Advice on new computer

[Guest]

[Ragwing]

Hi!

I'm planning on buying a new computer, but need some advice on the components. I know that there are people with much knowledge here, so therefore I'm asking. I have $830, so not enough for a super computer, but should get a decent one. Anyway, will get to my questions now.

Processor: AMD or Intel? Dual, tri or quadcore? What's the difference between amount of cores, and when is it an advantage/disadvantage to have many cores? 32-bit or 64-bit?

RAM: 4 GB seems to be enough for me. I've heard that 2x2 GB would give better performance than a single 4 GB. Is that right?

CPU cooling: I've thought about getting water cooling, as it's supposed to be way more effective than a fan, but how does it work?

Also, it's okay if you want to give feedback on other components, or any other information.

[OmeletGuy]

Hi!
Processor: AMD or Intel? Dual, tri or quadcore? What's the difference between amount of cores, and when is it an advantage/disadvantage to have many cores? 32-bit or 64-bit?

Intel, the advantage is more speed, get 64-bit its faster.

RAM: 4 GB seems to be enough for me. I've heard that 2x2 GB would give better performance than a single 4 GB. Is that right?

If placed in the right socket it 2x2 will be faster then 1x4, you would have better preformance with 2x2 then just 1 4GB stick, since it gives you more Memory Channels to the CPU.

CPU cooling: I've thought about getting water cooling, as it's supposed to be way more effective than a fan, but how does it work?

Water colling does work, but you have to refill it ever cuple months and there can be leeks AND you cant use water with it, it makes rust.

If you get a fan get a good one, also get some filters to keep the dust out of your PC.

I would also recommend you get a SSD insteed of a HDD. Most have a life time waranty and are faster then HDD when it comes to reading.

[languy99]

I have watercooling and have yet to have any problems. You need a good pump for it to work right, along with good water block and radiator. I use only swiftech products, I have the Swiftech PMC655 pump along with the 3 core radiator, apogee GT cpu block, mwc30 northdridge block, MCRES reservoir, smart coils tube wrapping and a glycol based coolant that is mixed with distilled water to prevent corrosion. All of this is connect with high quality tubing and you will have a great system with great cooling and is very quiet.

[Tarantela]

I will recommend my configuration that i got 3 weeks ago:

CPU AMD Phenom II 940 X4 cores.
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA780G-UD3H.
RAM Buffalo 2 gb (1+1gb stick).
Graphic card Gigabyte GTX 260 OC 896 MB GDDR3.
Chieftec Power supply 550 Wat.
DVD recorder Pioneer DVR-216D.
HDD Hitachi 250 GB 8 MB cache.
CPU cooler Zalman CNPS9500.

All that i got for 1000 $ but i payed more because those products are priced higher in my country.
I am sure that you can get these components much cheaper.
Make sure that you use a 32 bit system because 64 bit software is not much developed.
Get x4 cores because software is getting developed for multi core and you will get more performance,don't
buy CPU that is in middle range buy top line because it is the working mule of the whole system.
For a 32 bit system use 3 GB of RAM,or if you want to use 64 bit system 4 GB is fine.
Buffalo RAM has 10 years of guarantee.
CPU cooling use strictly a copper based cooler-anything from Zalman you don't need water cooling
because it is not needed for this type of CPU - i got my Zalman running on 2000 RPM and
processor on idle with room temperature of 29 degrees celsius CPU is 45 degrees C.
For CPU and GPU processor termal paste use Arctic silver.
And for the HDD get Hitachi 16 or 32 bit cache because it will increase performance,for
GB size your choice.
For motherboard use Gigabyte 790 chipset and AMD CPU becaise your CPU will work better
on a AMD chipset.
Remember for all the components do research and think before you buy.
It is your money to spend for you to see fit not the shop in witch you will buy your PC.
  

[OmeletGuy]

If you want CPU virtualization use AMD processor because Intel can't do virtualization.

I have Intel and it does do hardware virtualization, I have a setting in my Motherboard to turn it on.

[Tarantela]

If you need any other advice on personal computers feel free to ask.
My experience with PC is 22 years beginning from the first computer i worked on and it
was a Spectrum ZX-80 ,Commodore 64 and 128, Apple ++, Olivetti M-19 and a 5 years
of work on todays PC.

[John Buchanan]

I use a Swifteck H2O-220 water cooling.  It does a great job of removing much more heat than air-cooled, and since it is a sealed system, it won't need refilling for maybe 5 years (I've had mine a year with no issues - computer runs 24/7 OC'd [at] 3.627GHz on a Intel Q6600 Quad Core CPU, spread-spectrum disabled).

[Dch48]

Tarantela's hardware minus the memory comes to $672 on Newegg. 2 or 3 gigs shouldn't be too much but remember, this is without an OS. If you want a prebuilt machine I would look at Gateway or ASUS. Both are building quality machines these days at reasonable prices.

