buying a new pc

[luke]

i need to get a new pc, mine is old now and it feels it - it does what i want, but something new and faster would be nice

might sound weird for a programmer/web designer, but i don't really know much about pc's any more. when it was all 386 486 i knew the score, now its all amd vs intel and cores and stuff i don't know whats going on.

i don't play any games so i don't need some fancy video card, i really just use coldfusion, photoshop, make music ( i have a decent sound card which i plugged in extra - i think its a pci card? ) using fruityloops and x amount of plug ins, plus watching video. being able to convert video formats faster would be good ( this thing takes ages ) as would being able to edit and save short videos with microsoft movie maker without having to wait hours for it so save the file

i've got a nice screen, a keyboard and mouse, i've got a couple of old 500gb ide drives that i'd like to be able to connect somehow, either internally, or a usb or something connection.

i checked this place that i've used in the past to get motherboards and hard drives etc, and this kinda looked alright to me



is that a good spec/deal? i don't really want to pay much more.

they do lots of others, they got this one for one £169, but i can't tell how fast it is ( maybe it doesn't contain the processor? )

i've built pc's in the past, but i wouldn't really feel confident doing it now from scratch, but i'd be fine plugging in memory or hard drives etc

so if you know of any good deals, things i should be looking for, let me know

[faceless]

Check out this badboy... for video converting, the extra oomph you'd get adding a good video card (the one I got recently is great - £80) really adds a lot, while leaving you able to do other things normally.

With this sort of speed and memory, you'll get through your work a lot easier.

CLICK

[luke]

yeah for £25 extra that one does sound nice, its worth it just for the extra memory and hard drive

[major.tom]

It's hard to stay on top of all the new hardware.

I can't speak to UK prices, but I would suggest buying a SSD to use as your O/S partition (aka C: drive). They're much faster than standard HDD's. I have a 64 GB Kingston (low end) SSD as my C: drive and use larger regular (spinning) drives to store data.

Best results (in terms of drive life) occur when taking small extra steps such as moving the pagefile and Firefox cache folder off the SSD. And NEVER defrag(ment) your SSD. That'll kill it quick.

[luke]

so my one lovely hp computer died yesterday

i need to get a new computer quicktime, but i'm kinda limited in funds for the money, which do you reckon would be better;

£199 http://www.cclonline.com/product/75958/NoMfgCode/All-CCL-Desktops/CCL-Alpha-Prime-PC-System/CCL-ALP-IBUD/

£219 http://www.cclonline.com/product/116366/NoMfgCode/All-CCL-Desktops/CCL-Alpha-Champion-V-PC/CCL-AMD-ENT5/

[faceless]

I'd really look on ebay first - refurbished Dells are almost always solid and reliable. And you'll get a setup that's more powerful than that one, including a monitor, for around £120

[luke]

thanks face, and thanks for the ebay link - they do have some good deals - although i'm not looking at any hp stuff as thats what just died on me, but the dell stuff looks ok! i kinda just fancy something new though, i seem to have been through so many computers and screens the last few years - a new machine with a 3 year warranty just sounds reassuring at the moment!

the old one that died was only a amd dual core 2.something ghz, 3gb ram with built in ati radeon graphics card, and it was fast enough for me. i got given a graphics card last year but i've never used it, the card says nvidea p348 but thats all i know. i've also got 16gb in memory chips, which i'll use if i can as i'm going to use the 64bit windows from now on

i actually bought a new screen just a week or so ago after the last one started playing up - a nice big 1920x1080 wide screen and then a week later the computer dies!

i might just go for the amd and hope the extra £20 was a good investment!