Recommendations for New Pc

[Senna]

Ok Just asking around, and i know many people here know stuff about pc hardware

I wanna buy a new PC and dont wanna waste more than 950 euro on it

My first objective is buy an motherboard socket 1155 that supports the oc of the i5 2500k
Then buy a good fan to cool the cpu
Income power of 700 watts
a good gfx
8 gb kingstom 1333 mhz ddr3
250 gb hdd sata 3

i dont know what product is better.

I would like ur recommendations;

-Intel Core i5 2500k

[Das Bruce]

I wanna buy a new PC and dont wanna waste more than 950 euro on it

If you use your computer a lot it's definitely not a waste to buy a better product. There are limits of course but if you don't get a machine that is good now it's going to become torturous as requirements increase and you'll end up having to upgrade/replace for the same price again instead of spending fifty percent more now and having it last twice as long.

Other than that, probably suggest you go with nVidia for the graphics card.

[SpliFF]

I suggest a decent sized SSD for your primary OS/applications drive. Pretty much everything is bottlenecked by the disk these days since even cheap RAM and CPUs provide excellent gaming and video encoding. Basically your PC will spend more time waiting for user input, disk and network than actually processing data. Pick up a cheap 7200 RPM 2TB drive for all your other data. Not even HD video needs a faster disk.

Anything quad-core should do but AMD tends to provide better value for money. If you've got some extra cash after that put it into a good GFX card. I'd really advise against a top-end CPU as they're pretty much overpowered for most desktops.

Even if games are your thing be careful overspending. Most games are aimed at consoles these days so having equivalent power to an XBox/PS3 is usually sufficient.

[SirArtturi]

My PC buying philosophy has always been that don't buy latest tech now if you can buy it cheaper tomorrow. Invest on future. Unless you want to stay always on top, run latest games fastest, and have money to do that.

Theres just no sense to buy over-prized components. So you can easily postpone of purchasing some components and buy cheaper. This is ofc if you want your PC to run well in long-term and not invest too much:

Invest on motherboard. Its a long term investment if you buy a motherboard which supports future techonologies. For example: buy AMD motherboard which supports FX.

P.S My PC is now about 6 years old and still running pretty good. I updated it about 3 years ago by using 350€ to a new processor and graphic card and voila it was up to date...

[smoth]

Things are not black and white, there is no waste/efficiency meter, this isn't a video game it is real life and variables are many..

one day ram could be cheap next day there could be a labor strike or more recently a flood where we have our hardware sweat shops.

What are you planning on doing? do you pc a lot? like how much of your spare time does your pc usage comprise. If it is most of your free time then you get something nice...

but if I can use clothing as an example...
you can get a cheap t-shirt for cheap in large bundle..
- it will not be stylish, probably tear easily etc but it is a shirt, it will cover you and if you get stains on it..
- you could buy a neat shirt that will have designs on it or maybe some style around 20$ and have something you can wear everywhere..
- you could buy a "dress shirt" with buttons and take it to get dry cleaned all the time for about 40-80 bucks. It is not good to work on but damn you look snazzy..
- you could buy a designer shirt and pay in the HUNDREDS for it.

somewhere between cheap t-shirt and designer shirt is where you want to fall I suspect.

Now, if you live in a tribe and never wear tshirts it would be a waste...
if you live in culture that wears those long dress things, it would be a waste..

so when you talk about waste and over-priced.. it depends on your use... someone, somewhere out there wants this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822135009

you obviously don't.

why not take a look at the: wishlists on newegg to see what other people are putting together. You may find some good suggestions, when I built my first pc, that was what I did, I found some interesting selections.

you can put a few of your own together and post them here, people can then give you some feedback on what is good or bad(some people here like doing that sort of thing) and then you can try and find similar hardware IRL.

[AF]

I'd like to point out 2 things:

• A HD will not saturate SATA 1 interfaces, nevermind SATA 2 or SATA 3, only an SSD or a RAM drive will do that
• SSDs are not fancy uber new technology, they've been available for years now and have had numerous iterations, and are quite reliably the best thing you can do to improve speed/throughput/batterylife/weight on any machine be it a netbook or an uber computer. They're also fast approaching and surpassing the 1GB per £1 mark.

