Custom building my new computer
-
all new Phil
- Posts: 2020
- Joined: Sun 13 Feb, 2005 00.04
- Location: Next door to Hell
Yep, I'm sure something somewhere on my computer says AMD and mine's fine. As is my Dad's computer.
Sounds OK but a little pricey. What makes are some of the components as they do not seem to be listed?
You could be receiving brown box cheap stuff for all you know.
I think a 350W PSU is a bit on the small side, though. And again, not all are created equal - the cheaper ones tend to less able to handle their maximum rated wattage.
I've specced you up a system for only £2 more, but with a quality branded components and a few added extras, like more HD space, 2x DVDRW/drives and a slightly cheaper graphics card - if you're not planning on being a hardcore gamer, then there's no need to have the best graphics card.
You could be receiving brown box cheap stuff for all you know.
I think a 350W PSU is a bit on the small side, though. And again, not all are created equal - the cheaper ones tend to less able to handle their maximum rated wattage.
I've specced you up a system for only £2 more, but with a quality branded components and a few added extras, like more HD space, 2x DVDRW/drives and a slightly cheaper graphics card - if you're not planning on being a hardcore gamer, then there's no need to have the best graphics card.
-
Gavin Scott
- Admin
- Posts: 6442
- Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.16
- Location: Edinburgh
- Contact:
What site is that Chris?
eBuyer - http://www.ebuyer.comGavin Scott wrote:What site is that Chris?
Do bear in mind that you've got to build it yourself, but you'll get a year's full warranty on everything at least. Oh, and bear in mind I've not got all colour co-ordinating parts, as I just stuck in what I could find without searching for a specific colour. You may also need the odd extra, like fans and thermal material for the processor, but I believe the boxed AMDs come with such fans/heatsinks and material.
I'm still a stalwart of the venerable CCL (http://www.cclonline.com). Been using them since 1999, always had very reasonable pricing, only ever had one item delivered faulty out of countless purchases, and even then they promptly exchanged it with no argument.
My present desktop machine I've had since October 2001, with no upgrades. It has a 1.3Ghz Thunderbird Athlon, 512MB DDR266 RAM, a 40GB HD, a 64MB GeForce2 graphics card, and a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 sound card.
It wasn't the best you couuld get when I bought it, but it was certainly typical of a half-decent machine of that time. Despite being 4 1/2 years old, and current machines on paper appearing to make it a dinosaur, it will still run virtually all current software (including delivering acceptable performance with most new games). The only thing I'm finding restrictive now is the size of the hard disk, and that's easily fixed.
At the time I bought it however, the same certainly can not be said of a machine which was 4 1/2 years old then, and if you look at typical specs of a machine from early 1997, typical specification advanced faster between early 1997 and late 2001 than it has between late 2001 and early 2006.
Indeed, I remember getting a machine in 1996 which again, whilst not top spec, was certainly respectable enough - a Pentium 120, 16MB RAM, 2MB Graphics, 1.2GB HDD and 2 channel stereo sound. Within 18 months such a specficiation was quite laughable, and did not meet the minimum specs of a great deal of software.
And as we continue to see this trend of even the most basic PC having more power than the average home user needs, along with ridiculous levels of over-specifying (give me one good argument why a home machine running Windows XP, even one used for games, needs 2GB of RAM (that's over 30 times more than the minimum specfication) Yet many people specify it now).
Indeed, but then Windows XP has been generally received as some sort of groundbreaking leap forward when it's nothing more than a tweaked version of Windows 2000 (no more telling than that 2000 was version 5.0 and XP is version 5.1). Let's be fair to Vista though, it's not really on to brand a product as 'crap' when it's not even got to an RC yet.
If your swapfile is getting hit hard and slowing your system down however one tip is to change from a temporary variable size swapfile (the defult since WFWG 3.11) to a fixed-size permanent swapfile (which was the default up to and including Windows 3.1). Rather than being a dynamic file which is constantly being resized, moved and deleted, a permanent swap file is always the same size, always in the same place, and always there. On older machines with slower processors or where it's getting a particularly high amount of use, changing it to permanent will offer better performance. The down side is that the swapfile is permanently taking a chunk out of your hard disk, no matter how little it's being used.
