only be a cheap 512 card nothing special.

was gonna use 32 bit windows 7 on it ?

[gumby6371]

A 32 bit OS will only recognise 3 GB of RAM, 64 bit compatability is very good now so I'd go for Windows 7 64bit and you can add as much memory as you like in the future assuming you have enough slots.
Plus the fact there is only pennies difference in the price for windows makes it a no brainer.

[highlander]

When you go into a shop and buy Windows 7 in the retail box, it's both 32 and 64 bit editions on the disc. You get one license key, and that will work with either release - the license is the same cost for 64-bit as it is for 32-bit.

You only need to worry about it if you're buying OEM license copies from the web (i.e. for system building) - the disc will only include either 32-bit or 64-bit.