High-end "off the shelf" PC required

[gixxer1000]

It's about time I changed my ailing PC for something that is faster, has more memory, has better graphics, doesn't keep crashing, has a better (and bigger) monitor, doesn't keep crashing, has (much) more RAM, doesn't keep crashing..... etc.

I know squat about what to buy or what's good for that matter. To put it into context, when I bought my current PC I splashed out for the very top of the range Sony Vaio at the time (6 years ago perhaps - 2.2GHz P4, 512MB SDRAM, 120GB Hard Disc, GeForce M4 Graphic Card, etc). It was well expensive and has served me well, but now:

• It's too slow
• I've filled the hard drive
• It's got way too little RAM
• It's so full of crap that it keeps crashing (did I say that already )

Other than all the usual usage stuff (web browsing, MS Office, etc) my main requirements are for gaming and digital photo manipulation / storage / publishing (i'm a fairly serious amateur photographer)

I don't know enough about hardware to spec my own machine, so just want to pop along to PC world (hopefully not, but you get my drift) and pull one off the shelf. I'm happy to buy a high-end monitor separately (but need advice on that too).

Any ideas, suggestions, guidance, wrist-slapping welcome.

Cheers,
Gixxer

[gixxer1000]

Forgot to say that I am keen to future-proof as much as possible so am happy to over-purchase on spec.

What are the things that I'd be mad not to have? What processor should I be looking at? What's the biggest and fastest RAM I should expect from an "off the shelf" machine?

I also know nothing about Macs, but am intrigued. Can you run boot camp and mac OS (whatever that's called) simultaneously, or does it have to be one or the other (presumably with a multi-core/processor machine, I could run both - forgive my probably incorrect technical terminology).

Cheers,
Gixxer

[LukeBird]

Just made this up at www.pcspecialist.co.uk
Bought a couple of PC's from there for work and haven't had any problems at all really.
Great for someone like yourself who wants an off the shelf.
Unfortunately I can't copy the URL for the link, so I've just copied the text-
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™2 Quad Q6600 (4 X 2.40GHz) 1066MHz FSB/8MB L2 Cache
Memory (RAM)
4GB CORSAIR DDR2 667MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x2GB)
Motherboard
ASUS® P5K SE: DDR2, SATAII, PCI-e x16, 2 PCI, 3 x PCI-e x1
Operating System
WINDOWS® XP Professional (inc. Genuine CD & License) (£95)
USB Options
8 x USB 2.0 PORTS (6 REAR + 2 FRONT) AS STANDARD
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
80GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
1000GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)
3rd Hard Disk
NONE
1st CD/DVD Drive
20x Dual Layer LightScribe DVD Writer ±R/±RW/RAM
2nd CD/DVD Drive
NONE
Graphics Card
256MB RADEON HD 3850 PCI Express + DVI
2nd Graphics Card
NONE
Sound Card
8 Channel Realtek ALC883 High Definition Audio (P5K-SE)
Modem
NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Floppy Disk Drive
NONE
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)
Case
Stylish Silver/Black Sigma case + 2 front USB
Power Supply & Case Cooling
500W (Peak) Quiet Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£25)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD CPU COOLER
Firewire & Video Editing
3 PORT IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PCI CARD (£9)
TV Card
NONE
Monitor
22 Inch Wide TFT Silver/Black 1680 x1050 5MS D-Sub, DVI (£159)
2nd Monitor
NONE
DVI Cable
1 x 2 Metre DVI Cable (£5)
Keyboard & Mouse
NONE
Mouse
NONE
Speakers
NONE
Printer
NONE
Surge Protection
NONE
Webcam & VoIP
NONE
Media Center Kit
NONE
Anti-Virus
NONE
Office Software
NONE
Warranty
1 Year Return-to-Base incl 1st Month Free Collect & Return
Delivery
Standard Insured Delivery to UK Mainland (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm)

Price for this PC System:
Price for this PC System:
£923.40 ex VAT.
£1085 inc VAT and Delivery.
Quad-core is great for all of CS3 (I assume you use it as you said about being an amateur photographer)
4Gb RAM great for all those memory hungry programs, 1Tb Hard Drive for storing everything.
Not bad at all really, although for that money an iMac is certainly a good purchase.
I can't make any comment on boot camp though, as I have my mac solely for OS X.
But ask away and I'm sure we can help!

[Holst]

Most people would consider trying to "future proof" your PC a waste of money.
But if your a gamer and you can afford it then buying something high end then you might as well.

You can run windows on mac's, but not both operating systems at the same time. Im not a mac expert but I dont think your going to get the same grapics card options as with a PC, so your gaming performance might suffer.