As for the rest, we've been doomed spoilt by games built to console specs, meaning you only need the hardware of 2008/2009 to play most games these days

[SirArtturi]

I think your analogy is bad smoth.

You can't compare buying a shirt and buying a computer.

Computer consists of different components which prices cheapen eventually. Some components cheapen faster, usually processors and graphic cards. Why? Because of product development. T-shirts are complete products, they don't change that much. Usually what costs in clothes are imaginary.

PC-components however, are still pure power and efficiency, and so are the markets. They invest a lot of money on Research and development, which affects on prices. Latest tech is expensive. There's no fashion factors, nor there's a much quality factors cos' it's all pretty good stuff around mostly. Then you really can consider whether to buy today or tomorrow if it's cheaper tomorrow.

Ofc its a matter of necessity too. Why would you buy an expensive dress shirt if you use it like couple times in your life? Why would you buy a hardcore PC if you play solitaire in your windows 3.0? But yet this is a completely different aspect.

BTW, don't hinder with RAM, its cheaper than ever.

[zerver]

My buying philosophy has been like this for quite some time:

MB: Look for quality, such as solid state capacitors. Look for features that you desire, and read some reviews.

RAM: Look at the MB memory support list to avoid any risk of trouble. Low latency is good, as long as it does not cost anything extra. Some kind of heat spreader is nice, but big heat sinks are just a waste of space.

CPU: The fastest that money can buy. This I cannot recommend though if you are on a budget. It has been a waste of money in most cases, with a few exceptions. Get a big-ass CPU cooler. If you want to save $$$, look for a cheaper CPU with a high performance per watt.

GFX: The fastest passively cooled one that money can buy. This is usually not very expensive, and enough for most games.

HD: 32-64GB SSD for the OS, and 1TB or more low-rpm low-power bulk storage drive for media files etc.

PSU: Don't buy too many watts! Those are usually less efficient in the typical power range which may be 100-150 watt. 400-500 watts with a 80+ gold rating or better is usually more than enough. A passively cooled one if you can afford, but in this case place it outside your computer box to avoid overheating.

AUDIO: External sound cards, they have less noise.

[KaiserJ]

i just bought a bunch of new parts, here's my current setup

bought
-AMD 955 quad @ 3.2 ghz CPU
-16 gig coresair dominator RAM
-Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard
-Coolermaster N520 CPU cooler
-Thermaltake case

(total 585 CDN)

owned
-WD 1TB HD
-Ultra 650 watt lifetime series PSU
-Xfx geforce 9600 gso graphics card

(you could probably get this stuff for like 200 CDN, and a lot less if thailand hadn't shit the bed)

IMO intel chips are nice, but ATM too expensive for what you get. if i bought intel, it was either going to be the 2500k you mentioned. current AMD chips are pretty crap too (the ones in the red boxes) for anything but rendering pricewise.

i was able to overclock to 3.8 ghz without a rise in temperature. i could (and likely will in future) go even higher, but since i haven't got all of my stuff loaded on yet, all i've been doing is playing skyrim and BF3, which bottleneck on my graphics card (even at 3.2, BF3 rarely goes above 60% load.) BF3 on low/med, skyrim on med.

motherboard is nice because it's socket AM3+, so i can get the new AMD chip when it comes out if it seems right. also it supports both SLI and crossfire, so my options are open as far as getting a new graphics card (although, i am looking at the GTX 560, which was why i wanted a SLI capable board in the first place)

before i got this comp i was thinking about SSD. however, it takes 7 seconds to get from memory post to windows login, so even something like a 50% increase in load speed really seems worthless for me at the moment.

but yeah. if i have two pieces of advice for you. first is to NOT buy a cheap motherboard. this one was mid-range, and was the first time i didn't buy the cheapest option. $75 more than what i could have spent, in order to future-proof myself somewhat

the other suggestion is to buy a cooler; you'll have to buy thermal paste anyways, and for the equivalent of $20 more, i got this big-ass cooler that included paste, which allowed for a temperature-change-free overclock

[smoth]

My point was about what you NEED and about what you don't. FWIW, I wear 1 regular shirt a week.. but will never purchase the really expensive 200+ fashion shirt. See my link if you were having a hard time following the analogy.. the link was to a 1+k hd.

