It's time for me to seek desktop advice, Mark II

[Ed Anger]

Is your package signed in?

Yeah, I'll have to sign for it.

[Caliga]

Just ordered me a AMD X6 with 6GB Ram and a Raedon 5670 from Dell for 600 bucks. Hopefully it'll last 3-4 years like my old quad core did. If I don't have to upgrade anything in it like the last one, I'll be happy.

I've got an AMD x6 also.  It rules.  I have 8 Gb and a 5770 in it.... more than sufficient for anything out there I'd want to play right now.

[Ed Anger]

Jun 16, 2011 1:39 AM
Departed FedEx location
FORT WORTH, TX

WILL YOU NOT ARRIVE AT THE NEXT HUB? 

[Ed Anger]

Its on the truck! WOOHOO!

[Ed Anger]

Oh my.

[Pishtaco]

It's time to retire the laptop that I've had as my main computer since 2004. I'm living in a small apartment, and will be moving a couple of times in the next year, so it would make sense to replace it with another laptop. But I've looked at some of those, and they're all either ugly or Macs. Plus, I would like to get back into some flight simming, and get myself a hotas and a head tracking thing, and that doesn't seem like it would harmonize well with a laptop.

I will be using it for gaming, programming, and general internet stuff. It should be quiet and not garish, since it will be sitting in the living room all the time, and I'm not too worried about budget. I'm not interested in building one myself.

This is what a local computer place is offering as its middle-tier gaming sytem, for 26000 crowns after tax (1060 Euros):

Motherboard: Intel P67
Processor: INTEL CORE i5 2500K-3.3 GHz
Hard Drive 1: 1TB SATA 6Gb / s. 7200rpm
Hard Drive 2: 128 gigabytes SATA SSD
Memory: 8 gigabytes of DDR3 1600MHz Kingston HyperX Grey
Video Card: ASUS Nvidia Overclock Edition GTX560TI  DirectCU-II, 1 gigabyte
Sound Card: Integrated. Definition Audio Codec 7.1
Burner: DVD-RW.
Power: FORTRON 550W.
Case: FRACTAL DEFINE R3.
Software : Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit GB 

Or for 820 Euros they have:

Motherboard: 790FX + SB750
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 3.21 GHz
Hard Drive: 1TB SATA 3Gb / s. 7200rpm
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz
Graphics Card: nVidia GTX 560 DirectCU Ti-II 1GB of GDDR5
Sound Card: Integrated. HD Audio Codec 1.7
Burner: DVD-RW
Power: FORTRON 550W
Case: Coolmaster Elite 330
Software: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit GB

(They're on the page here: http://www.mironet.cz/pocitace/tiche-pocitace-mironet/herni-graficke+c16685/)

I'm tempted by the top one. I don't know much about computer hardware, but I looked up reviews of some of the parts and they seem ok. It has a charmingly featureless looking case; on the other hand "overclock edition" is disconcerting. I would appreciate any advice on what to go for. 

[Cerr]

Those aren't the names of the motherboards, just the type of socket they have.

The first one should perform better, particularly for gaming. The 2500k is great for gaming and the SSD should also speed things up.

The 550W power supply might be a bit low if you want to add a second graphics card in the future.

I built my pc a few months ago. I bought all the parts from this german site:
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/home.jsp?lid=2

The PC configurator section on the site is handy for picking the parts you need and will only show components that are compatible with each other.

http://www2.hardwareversand.de/pcconfigurator.jsp?pcConfigurator.step.1=1

They offer to build the PC for about 25 Euros extra.

I would recommend at least looking into picking the individual components yourself but it does take more time.

[Pishtaco]

Thanks for looking it over - it sounds like you think it's a decent spec. The motherboard is listed as ASUS P8P67-M PRO REV 3.0.

I'm not likely to add a second card; rather, I'm worried that the computer might be noisy as it is. But this shop makes a point of saying that they make quiet computers.

[Pedrito]

Pishtaco, the first configuration you posted resembles very much the pc I built three months ago; I'm very happy about it: excellent performance and extremely quiet. The P8P67 Pro was a candidate for my pc, and I read positive reviews about it; the only reason I didn't get that board is it wasn't available at the time of my order.

L.

[Pishtaco]

Pishtaco, the first configuration you posted resembles very much the pc I built three months ago; I'm very happy about it: excellent performance and extremely quiet. The P8P67 Pro was a candidate for my pc, and I read positive reviews about it; the only reason I didn't get that board is it wasn't available at the time of my order.

L.

It got delivered last week. I'm not entirely happy with it. It's noisier than I would like when idle - it's only a low hum and a woosh of air, but I'm used to a nearly silent laptop. I made it a bit quieter by turning down the CPU and chassis fan in the bios, but it seems like the PSU fan always runs at full speed. The case, which looks nicely understated in pictures, turns out to have a glaring blue light on the front that flashes when it's sleeping. I will probably replace the PSU and unplug the light, but it looks like opening the case will void my warranty with the shop. The SSD doesn't make it as snappy as I imagined, and coming to windows 7 from windows 95-themed XP is a shock.

However, it's doing a good job running games, and is even relatively quiet while doing it (except for a weird whine at the Crysis menu screens).