Time for a new PC!

[randomiam]

pc for high end gaming hd video editing future proof

7 year rig

cpu Intel Core i7 6700K

mobo ASRock Fatal1ty H170 Performance Motherboard

ram G.Skill Ripjaws 4 F4-2133C15Q-32GRR 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4

ssd Toshiba Dynastore 480GB 2.5in SSD

storage drive Seagate Archive 8TB ST8000AS0002

graphics EVGA GeForce GTX 970 Hybrid Gaming 4GB

video capture AverMedia C985E Live Gamer HD Lite Capture Card

power Cougar CMX1000 V3 1000W 80 PLUS Bronze Modular Power Supply

plenty of power for years

 

[thebigs]

Sorry we only have house upgrades left.

As i am still not able to drive yet until after my operation i suppose the car really was no good anyway so yep the house sounds cool.
I reach the big milestone of 50 this wednesday so maybe the house would be a nice birthday present.
Joking aside Mark it really is a fantastic gesture to Jon and as he contributes to here so much does this mean a new computer will mean more posts from him lol.

 

[Jono777]

I know nothing about PCs but good luck on getting something that suits your needs Jon.

Now Mark that is really great of 32RED to do that. What a generous offer so thanks to yourself and 32RED for offering it. You now have a nearly 50/50 chance of doubling your money Jon so good luck. Remember tho if it goes wrong its your PC money so no spending it on slots lol.

But seriously a can of Carling lol. Does anyone really drink that. Maybe its an English thing.

It's all I have ever drunk (apart from the odd Foster's) and yes its everywhere in England, cans, bottles, draft etc but I don't drink much these days just now and then but when I do yep its Carling.

There is no way Paul I will slot this opportunity away. I am desperate for this new PC and it wouldn't even cross my mind to slot any of it. Withdraw > Bank > PC World (or similar) lol.

The first deposit and first spins on the new PC will defo be made at 32 Red tho

 

[maxd]

7 year rig ...

Nice system but the price tag on that is about £1300 and you'd still need to add a case and a CPU cooler, so £1500-ish by the time it would be ready to power up.

"Carling"? "Fosters"?!? "Peroni"?!!! Guys, you need to broaden your horizons a little.

 

[randomiam]

Nice system but the price tag on that is about £1300 and you'd still need to add a case and a CPU cooler, so £1500-ish by the time it would be ready to power up.

you could cut it down abit yer if you have a budget i can help you pick some bits

 

[maxd]

you could cut it down abit ...

The man said his budget was £150-200. Your system is going to need a whole lot of trimming.

 

[randomiam]

The man said his budget was £150-200. Your system is going to need a whole lot of trimming.

Best buying a secondhand gaming laptop then.

 

[maxd]

Best buying a secondhand gaming laptop then.

Yup, more or less the conclusion we came to back around post #8 or so.

Or put the money into some carefully chosen upgrades.

 

[Jono777]

The man said his budget was £150-200. Your system is going to need a whole lot of trimming.

Hopefully double that with Marks amazing gesture!

Planning the 'big event' for Wednesday all being well so will have a more definate figure after then

Edit: Just had a thought which I should have had at the very start (told you I was useless)

If purchasing a new/replacement PC altogether is it simple enough (so in my case really simple) to take my existing hard drive and set it in the 'new' PC as a secondary/storage only drive (slave??) so I don't lose all my files/videos/pics etc.

Quite important to me but not a life/death scenario as all work related stuff is obsolete once a job is completed and I keep all 'to do' work in emails to start with. I just have years of screenshots, pictures of my children/family when they/we were younger and a few hundred video files I'd like to keep but could let then go if push came to shove!

 

[vinylweatherman]

Hopefully double that with Marks amazing gesture!

Planning the 'big event' for Wednesday all being well so will have a more definate figure after then

Edit: Just had a thought which I should have had at the very start (told you I was useless)

If purchasing a new/replacement PC altogether is it simple enough (so in my case really simple) to take my existing hard drive and set it in the 'new' PC as a secondary/storage only drive (slave??) so I don't lose all my files/videos/pics etc.

Quite important to me but not a life/death scenario as all work related stuff is obsolete once a job is completed and I keep all 'to do' work in emails to start with. I just have years of screenshots, pictures of my children/family when they/we were younger and a few hundred video files I'd like to keep but could let then go if push came to shove!

Yes, I've fitted hard drives, and provided it's the same interface and you have a spare bay in the case, it's really a case of plug & play. There should be 2 leads, one power and one SATA cable.

Another option is to get an external USB SATA docking station, then you can use this to read & write to any hard drive.

You can always save up and get a bigger storage drive later on if necessary. How many you can fit depends on the number of bays in the case, the number of SATA connections on the motherboard, and the number of power supply points you have. The smallest of the three is the number of drives you can connect, including any DVD drive and card reader.

I expect even a budget rig would have the capacity for at least one storage drive as well as the primary SSD.

 

[Harry_BKK]

Hopefully double that with Marks amazing gesture!

Planning the 'big event' for Wednesday all being well so will have a more definate figure after then

Edit: Just had a thought which I should have had at the very start (told you I was useless)

If purchasing a new/replacement PC altogether is it simple enough (so in my case really simple) to take my existing hard drive and set it in the 'new' PC as a secondary/storage only drive (slave??) so I don't lose all my files/videos/pics etc.

Quite important to me but not a life/death scenario as all work related stuff is obsolete once a job is completed and I keep all 'to do' work in emails to start with. I just have years of screenshots, pictures of my children/family when they/we were younger and a few hundred video files I'd like to keep but could let then go if push came to shove!

Not a fan of fitting old to new things.