[Tarantela]

If you want to buy an OS buy a retail version not a OEM because a retail OS can be transfered
on a new computer prior that has been removed from old computer and a OEM version
is not good because if something has to be replaced on a PC OEM version considers it a
hardware change and after a certain amount of changes you have to buy new license.
An altenative OS could be Linux.My favorite is Linux Mint.It has already integrated codecs for
video reproduction an i use a Linux Mint 6 "Felicia" 32 bit main edition gnome on a single cd.
It is practically out of the box OS. 

[Ragwing]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm thinking of buying a 'cheap' computer for now, and later when I have more money ($2,000+), I'll buy a new one. Here's what I possibly will buy:

$1 = 7.84 SEK

Computer case: Just some cheap one (~$57), plus ~$20 for a fan.

PSU: I need help with choosing a good one, I don't want one that dies after a year. Manufactures I can choose from:
* Cooler Master
* Antec
* Corsair
* XIGMATEK
* Hiper

Will cost ~$130.

Motherboard: ASUS M4N72-E, NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI, 5200MT/s HT, 4DDR2 / 2PCI / 2PCIe x1 / 2PCIe x16 / 6SATA / 1IDE, FireWire / 6USB / GBLAN / HD-Audio, ATX, Socket AM2+ (~$170)

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 940 (~$270), supports both 32-bit and 64-bit?

RAM: Kingston DDR2 (2 GB + 1 GB), PC2-6400, 800 MHz (~$60)

Graphic card: GeForce 9500GT, 512MB DDR3, PCIe x16, VGA (~$73). I know it's Intel and Nvidia and AMD and ATI, but will this be a problem?

HDD: Western Digital RE3 WD5002ABYS, 500GB (~$107)

DVD: Samsung (~$26)

Estimated price: ~$1,000

I shouldn't have any problem to get some extra money from my parents.

EDIT: I could save ~$113 by going with a cheaper motherboard, but it comes with an integrated GeForce 8300. I really don't like integrated parts.

[languy99]

 few of my recommendations, get an antec PSU, I would say at least 750W to be safe.

I say drop the AMD and get a Intel i7 920 it is the same price but beats the AMD at everything. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-phenom-ii,2119.html

With that I also say get a gigabyte motherboard, I have had nothing but great success with them.

For ram, kingston is overpriced, think about G-skill but do your research to grab the right ones with the right memory chips to achieve best OC.

for the HDD I don't like samsung, get a seagate or WD but make sure they have the 5 year guarantee.

[Ragwing]

few of my recommendations, get an antec PSU, I would say at least 750W to be safe.

All right, then I'll probably go with the Antec PSU, unless I get some other recommendations.

I say drop the AMD and get a Intel i7 920 it is the same price but beats the AMD at everything. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-phenom-ii,2119.html

Same price? Not where I live... the i7 costs like $130 more. Most likely buying an Intel next time, but for now, I'll go with AMD, as it's cheaper. I'm not going to overclock.

With that I also say get a gigabyte motherboard, I have had nothing but great success with them.

From what I've read, both ASUS and Gigabyte seem to be good.

For ram, kingston is overpriced, think about G-skill but do your research to grab the right ones with the right memory chips to achieve best OC.

No G.Skill-items available from where I'm buying.

for the HDD I don't like samsung, get a seagate or WD but make sure they have the 5 year guarantee.

Yeah, a WD sounds better. Changed that.

[Tarantela]

Asus board is not good and don't buy it.Gigabyte is better quality and get 790 chipset.
For RAM Buy Buffalo it has 10 years of guarantee.
For a processor get CPU AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE BOX, 3.2GHz, Sck AM3 or a
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE BOX, 3.0GHz, SckAM2+ i would buy the 955 edition.
For hard disk drives buy Hitachi because they are much quieter and heat up less
less than Western Digital.For GB size choose yourself and for cache use 16 or 32 mb,
larger cache is better and gives better performance.
For HDD i have Hitachi and the temperature in a room that is 30 degrees celsius the idle HDD is
38 degrees celsius and the Western digital the same size 250 gb got to 45 degrees celsius.
For graphic card get  Gigabyte GTX 260 OC 896 MB GDDR3 because Nvidia doesn't need
.NET Framework to run their drivers ATI does.
For my former computer i had a ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256 MB Saphire 9.3 driver and
.NET Framework 2.0 SP2 sucked 140 MB of motherboard RAM when the system was idle.
Don't use SLI configuration and double GPU cards because single GPU cards are very good.
And Intel is too expensive and i don't like monopolistic companies AMD is better.
I am talking about facts and not "I like that company because i am a fananatic".
550 Wat power supply is more than enough for a the for my previous recommendation.

[languy99]

I have to disagree on two things

First most good ram companies offer lifetime grantees on their ram sticks.

Second the your temp of the WD HDD might be right on older units but I just upgraded my desktop with one and I can tell you it runs cooler than anything I have had before. Right now the temp in my room is 21C and the HDD is 30C. Also it's even quieter than my older seagate that is running as a backup drive. All I did is made sure that I got the Caviar Black which is an enterprise edition made for reliability.

[Dch48]

AMD CPU's run best on boards with AMD/ATI chipsets and with ATI graphic cards. ATI drivers are fine.

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