Hardware decreases in price as does availability and relative quality. My old mbo from my first pc build only had average processors, not high performance ones. The variety of hardware carried that is compatible with your hardware DECREASES over time severely limiting your choices of what you can add to your machine. I have been there way too often. Stuck with what is the mid-level performance cards and crap for what was an AWESOME motherboard.

even with the advances some cards are built entry, midlevel, and high performance... like CARS, you can get a riceburner, family car, luxury, 'vete or alfa romeo. I prefer something closer to luxury but if I was using old hardware I would(and have by past experience) be limited only to family or riceburner level.

that is the way it goes. If you want high performance stuff, you have to pay for the luxury or designer level. Same with t-shirts, a well made shirt you are not going to get in the 10pack of fruit of the loom.

[KaiserJ]

but then again, you can get performance for low cost, as long as you're willing to put in a little bit of work (cars, you can get some nitrous... shirts? i have a screen printing setup in the other room... cpu? overclock that shit)

[Senna]

Well im interested on the intel core i5 2500k because its processor of future, after 6 years u still got a good cpu that supports everything because u have 4 cores at 5 ghz speed.

the things that can get old its the ram, hdd speed, gfx and maybe the dvd to blu ray also the fan and motherboard gets older but the cpu still competent after 6 years thats why i need good motherboard and good fan to make sure when oc to 4,5 ghz or 5 ghz dont burn out any piece

[Pxtl]

I'd like to point out 2 things:

• A HD will not saturate SATA 1 interfaces, nevermind SATA 2 or SATA 3, only an SSD or a RAM drive will do that
• SSDs are not fancy uber new technology, they've been available for years now and have had numerous iterations, and are quite reliably the best thing you can do to improve speed/throughput/batterylife/weight on any machine be it a netbook or an uber computer. They're also fast approaching and surpassing the 1GB per £1 mark.

As for the rest, we've been doomed spoilt by games built to console specs, meaning you only need the hardware of 2008/2009 to play most games these days

I still haven't bit the bullet on an SSD - do they only show a real performance improvement under Windows if you set them up as your primary drive, or do they help even if you just put the swap space/hibernate/documents there?

[AF]

It's a good idea to invest in your tshirts, but don't spend your life savings on them ( giorgio armani/diesel/etc anyone? )

[Jools]

Go to Turkey and buy cheap (but good) copies of those (Armani/Diesel etc)

[KaiserJ]

Well im interested on the intel core i5 2500k because its processor of future

i would say you should be interested in it because it's a good deal, probably the best deal on an intel chip in terms of price->performance

and that was the choice i made... intel i5 2500k, with only 8gb of RAM, or what i got. prices of complete builds were roughly the same when comparing the two.

or, you could just forget the computer entirely, and buy some expensive shirts :D!

[zerver]

I still haven't bit the bullet on an SSD - do they only show a real performance improvement under Windows if you set them up as your primary drive, or do they help even if you just put the swap space/hibernate/documents there?

They are typically faster than regular drives in every aspect, but particularly excel at reading/writing many small files. For example, when running windows update, an SSD will install about one update per second, and the same on a regular drive takes 5-10 seconds.

It is the best performance boost you can get from any system upgrade IMO. The OS becomes much snappier.

Install the OS and the most frequently used programs on the SSD, and you will be happy.

[Prominence]

i just bought a bunch of new parts, here's my current setup

bought
-AMD 955 quad @ 3.2 ghz CPU
-16 gig coresair dominator RAM
-Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard
-Coolermaster N520 CPU cooler
-Thermaltake case

Why buy expensive RAM when you get very very little performance boost like a nanosecond or so. Just stick with quality RAM at lower price and lower power consumption like Samsung or Hynix

[Prominence]

Is there any benefit in having CPU with integrated graphics given that there is discrete graphics card.

Quick Sync?
What else?

[AF]

Its a vast improvement in terms of integrated graphics, but it's not a discrete graphics card. A discrete card will always give it a run for its money, and you can get such cards for a 10th of the cost of the cpu these days.

Alternative analogy:

My marble is considerably bigger than yours, a revolution in scale technology, but we're both dwarved by that small car over there, and most cars are bigger, we hardly stand a chance, my giant marble is still bigger though, just don't look in any other direction and I'm still the biggest