Without a price guide there are so many options to choose from that its hard to recomend any specific system.

As for things to look for.
Processors Intel is still the best, There is still a debate between Dual core and Quad core, but if your looking to the future and you dont mind spending extra a Quad core would be my choice (although current games/software are not taking full advantage at the moment.

Memory is cheap at the moment, so you can put allot in, just remember that you will need to be running 64bit OS to use over 3gb (i think thats the XP limit)

Im not 100% upto speed on the latest graphics cards at the moment, but buy the best one you can afford.

Pc world is ok, but you wont get the latest stuff there. Try HP or Dell instead as they will sell the latest stuff at a slightly better price.

[Holst]

Luke posted as I was typing.

That looks like a great spec mate

The only change I might make is put in a more powerfull graphics card.

[gixxer1000]

That does indeed look like a nice spec Luke. I went on their website and must have gone a bit daft with my selections as this is what came out. Anything just plain stupid in this spec?

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX9650 (4 X 3 GHz) 1333MHz FSB/12MB L2 Cache

Memory (RAM)
8GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz - LIFETIME WARRANTY! (4x2GB)

Motherboard
ASUS® P5K: DDR2, SATAII, 2 xPCI-e x16, 3 PCI, PCI-e x1

Operating System
64 BIT WINDOWS® VISTA Ultimate (inc CD & License) (£119)

USB Options
4 PORT USB 2.0 CARD (TOTAL: 12 USB 2.0 PORTS!)

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 16MB CACHE (7200rpm)

2nd Hard Disk
1000GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)

3rd Hard Disk
NONE

1st CD/DVD Drive
20x Dual Layer LightScribe DVD Writer ±R/±RW/RAM

2nd CD/DVD Drive
NONE

Graphics Card
1024MB GEFORCE 8600GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

2nd Graphics Card
NONE

Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic 7.1: £48

Modem
NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND

Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

Floppy Disk Drive
1.44MB - 3.5 INCH FLOPPY DISK DRIVE

Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

Case
Stylish Silver/Black Trident case + 2 front USB

Power Supply & Case Cooling
800W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£99)

Processor Cooling
ASUS SILENT KNIGHT II PURE COPPER ULTRA COOLER (£36)

Firewire & Video Editing
3 PORT IEEE 1394a FIREWIRE PCI CARD (£9)

TV Card
NONE

Monitor
LG L226WTQ 22 inch Wide: HDCP/DVI/2MS/1680 x1050 (Special: £179)

2nd Monitor
NONE

DVI Cable
NONE

Keyboard & Mouse
NONE

Mouse
NONE

Speakers
NONE

Printer
NONE

Surge Protection
NONE

Webcam & VoIP
NONE

Media Center Kit
Microsoft Remote Control, Keyboard & Receiver for Media Center PC (£45)

Anti-Virus
NONE

Office Software
NONE

Warranty
2 Year Return-to-Base incl 2 Years Free Collect & Return: £69

Delivery
Standard Insured Delivery to UK Mainland (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm)

Quantity
1

Price - £2027

[Andrew[MG]]

Something from Dell, Mesh or Evesham should do the trick. Not really worth spending anymore than £2k

Make sure you get an 8800GTX/ultra graphics card and don't be fobbed off with 2 crappy cards!!

http://www.meshcomputers.com/Default.aspx?PAGE=PRO...

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/feature...

http://www.evesham.com/products/index.asp?e=C584FC...

[Mattt]

You could consider a Raptor HDD for the OS

[LukeBird]

gixxer1000 said:

That does indeed look like a nice spec Luke. I went on their website and must have gone a bit daft with my selections as this is what came out. Anything just plain stupid in this spec?

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX9650 (4 X 3 GHz) 1333MHz FSB/12MB L2 Cache

2nd Hard Disk
1000GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)

Graphics Card
1024MB GEFORCE 8600GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Those are the only bits I'd change.
That CPU is frightfully expensive (if you bought one on its own, it'd be £600) I'd go for the Q6600 I'd suggest as it is really enough even for heavy video & photo rendering.
The system I mentioned at work is based on the CPU that came before that (basically no performance difference to the one you specced) and it really is great for that bit extra, but IMO not worth the extra £. I'd have a small HD to boot windows from (on the site you can specify where you want the OS installed) and then have maybe 2x500Gb or 2x1000Gb for installing software and scratch disks for photo-editing.
I wouldn't bother with an 8600GT graphics card either, for gaming it is pretty crappy.
If you want mega gaming performance and the ability to output to 2 x30" at Full HD, go for the Nvidia 8800GTX. That's what I have, it is in no uncertain terms a monster!
Other than that, that spec looks pretty tasty.
The RAM I'd drop to the 667MHz stuff as the Intel FSB (Front Side Bus) unless overclocked won't take advantage of the faster RAM.

