Building A Desktop

[Evil4Zerggin]

I ran stock, and he is planning to as well:

Hurm... well, let us see who else drops in. I'm not planning on any overclocking, I can't afford risk.

Interesting, Snipa, but I was thinking about going for 2GB sticks at those timings, as I did that for my laptop after all, and I plan to dual-boot Ubuntu and XP.

Besides, as I understand it, higher FSB = better memory performance. Unless I'm mistaken?

[AF]

If you plan on anything more than 2GB of ram get Vista 64bit (XP 64bit was such as car crash). Vista 32 bit would be best with 2GB or 4GB but considering its 32bit its a mistake, especially when Vista is supposed to be a 64bit OS anyway, so If you do insist on 32bit I would recommend XP.

Don't get any version of windows costing more than £80 regardless of its version. Don't get XP 64bit, dont get Vista basic edition either.

I'd buy 2 hard drives, a data drive, say a 500gb, and an OS drive, say 80GB-160GB, probably a 10k+ rpm drive. I'd agree with what was said about seagate and western digital (pretty much the same company right?). I've had maxtor drives crap out on me momentarily every few minutes and Ive had to lift my tower and drop it to get it going again, but my seagate and wd drives work flawlessly.

[Neddie]

Is the increased speed possible without losing stability? I need about 1.4 TB of HD space on the whole, and I plan XP Pro and Ubuntu Gutsy for now.

[Nemo]

/me double blinks

1.4...TB? what on earth for?!

holy crap. my 20gb laptop always feels huge (so long as I don't load it up with music) and 80gb on my desktop is positively massive. yow.

I apologize for having nothing constructive to say. That's just an astoundingly large amount of storage for a personal computer to me and my weak hardware-fu.

[Neddie]

Well, Nemo, I've accumulated a tremendous amount of data over the years, and I would like to have a glut of property, if you will, in at least the virtual world. It is... well, perhaps an expression of greed, but I can't stand having to access something only remotely, or losing something which interested me because a domain expired. Not that I need much space at all, nor does it bring me happiness - but the possibility that I have it if I need it, and never have to entrust my data to another - though I do have somebody I could - is comforting.

[Neddie]

Alright, so I want to order on the 31st.

[REVENGE]

I recommend the 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 as your drive of choice. It uses 3 platters, and is currently the highest performing large capacity drive on the market according to TomsHardware.

I recommend 4GB of memory as well. You can get it for around $100 on NewEgg.

[Pathfinder]

Only go with 4 Gb if you have a 64 bit OS. Really 2 Gb is more than enough for what you might use it for. Personally I would stick with Windows XP seeing how vista doesnt seem to be worth upgrading to. Only go to Vista if you want DX 10 which imo is worthless considering some of the comparison shots I have seen. DX9 looks just as nice as DX10.

[AF]

if possible
---->Install linux
else
----> dualboot with
--------if ram is smaller or equal to 2GB
------------>go 32bit XP
--------else if ram is bigger than 2GB
------------>go 64bit Vista

Vista 32bit is all fine and dandy but a 32bit system will probably be best with 32bit XP. Vista is a 64bit OS recompiled to 32bit and as such isnt quite what it should be, just as XP 64bit is a 32bit OS recompiled and tweaked/fiddled, and it shows.

XP 64bit isn't worth it, and Vista 64bit is miles better than Vista 32bit, if only because Vista was designed to run as a 64bit OS and was optimized accordingly. 64bit Vista drivers are better than 32bit Vista drivers and more reliable than 64bit XP drivers, and 64bit XP has more compatibility issues.

And as always if you can get away with Linux, do so, I personally would recommend ubuntu but there's nothing stopping a 10 way boot of 9 linux distros and a windows install.

[Comp1337]

/me double blinks

1.4...TB? what on earth for?!

holy crap. my 20gb laptop always feels huge (so long as I don't load it up with music) and 80gb on my desktop is positively massive. yow.

I apologize for having nothing constructive to say. That's just an astoundingly large amount of storage for a personal computer to me and my weak hardware-fu.

dude welcome to the 2000s

[Neddie]

I wonder what caused my feedback thread to be less useful than others which have been posed in this forum. Hurm...

I'm planning on dual booting with Ubuntu, and considering then reformatting my current machine so I can play with Debian directly. I am going for 4 GB of RAM, I can't see why anybody who wants their machine to perform would go for less at this point, particularly if their only OS is not XP. However, I will not waste two hundred dollars on what I consider the equivalent of software excrement - if Vista offered anything to an intelligent user that XP and Linux together or separately do not, that might be another story.

Also, Pathfinder, I'm running 3 GB now, and I'm definitely in need of more. Especially if I start mastering one of the skill sets for content creation in Spring.

REVENGE, that looks like a good drive, thanks for the input.

[Comp1337]

/me double blinks

1.4...TB? what on earth for?!

holy crap. my 20gb laptop always feels huge (so long as I don't load it up with music) and 80gb on my desktop is positively massive. yow.

I apologize for having nothing constructive to say. That's just an astoundingly large amount of storage for a personal computer to me and my weak hardware-fu.

dude welcome to the 2000s

To prove my point further i present to the jury the following evidence

[Neddie]

Amazing that I use 700 GB without any pornography.

[Comp1337]

I soon have too
My harddrives crave moar animu

I hate and love having faster download speed than the bitrates on animu, it builds up...

[rattle]

Amazing that I use 700 GB without any pornography.

You mean your girlfriend wipes them before you have chances, eh.

Well my pron folder is 0 jiggabytes, watch and delete keeps your harddrives clean, at least.

[BlackLiger]

I need maor HDD myself. Might get myself an extra 500gig one in the new year. Put me up to 1.25 GB.

[Comp1337]

Put me up to 1.25 GB.

punchcard harddrive gogo

[Neddie]

Ordered, paid and built. Now borrowing a secondary monitor while my roommate uses my 20" wide so I can have more workspace.