I didn't build this PC

I used to also enjoy building them for myself and my clients. I've only built two in the past five years. I use laptops exclusively now. A friend emailed earlier that he had tried to build his own and hosed it all up. Wants me to fix it. Looks like I'll be building one tomorrow.

 

That's not a bad PC at all.

But I still build my own. I just built a new one using top shelf components...the same PC in a prebuilt would have been almost $400 more expensive.

 

Yep.

I did see that HP at BB and it was a good deal.

 

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mice_pointers/mice/devices/5750&cl=us,en

 

I just built one within the last month and saved HUNDREDS.
Quad-core phenom, radeon 4670, 4GB soon to be 8 of 1333 Ram, 2TB, and cool as could be. All for about $600.

Recently purchased a computer for someone else, same processor, slower video card, slower memory, inferior mobo, only 500GB, and not as cool looking for $700 which was a pretty good deal.

 

The last PC I assembled was in about '97, from free parts friends had thrown out. My current PC was purchased ready to go in about 2004.

 

You could build your own Mac - oh, wait, no, you can't....

 

Hackintosh.

 

Not to steal the thread, but does anybody know if there are 14" laptops on the market with capability of using 8gb ram?

I find I typically have as many as 15, sometimes 20, windows open, and switching can get a little slow as W7 apparently writes some data to disk to accommodate my switching between screens.

 

As long as you have a 64-bit operating system and check the specs on the mobo supporting 8 gigs should not be a problem.

Problem is that mobo probably only has 2 slot so 4gb memory is usually pretty expensive.

 

I used to be huge into the PC thing, always buying the latest and greatest.

Now I just buy a new desktop PC about every 2 years and a new laptop about every 2 years also. I spent around $500-600 on a dektop and around $800-1000 on a laptop.

The thing is, that last 20% of performance is 80% of the cost. What costs $1500 today will be beaten by a $600 computer in several months time. There are so many people who still buy into the myth of upgradability too.

When I built my HTPC not too long ago, 250GB drives were $179 on super duper sale. Now you can get a 1TB drive for $65. The manufacturers change the chip sockets and bus speeds too. Even 2 years ago if you built a PC that was top of the line, it wouldn't have Blu Ray so if you bought a top shelf optical drive 2 years ago, it's obsolete today.

In short, I believe it is better to spend less money on a computer and upgrade more frequently than to buy on the high end thinking you will keep it longer.

 

CPU's don't get obsolete as quickly as they used to when clock speeds were low. A two year old Core 2 Quad still has pretty long legs for today's software.

And what's the myth of upgrading? You've never put in a newer video card/ram/drive? CPU is different; I've only upgraded one once...usually upgrading CPU requires new mainboard, perhaps RAM and then there's WhileImBuyingThisIMightAsWellGetThisAlsoitis.

You are right about the 20/80 bit. A $200 Core i5 750 with some really nominal overclocking is pretty close to a $1000 Core i7 Extreme.

Still gotta splash out for a good GPU though.

$1500 has been the sweet spot for a GOOD PC and it looks like it'll continue to be the sweet spot, although $700 buys a nice PC whereas in years past it didn't.

 

i still build my own, and do all the software on an as needed custom basis. there is too much crap "bundled" together now that i dont want or need on my computers.


it "depends" on how you use them.

 

As soon as my woodshop is ready, I'm building my own PC as well.
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+1

 

Very cool thread! This & the "Hackintosh" thread got me thinking. [Uh-oh ]

Firstly, IMHO, there's some *really* "wise" comments above - My further 02c - When I was "rolling my own", I generally got a dual-processor MB, but only put in one "level or two below state-of-the-art" CPU's. [The DP MB's were surprisingly close in cost to their single chip brethren, while the "latest" CPU's were big $, and often on backorder......]

+1 year - "Matching" CPU is now a "utility", buy another -> instant upgrade.

Same applies with memory as well of course.

I'm gonna open up my last build and see what's what - Then decide between a hackintosh and Linux.....

Cheers,
Ian

 

Linux.

Hackintosh at this point is simply a curiosity that's easily bricked.

 

Thanks for that!.... I'm certainly leaning that way, at least partly for that reason.....

However, *are* they being bricked? What are "they" doing to brick 'em? Please note, I'm not arguing, just interested in if it's a "real" concern? [And, yep, I'd like to leave "auto-update" (with sanity checks ) enabled.]

As I said above, I'm kind of pissed that I can't (legally) install my SL "family pack" on *my* H/W in addition to my Mac.... The OSX86 guys are already on thin ice, hopefully there's someone working on this "issue"?.... There we go! - The "first significant" virus checker for OSX protects you from the turtleneck police!.....

Cheers,
Ian

 

Problem with upgrading is that while you can increase the speed of that one component, you won't get the newest features unless you upgrade more components. Not if you upgrade after a few months (usually), but if you're the guy upgrading every few months then you're likely a gamer chasing the best performance... for everyone else, upgrading doesn't have the ROI.

I wanted to upgrade my computers at work... got new 28" LCD monitors. Great... too bad my computers only had VGA jacks, would be nice to have HDMI, which means new video cards. But the motherboards have PCIe 1.0, video card uses 3.0 for best performance (why put a high zoot card and hamper it with a slow connection?). So now you're looking at motherboard (which means CPU and memory too), video card, monitor, etc.

All I end up carrying over is the case, mouse, keyboard really. I throw the old hard drive in as a backup and to copy data over, but other than that, upgradable computers are a myth other than the guys on the very bleeding edge willing to junk 3 month old hardware in favor of 0 month old hardware.

I also have tons of family who bring their old Gatway machine over on Thanksgiving and ask me about "upgrading the memory to make it faster". You look in and see some 266Mhz 256MB DIMMs, AGP graphics slot, an old socket motherboard with an old Pentium chip and a 60GB HDD. For them too it's better just to buy a $400 computer at Walmart or Best Buy.

All IMO of course.