[LukeBird]

Holst said:

Luke posted as I was typing.

That looks like a great spec mate

The only change I might make is put in a more powerfull graphics card.

Why thank you squire
The 3850 isn't bad, but one of the new (released next week) 3870X2's or 8800GTX/Ultra is probably a better bet for the long run.

Edited by LukeBird on Thursday 24th January 23:01

[_Lee_]

LukeBird said:

gixxer1000 said:

That does indeed look like a nice spec Luke. I went on their website and must have gone a bit daft with my selections as this is what came out. Anything just plain stupid in this spec?

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™2 Extreme QX9650 (4 X 3 GHz) 1333MHz FSB/12MB L2 Cache

2nd Hard Disk
1000GB SERIAL ATA II HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7200rpm)

Graphics Card
1024MB GEFORCE 8600GT PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Those are the only bits I'd change.
That CPU is frightfully expensive (if you bought one on its own, it'd be £600) I'd go for the Q6600 I'd suggest as it is really enough even for heavy video & photo rendering.
The system I mentioned at work is based on the CPU that came before that (basically no performance difference to the one you specced) and it really is great for that bit extra, but IMO not worth the extra £. I'd have a small HD to boot windows from (on the site you can specify where you want the OS installed) and then have maybe 2x500Gb or 2x1000Gb for installing software and scratch disks for photo-editing.
I wouldn't bother with an 8600GT graphics card either, for gaming it is pretty crappy.
If you want mega gaming performance and the ability to output to 2 x30" at Full HD, go for the Nvidia 8800GTX. That's what I have, it is in no uncertain terms a monster!
Other than that, that spec looks pretty tasty.
The RAM I'd drop to the 667MHz stuff as the Intel FSB (Front Side Bus) unless overclocked won't take advantage of the faster RAM.

Good post.

If you are looking for a high end machine a 8600gt just won't cut it. It has to be a least a 8800GTX or even better a ultra.

[LukeBird]

_Lee_ said:

LukeBird said:

I said blah...

Good post.

If you are looking for a high end machine a 8600gt just won't cut it. It has to be a least a 8800GTX or even better a ultra.

Once again I dip my cap, squire
I realised in my other post that the ATi 3870X2 would be a better choice over the GTX/Ultra, because it uses less power, cost less, produces less heat and performance is pretty much on a par with an Ultra.
Only advantage would be with the Ultra at high resolutions where the higher memory bandwidth would have higher throughput (although I doubt there'd be much in it) seemingly that is the only thing that separates the GTX/Ultra (G92 core) from the newer GT/GTS (G80 core).
But heyho, my GTX more than gets the job done
It does look luverly on crysis

[cyberface]

Regarding 'stopping your machine crashing' - in the vast majority of cases, regular crashing is due to a low-quality operating system or applications. In other words, software. The vast majority of the remaining small minority of cases where crashes are due to bad hardware, it's faulty sticks of RAM.

I really don't want to push this in the direction of Operating System flamewars but I bet that 1. You're running Windows, and 2. It would still crash on a new PC.

Assume you do what I just did (took the two hard disks out of my old, dying Quad G5 Powermac, slid them straight into a box-fresh Octo-core Mac Pro with no changes, pressed the power button and my system booted up) then you'd be running exactly the same software configuration that you have now, but on faster, more modern hardware. If you've got a buggy and crashy Windows system (registry full of rubbish, loads of different versions of the same DLL in different paths, shoddy third-party drivers, spyware, adware, etc.) then it doesn't matter how new or powerful your replacement machine is, the software will remain unstable.

No point in spending loads on a new machine if simply backing up your data and rebuilding your current box with a fresh install of Windows and current service packs will solve the stability problem. Of course, you could install Linux to get a highly stable system. Oh, and bunging a load of RAM in will give the best bang for buck.

If you really want a new machine though, then backing up your current 'crashing' Windows install and restoring it onto the shiny new PC will almost certainly disappoint. You'll need to start from fresh and restore your data and applications bit by bit.

Of course, this offers the opportunity to try a different OS (like Linux, or if you buy an Apple PC, you can use Mac OS X, which is Apple's operating system and is IMO the best of them all). Apple machines will let you run Mac OS X, Windows and Linux all at the same time on the same machine. Non-Apple machines will allow you to run Windows and Linux at the same time and on the same machine.... and a few can even be tweaked into running Mac OS X (fondly known as 'hackintoshes').

