Spend my money - New PC

Hi All,

I used to be waay into PC builds and such but have been out of it for a couple years. That coupled with being Waay busy, medical issues for myself and the kiddo - makes me not have the time to look into a new build all too much.

So here is my wallet - could I count on my fellow POTNers (those who might have the time to research , comment or otherwise throw in their 2 cents) to Advise to me what they would purchase at this time given these parameters:

Thank you all in advance - I'd like to get this ordered in the next week or two. Hopefully that will be enough time for folks to chime in and get the build ironed out. I appreciate all your help)

The PC itself I would like to be fairly compact - a horizontal desktop or shuttle maybe. I'm in the habit of shopping 6 months or so behind the latest and greatest trends and new products to give the hardware time to test out (and come down in price a bit) I basically just use photoshop lightroom etc. for photog stuff, the occasional AutoCad and web surfing, documents etc. I don't do much with HD or video at this point. I'm currently running XP on 2 machines, a 4 year old laptop and a 6 year old PC.


That being said I would like to get a case (small ish),
Power Supply (5-700W),
MoBo - ( lost touch on the jargon a bit here)
SSDrive (120 ish Gig for OS, scratch, cache etc.
On-Board or - Average Video (don't do much gaming anymore)
Sound - same as video - on board or average
HD - Prob just a TB or so SATA drive
Display - looking at a pretty sweet IPS - about >$600 - any suggestions?
DVD / Burner - prob 2 of these
8-16GB memory

Doesn't need to be cooled or overclocked etc - prob won't have time for that. Its just there is so much out there I get lost (Chemo-brain) So any help finding compatible setup, model numbers etc. is appreciated. I usually shop at NewEgg or the like. - Budget for PC - >$1000

THANKS AGAIN GUYS!!

I suggest you buy a Dell or HP, add in an SSD, and reinstall the OS on the SSD yourself to get rid of the guff.

If you do build then you're on the right track. Get a Sandy Bridge i5/i7, 8GB RAM, a midrange video cards with 1GB RAM, 60GB or so OCZ Vertex 3 SSD for OS, a disk for images. You can get another SSD or a larger SSD for image cache. Massive power supplies are unnecessary, just a good quality 400W or better is fine. People more into the hardware will be able to give you links, or somewhere like hot hardware, anandtech, or toms hardware will probably have budget, value, and performance setups you can base yours off.

Best wishes for your recovery.

That's a pretty good idea Tim, I hate all the crapware that comes with them though. I wonder if there's a way (with the Win7 disk that comes with it) to wipe it and re-install just the OS. In the past, when I somehow got ahold of one of those machines, I would just install a generic copy of XP from one of my older machines. But that leads to many other issues to fix along the way - a bit of a pain. Sometimes you can't uninstall Norton or whatever other antivirus crap they lock down in the registry. Seems like it would prob be cheaper that way because I wouldn't have to buy the OS too.

- I was wondering about the OCZ drives I saw on NewEgg - I'm not familiar with the brand - Thanks Also - I was trying to remember the web site I used to frequent about hardware stuff - It was Toms - so Thanks for that too! - I appreciate your kind words - and your help.

Apshiso wrote in post #13040236
That's a pretty good idea Tim, I hate all the crapware that comes with them though. I wonder if there's a way (with the Win7 disk that comes with it) to wipe it and re-install just the OS. In the past, when I somehow got ahold of one of those machines, I would just install a generic copy of XP from one of my older machines. But that leads to many other issues to fix along the way - a bit of a pain. Sometimes you can't uninstall Norton or whatever other antivirus crap they lock down in the registry. Seems like it would prob be cheaper that way because I wouldn't have to buy the OS too.

- I was wondering about the OCZ drives I saw on NewEgg - I'm not familiar with the brand - Thanks Also - I was trying to remember the web site I used to frequent about hardware stuff - It was Toms - so Thanks for that too! - I appreciate your kind words - and your help.

If you buy a business-class system from Dell, one of the Optiplex or Precision boxes, they come basically clean.

jasonlitka wrote in post #13042129
If you buy a business-class system from Dell, one of the Optiplex or Precision boxes, they come basically clean.

Same with HP business boxes...good deals from here too:

http://h71016.www7.hp.​com …shed/computing/​price-list

This is an example of a nice deal for $555, though I'd get a 2nd HDD for data...another $75 from NewEgg....

