Buying a new computational device!

[Jetsetlemming]

What are you doing with this computer? Is it a workstation, or a gaming PC? If you're not using shit that supports hyperthreading (no game does), the i7's a waste of money. Over 4GB RAM is also unneeded unless you're going to be making massive maps in level editors and using photoshop and a 3d editor at the same time. For general use, an i5 and 4GB and a Geforce 460 1GB is essentially top of the line and far cheaper than the highest end components possible.

[Bunglo]

If you're baking textures from 3dsmax, it's always nice to have more than 4gigs of RAM to ensure max doesn't crap out on you.

[Jetsetlemming]

Oh, and I wanna say because a few people in the thread said Nvidia hasn't been good lately: They haven't, but the Geforce 460 is a massive turn around for them and is basically the best card for the money in the ~$200 price range. It's very near the ATI 5850 in performance, while seventy bucks cheaper, and typically better software support (also CUDA and PhysX if you care).

[twiz]

I too have heard the Intel Core processors are the bee's knees.. I went newegging to see how much it'd be to upgrade my system, and decided against that rather quickly $300 for the cheapest core i7's.. up to a grand+

Then I looked at some AMD processors and a quad-core 3ghz is a hundred bucks, great reviews, take well to overclocking, etc... Unless you have cash to burn, seems to be the smart way to go! You get an L3 cache with the i7's, but I've read the performance increase is minimal for the additional cost. An AMD Phenom X2 quad core, 3.4ghz with a 6mb L3 cache is $150, just about half as much as the i7 you have specced.

I've also heard really good things about the Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives, fast and quiet. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152185

$5 more expensive than your specced drive, but it has a better Newegg rating, fwiw. Occasionally they'll go on sale for ~$60, so maybe snap one up during one of those sales.

I see dux has mentioned the spinpoint already

[dux]

I see dux has mentioned the spinpoint already

Samsung are awesome.

[Jetsetlemming]

I too have heard the Intel Core processors are the bee's knees.. I went newegging to see how much it'd be to upgrade my system, and decided against that rather quickly $300 for the cheapest core i7's.. up to a grand+

Then I looked at some AMD processors and a quad-core 3ghz is a hundred bucks, great reviews, take well to overclocking, etc... Unless you have cash to burn, seems to be the smart way to go! You get an L3 cache with the i7's, but I've read the performance increase is minimal for the additional cost. An AMD Phenom X2 quad core, 3.4ghz with a 6mb L3 cache is $150, just about half as much as the i7 you have specced.

I've also heard really good things about the Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives, fast and quiet. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152185

$5 more expensive than your specced drive, but it has a better Newegg rating, fwiw. Occasionally they'll go on sale for ~$60, so maybe snap one up during one of those sales.

I see dux has mentioned the spinpoint already

Don't compare the Phenom X2s to the i7s, compare them to the i5's. Intel's i7 push is practically trolling typical computer buyers with extreme high end shit completely inappropriate for anyone not using their computer to cure cancer or make videogames.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115215

That's a quad core i5 for $195. $30 more than the Phenom ii but benchmarks notably better, and that's before OC'ing it to equal clock speed. It also uses far less power.

[madgernader]

Is the hyperthreading and L3 cache really the only things that the i7 has over the i5? their whole i-series has me confused... I've got a core 2 quad at 2.83Ghz and I'm always just confused when trying to figure out why the i7's are so spendy...

edit* when did newegg get the website facelift

[Pericolos0]

just get like a dell or something , hope you like my advice, thanks

[Skjalg]

Im with peris on this one.

Let some company with a 3 or 5 year insurance policy going on build your pc.

[2d-chris]

buy a pre overclocked system, get 4ghz stable instead of 2.8~

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =FS-025-OP

these guys I'd trust to build good gaming machines without having to bother yourself, I used to like that stuff now i really cba

[insta]

Oh I'm not gonna build it myself, I'm buying from a company called Komplett which offers 3 years warranty.

And yeah, the computer will mainly be used for gaming and level design stuff.

[st0lve]

I'd email Komplett and ask what they would recommend for you depending on what you are using the machine for.

[Skjalg]

are you just going for the crazy gamer pc or something where you can select 5~10 different types of hardware for each component?

the "build your own pc" thing?

[insta]

Yeah it's the one where you can switch out parts and they put it together for you.

[Skjalg]

ah okay, then just go for whatever intel processor you like (quad right?)

get an ATI gfx card .medium range will do, or high end if you really wanna OOMPH it (not really worth your money).

get 6~8gb of ram, 4 is too small. (OCZ is a good brand, make sure its the same Mhz as your motherboard can handle).

get one SSD disk for your windows+photoshop+3dsmax/maya/Program Files. (it really is worth the extra cash, you might have to buy this on the side)

get one huge samsung disk for your games/downloads/music/movies etc.

get a really good motherboard. The motherboard is something people usually dont think is something you should pay attention to and they always fuck it up and buy a shitty one that cant handle the amount of IO that you need and it ends up beeing your bottle neck. If you are like me and not a super-sound geek then you can get one with integrated sound so you dont have to buy an additional sound card. (same with network, if you want wireless then buy an usb stick).