I'm firmly of the opinion that modern CPUs are hugely overspecified for any normal use of a computer. The bottleneck is all down to I/O - which for most home users is the bandwidth of their internet connection, or the hard disk for people copying large media files around. To have a fast machine, you therefore either need to avoid the computer using the disk that much (by buying LOTS of memory), or having a very fast disk subsystem (e.g. RAID arrays). For non-techie stuff, IMO the best advice is to go for the most RAM you can afford at the expense of the CPU. In other words, a dual-core 2.0 GHz machine with 8 GB of RAM will be faster than an 8-core 3.2 GHz monster with only 1 GB of RAM, because the machine with less memory is likely to be using the disk a lot more.


Computer retailers like to sell their machines on 'megagiga' i.e. headline numbers. So you'll get adverts screaming at you about the processor speed, the number of processors, the amount of memory, the size of the hard disk, etc. IMO the most important thing for smooth, fast use is LOTS of RAM. If you're buying 'off the shelf' and aren't getting a custom machine built, don't be conned into what looks like a high-spec machine but only has 512 MB of memory... Just like with cars, the headline numbers don't always tell the whole story.

Also be warned that 32-bit versions of consumer Windows support a maximum of 4 GB of RAM, and only 2 GB per program. So before taking my advice and buying a box with 8 GB of RAM installed, make sure your OS can use the memory!!!!


As with another 'what PC' question I answered to, if you want something that 'just works' and is reliable, then your choice of retailer becomes important. There are bad machines in every batch for every brand. Customer service can be worth a lot of money when your computer fails prematurely. Saving that last £10 by buying from some unknown internet firm may be the cheapest option, but if they go bust then your warranty is worthless. If you're not that cost-sensitive (you said 'high-end') then I'd advise going to somewhere like John Lewis, pick up a good machine that's specified with lots of memory, and you'll have both a shop to go back to if something fails, and a decent warranty (JL put an extra year on top of the standard warranty). Apple sell an insurance policy called AppleCare which is great if you just want complete peace of mind, and it's a proper deal rather than the joke 'extended warranties' sold by Dixons and the like.

[gixxer1000]

Thanks guys. All good advice.

Should I partition the 1000gb disk?

Gixxer

[Mattt]

I've never bothered, but found this on a search:

Google said:

Some of the advantages:

• small partitions use space more efficiently than large partitions.

• separating system software from data. This can make some of the more annoying upgrades safer. Rather than wiping the whole disk, you just reformat the system partition.

• in some cases, better performance but probably not one that you would notice. Defragging is definitely easier and safer with a smaller partition. One strategy I've heard is to put your swap file on a partition that is unlikely to change frequently to avoid having a fragmented swap file.

• the ability to run multiple operating systems.

• security. You can install the operating system on the C: partition, and mount it read-only.

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages.

• harder to set up.

• some software does not grok the idea that a compter might have multiple hard disks or partitions.

• can cause problems if one partition fills up.

• locking down a partition can make installing software a pain.

[Holst]

gixxer1000 said:

Thanks guys. All good advice.

Should I partition the 1000gb disk?

Gixxer

Why?

Unless you want to partition it for backup reasons I wouldnt bother with a partition. Backing up onto a seperate partition isnt a brilliant way or working anyway as if the drive dies you loose the backup..

So no, I wouldnt bother with a partition, just one big fat drive

[koenig999]

I am waiting for a 8800GTX card for my pcspecialist box.

Seems that are in short supply.

Koenig

[LukeBird]

I wouldn't bother partitioning as has been said above pretty much useless.
If you're doing it for backup reasons it's a little pointless IMO.
If the drive fails, you'll in all likelihood lose everything anyway.

With regard to the 8800GTX's being in short supply, maybe pcspecialist have been stocking the newer 8800GT/GTS's as they offer pretty much all the performance for less £.

[That Daddy]

koenig999 said:

I am waiting for a 8800GTX card for my pcspecialist box.

Seems that are in short supply.

Koenig

www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-051-OK its the same as all the branded versions,and in stock

Edited by That Daddy on Friday 25th January 23:37

[Andrew[MG]]

[quote=LukeBird]I wouldn't bother partitioning as has been said above pretty much useless.
If you're doing it for backup reasons it's a little pointless IMO.
If the drive fails, you'll in all likelihood lose everything anyway.[quote]

Means you can format the windows drive without having to wipe everything on the disk...very useful!