Thread: New Computer time...Help!

Originally Posted by feral

"The E8400 PC Sys, comes with MSI G31M3 L V2 motherboard & 550w Power supply."
Now the screen I have picked out is a BenQ22"WideScreen HD with HDMI Input. According to Hit the video card should be a nVidia 8400GS 512MB HDMI. At this stage it will run XP with the jump to Windows 7.

From looking at the specs of your monitor and video card they are both suited pretty well. So no worries there.

Its a good price $600 ex OS & monitor and the CPU you get is pretty good for the price you are paying.

The only draw back I think is maybe the motherboard or more specifically the ram the motherboard accepts its maximum is 4GB of DDRII.
In general 4GB will run most things these days but moving to Windows7 I'm not too sure, might be fine, might not. I havent run windows7 yet so cant really say for sure but Windows7 is "supposed" to run better than vista. The minimum specs for Vista I think is 512mb ram and with W7 its 1GB. We all know Vista on 512 would be silly. Anyhow ...................

To cut it short as I can consider swapping the board for one that will accept more than 4GB and before anyone starts with "I have W7 running on 256mb ram and an oily rag" I run vista at home on 4GB and XP at work on 3GB, (more or less) and they seem fine. BUT if you want it future proof as much as you can I would be looking for something that will accept more than 4GB IMO, DDRII, DDR3 doesnt really matter, DDR3 will cost more but will run, (arguably) faster.

One other thing consider upgrading to 4GB, (x2 2G chips now as DDRII at the moment is pretty cheap.

I just a thought you could just buy the system as is and when the time comes to upgrade just buy a new motherboard, chances are it will be newer technology and cheaper. Depends which way you want to go I suppose.

Good Luck anyhow

one other thing I strongly recommend if buying from a small vendor buying local it will save hours or weeks of hassle if you need to return the system if the warranty is back-to-base. If the warranty is onsite it doesn't really matter.

Originally Posted by HangOver

one other thing I strongly recommend if buying from a small vendor buying local it will save hours or weeks of hassle if you need to return the system if the warranty is back-to-base. If the warranty is onsite it doesn't really matter.

x2 for that.
At work we buy all our PC's from a local supplier who builds them on his premises. Reasonable pricing (not super cheap) but on the rare occasion that we've had a warranty issue we've usually got it fixed and back within a day. Sometimes the part has even been replaced while we wait.

Our notebooks come from one of our main equipment suppliers, but we always buy extended on-site warranty with those so its not a problem.

Steve

Just one final bit of info.

As the BenQ is HD and it can run a HDMI input, I need to have an additional video card instead of using the onboard stuff so its an extra $65 or so.

I notice that if I upgrade to the next spec computer the motherboard already has a HDMI output on board so I could run it direct.

The CPU changes though. One uses a 3.0mhz Core 2 Duo and the other a 2.3mhz Core 2 Quad. So which CPU is faster? I will eventually upgrade RAM to 4g but for an extra $100 I can go to this.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 PC System
HIT Online

Features:
Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 (2.3 GHz)
HDMI/DVI Motherboard Output
Nvidia Onboard video card
3GB DDR2 RAM
320GB HDD
Dual Layer DVD Writer


Just noticed it has a bigger hard drive too.

As I have stated before. All I want to do is to future proof the computer for 7 years at least.

I have been following this thread with interest, as I am thinking about a new system at some stage. But really, I have trouble justifying it, as the one I have seems to do everything it is asked to do (mainly internet, wordprocessing, accounting, photoediting, scanning) with little sign of being short on power. Most speed problems I encounter seem to be things like reading from DVDs, satellite link etc. And it is only a 2.8 Celeron with 1GB memory and a couple of 50Gb hard drives. So what are people doing that needs all this compute power? But then I do not run Windows.

John

Yes, John, there is no doubt windows is a bit of a resource hog,,

SEVEN years Feral???
It may be still running in 7 years, (maybe) but running what?

you can double the future proofing by doubling the cost,,

or,, to put it another way,, low cost(not cheap) PC's are that because they use parts already mass produced,, near the end of their SKU life. Bleeding edge PC's are already two-3 generations ahead and therefore "that" much more future proof,,

I hope this made sense--

I think that you have selected a good system.
If the shop is an authorised Intel dealer you will have one of the best warranties in the market.

I am using an Intel PC with 4 gig ram and Western Digital hard drives for my photo processing using very extensive image processing software and filters.

There is not another manufacturer of HDD that are going to give you the service of WD.

Last year in my other PC the control board in one of the HDD blow out. I have a lot of images there that I processed during the day and do not have time to back them up.
I sent a email to WD in USA one Friday with the details and photos on the HDD and board. The following Monday I received via Singapore a new board on priority express courrier free of charge
They processed the order duting the week end You cannot beat that

Cheers

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I have been following this thread with interest, as I am thinking about a new system at some stage. But really, I have trouble justifying it, as the one I have seems to do everything it is asked to do (mainly internet, wordprocessing, accounting, photoediting, scanning) with little sign of being short on power. Most speed problems I encounter seem to be things like reading from DVDs, satellite link etc. And it is only a 2.8 Celeron with 1GB memory and a couple of 50Gb hard drives. So what are people doing that needs all this compute power? But then I do not run Windows.

John

Well I am using image processing software where some times I have 3 files of 250 MB each open at the some time doing very heavy image processing on them.

Anything less that 3 gb ram would crash the PC

I cannot use any other OS because they do not run my software