I see that as more of a 90's attitude now. Although of course it's true that the cutting edge continues to move faster and faster, and resource intensive applications such as graphic design have increasingly benefitted from these advanced, to the average 'writes a few letters in word, plays a few games, and browses the internet' user, the useful service life of a PC has increased vastly.There's no such thing; whatever you buy will be considered outdated within a year.
My present desktop machine I've had since October 2001, with no upgrades. It has a 1.3Ghz Thunderbird Athlon, 512MB DDR266 RAM, a 40GB HD, a 64MB GeForce2 graphics card, and a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 sound card.
It wasn't the best you couuld get when I bought it, but it was certainly typical of a half-decent machine of that time. Despite being 4 1/2 years old, and current machines on paper appearing to make it a dinosaur, it will still run virtually all current software (including delivering acceptable performance with most new games). The only thing I'm finding restrictive now is the size of the hard disk, and that's easily fixed.
At the time I bought it however, the same certainly can not be said of a machine which was 4 1/2 years old then, and if you look at typical specs of a machine from early 1997, typical specification advanced faster between early 1997 and late 2001 than it has between late 2001 and early 2006.
Indeed, I remember getting a machine in 1996 which again, whilst not top spec, was certainly respectable enough - a Pentium 120, 16MB RAM, 2MB Graphics, 1.2GB HDD and 2 channel stereo sound. Within 18 months such a specficiation was quite laughable, and did not meet the minimum specs of a great deal of software.
And as we continue to see this trend of even the most basic PC having more power than the average home user needs, along with ridiculous levels of over-specifying (give me one good argument why a home machine running Windows XP, even one used for games, needs 2GB of RAM (that's over 30 times more than the minimum specfication) Yet many people specify it now).
Vista isn't due to be out for at least another year, so I wouldn't hold your breath. Personally I think Vista is crap - nothing more than some fancy visual effects and tweaks to the interface. Nothing that screams to me of BUY IT NOW!!!!
Indeed, but then Windows XP has been generally received as some sort of groundbreaking leap forward when it's nothing more than a tweaked version of Windows 2000 (no more telling than that 2000 was version 5.0 and XP is version 5.1). Let's be fair to Vista though, it's not really on to brand a product as 'crap' when it's not even got to an RC yet.
I've only ever built machines with AMD processors and I've yet to run into any performance or compatibility problems with them. The only modern Intel I have is in my laptop because that's what it came with - if there was an option to get the same machine with an AMD for less money then I'd happily plump for it without feeling I was loosing out.I can certainly get more bang for my buck with the AMD setup above; but are AMD *really* as good as intel?
PC World's components are bizarre. Some of their brown box stuff is comparable - and on a couple of occasions even cheaper - than the major online retailers; £12 for a CDRW drive is hardly a rip off. Yet other stuff is imperceptably overpriced - in 2003 a bog-standard EIDE cable, which should have been priced at £2.99 at the time, was retailing in PC World for £16.99. Even allowing for high street markup, there is no way in hell they can justify even half of that price.And yes, buy absolutely nothing from PC World ever. Unless you want to be ripped off.
Bare in mind however that (for reasons I don't understand) Windows is designed to use the swap file all the time, even if everything you have open will fit into the RAM. Adding more memory will reduce the amount the swapfile that gets used, but the only way to get everything into RAM is to disable virtual memory (really, really not recommended, not least of which because even if you re-enable it, it never seems to work properly ever again).My self built affair is just over a year old and is still going strong, although I need to get more HD space and memory for it, as I am sometimes going over the 512Mb limit and eating into the page file (ick).
If your swapfile is getting hit hard and slowing your system down however one tip is to change from a temporary variable size swapfile (the defult since WFWG 3.11) to a fixed-size permanent swapfile (which was the default up to and including Windows 3.1). Rather than being a dynamic file which is constantly being resized, moved and deleted, a permanent swap file is always the same size, always in the same place, and always there. On older machines with slower processors or where it's getting a particularly high amount of use, changing it to permanent will offer better performance. The down side is that the swapfile is permanently taking a chunk out of your hard disk, no matter how little it's being used.