Pavilion Elite HPE-570t W7HP-64 i7 2600 3.4GHz 1TB SATA 8GB DVDRW(LS) 1.5GB NIC 15-in-1 Rmkt PC...

Kit, Jason - Thanks, did that setup come from the HP site - I cant seem to find it?? Anyone else care to chime in? Im looking for an intellectual discussion on a system based on what people are or have used - maybe they went basic with 4gb RAM and it was too slow to run batch processing etc.. etc... If a few more folks contributed I would feel better

kitacanon wrote in post #13044880
Same with HP business boxes...good deals from here too:

http://h71016.www7.hp.​com …shed/computing/​price-list

This is an example of a nice deal for $555, though I'd get a 2nd HDD for data...another $75 from NewEgg....

Pavilion Elite HPE-570t W7HP-64 i7 2600 3.4GHz 1TB SATA 8GB DVDRW(LS) 1.5GB NIC 15-in-1 Rmkt PC...

I don't know how I would feel about buying a HP these days, especially not a refurbished HP. HP is getting out of the hardware business so all of these great deals are coming as a result of that. I just don't think I would want to be spending on that kind of money on a computer without knowing what kind of support I would have in the future.


Charlie - I got your e-mail, I'll try and get a list together for you today.


Edit - Here is a newegg cart for you. It needs some tweaking which I'll do later as I'm at work right now. But it should give you a general idea of the general direction I would suggest. I need to do some looking around to see how the AMD X6's hold up in LR3 and CS5 as you can get a cheaper setup generally going that direction.


Oh and as for monitors, in that price range, if you are doing print and want high color accuracy you want a wide gamut monitor so your choices are slim in that price range, but the Dell UE2410 and HP LP2475W are good monitors right around the $500-600 mark. If you don't plan on doing alot of print, and it's more web stuff you coul actually get away with a lower end E-IPS panel with just a standard gamut display and those are quite a bit cheaper.

Thank you, "sigh" Your help is greatly appreciated. I don't see the newegg cart? So, Don't bother with the "higher end" IPS monitor? Just get an E-IPS monitor? I may end up going a touch bigger - like 27"

Thanks again.

Apshiso wrote in post #13061370
Thank you, "sigh" Your help is greatly appreciated. I don't see the newegg cart? So, Don't bother with the "higher end" IPS monitor? Just get an E-IPS monitor? I may end up going a touch bigger - like 27"

Thanks again.

Well it would help if I actually posted the link.

I'm sorry about that. Here you are.
http://secure.newegg.c​om …x?WishListNumbe​r=21302507


As for the IPS, no that's not what I'm saying, it just really depends on what you are looking for. The higher end IPS panels are very nice they just come at a cost.

Great guide

http://media.photobuck​et.com …alPCBuyingGuide​/Guide.png

IPS go for the U2711 if you can afford it

chiggah wrote in post #13062314
Great guide

http://media.photobuck​et.com …alPCBuyingGuide​/Guide.png

Yes and no. The problem with that guide is it's just geared towards buying a general computer. It's not specialized towards anything (if anything it's geared towards gaming rigs).

It's not a bad place to start though.

Thanks chiggah - I actually have quite a bit of knowledge in PC hardware - its just a few years dated and I haven't kept up on display technology for a few years more than that. My situation finds me unable to do the research myself so I asked you all (and "sigh" in particular) for help getting the details straight so I could build a new system. - Thanks all again for your help. Am I missing something, or is 60gb enough to run the OS and swap.scratch yadda yadda on the SSD? - or should I go up to a 120gb?

Apshiso wrote in post #13064259
Thanks chiggah - I actually have quite a bit of knowledge in PC hardware - its just a few years dated and I haven't kept up on display technology for a few years more than that. My situation finds me unable to do the research myself so I asked you all (and "sigh" in particular) for help getting the details straight so I could build a new system. - Thanks all again for your help. Am I missing something, or is 60gb enough to run the OS and swap.scratch yadda yadda on the SSD? - or should I go up to a 120gb?

That really depends on how much you want to install on the SSD. I have a 120GB SSD for my OS which I install most of my programs on as well as my OS, I think I use about half of the space right now, but I also have a raid 5 array that I will install some of my larger programs/games on that don't need the slightly faster SSD. Also, most of the time people will move the scratch drive to a different drive (at least for video, I'm not sure what the norm is for photo stuff) on the computer to help speed things up, so you don't necessarily need to have the space for it on the SSD.

It definitely won't hurt moving to a 120gb hdd, but it does come at a price.