Since I am changing laptops latest every 3 years i invested in a good quality external drive with 1TB storage space and regularly back up my important files there. Mine is a USB plug and play unit and works a treat.

Actually lucky that i got it as my previous laptop decided to cease operations unexpectedly. Instead of getting the hard drive repaired to get my files back I just bought a new laptop (which was due anyway) and loaded the needed files from my external unit.

Good luck with chosing the right PC for you. You have an abundance of choices and decisions to make.

 

[Jono777]

Not a fan of fitting old to new things.

Since I am changing laptops latest every 3 years i invested in a good quality external drive with 1TB storage space and regularly back up my important files there. Mine is a USB plug and play unit and works a treat.

Actually lucky that i got it as my previous laptop decided to cease operations unexpectedly. Instead of getting the hard drive repaired to get my files back I just bought a new laptop (which was due anyway) and loaded the needed files from my external unit.

Good luck with chosing the right PC for you. You have an abundance of choices and decisions to make.

Don't I just lol

External HD didn't cross my mind so I think I will go that route as there are only around 80GB of files roughly to back up.

Was going Vinyl's route but then You mention putting old to new which has set my paranoia ripe so external HD is looking good.

I think when I know my final budget for sure after the Big Event @ 32 Red this week I will 'shop around' and post my findings in this thread so hopefully other will say either 'Looks good' or 'Don't be silly Jon!'

I have come to trust this community more than my 'real life' friends so have every faith and am also most grateful for everyone's input, I really am!

 

[maxd]

... is it simple enough ... to take my existing hard drive and set it in the 'new' PC as a secondary/storage only drive ...

In general yes, dead easy, done it many times.

Two caveats: 1) if the drive is really old you might have cabling issues (eg. IDE vs SATA), and 2) it is seldom worth it because old HDDs fail a lot quicker than you'd think and their capacity is usually peanuts compared to new drives.

In recent years all I do is migrate the data from the old drive to something new -- pretty trivial these days -- and either use the old HDD as a scratch drive or just junk the damn thing. I've had far too many hard drives fail over the years to think of them as permanent storage, they are ephemeral and you're only borrowing them for a while. The great hardware compost heap will recall them all too soon. Especially Seagate 1.5 and 2TB drives ( ).

The external storage thing is a great idea and easier than ever these days. Go for USB3.0 as a minimum interface. Seriously consider going SSD instead of HDD, bit pricier at the outset but far less prone to failure (provided you use an appropriate enclosure, or a sealed unit). Don't buy cheapo non-name stuff here, completely false economy. Do your research and read the reviews or ask someone knowledgeable for recommendations: there is huge variance in reliability and longevity between brands and the results do not follow traditional branding patterns. In other words famous Brand X in the HDD scene may not make (or be reselling) good SSDs, and vice versa.

 

[Jono777]

Fantastic Info once again Max, much appreciated - Thank you.

 

[maxd]

Should have added this:

For those of you considering the SSD approach you might want to take a look at this:

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

at TechReport.com.

Over the course of 18 months they tested a handful of SSDs to death (literally) and the results are _very_ interesting, at least to those of us who give a damn about such things.

The bottom line: SSDs are (generally) exceptionally durable and the Samsung Pro SSDs are (generally) worth every penny. That said you need to pay serious attention if your SSD starts reporting data errors: when a SSD starts dying they tend to do so fairly quickly and often not at all gracefully.

One last thing: any "internal" SSD can be used externally in an enclosure. Basically they're just sleeves that the drive slides into and snaps shut. Most offer one or more interfaces to the drive, USB3.0 being the norm, so it's just a USB cable into your box or laptop (or tablet or smartphone, assuming you've got the hardware/software to support OTG -- "On The Go" -- USB). The point being that one enclosure used for multiple drives is very much possible, if such a thing is of interest to you. The enclosures will often accept 2.5" HDDs too, those are the slim hard drives used in laptops.

 

[Kelly Jo]

... for a bit of New Year fun I want to give you the chance to double your budget.....Up for the challenge? ~Mark

This sort of thing makes me all glowie and sh.. stuff!

 

[Jakestar]

As others have probably said I'm sure but main things would be:

SSD drive - The standard Samsung offerings are very good performers for the proce. I bough a Samsung 840 ssd or whatever it's called about 3 years ago and it's had heavy use/abuse but still performs tops today.

A quality motherboard from a good company is essential imo - one that has a decent chipset and is known to be reliable (good wuality capacitors etc. not sure if it's relevent today as I'm going from the 2005 era when I used to work in IT - soo many dodgy boards with leaking capacitors but maybe today it's not much of an issue.)

Decent ram with heatsinks as well, and a decent PSU. And finally something i think is also essential is good cooling/airflow with a clean build/cables neatly tied/no clutter.

Pictures/specs when you get it

 

[Harry_BKK]

In general yes, dead easy, done it many times.

Two caveats: 1) if the drive is really old you might have cabling issues (eg. IDE vs SATA), and 2) it is seldom worth it because old HDDs fail a lot quicker than you'd think and their capacity is usually peanuts compared to new drives.

In recent years all I do is migrate the data from the old drive to something new -- pretty trivial these days -- and either use the old HDD as a scratch drive or just junk the damn thing. I've had far too many hard drives fail over the years to think of them as permanent storage, they are ephemeral and you're only borrowing them for a while. The great hardware compost heap will recall them all too soon. Especially Seagate 1.5 and 2TB drives ( ).

The external storage thing is a great idea and easier than ever these days. Go for USB3.0 as a minimum interface. Seriously consider going SSD instead of HDD, bit pricier at the outset but far less prone to failure (provided you use an appropriate enclosure, or a sealed unit). Don't buy cheapo non-name stuff here, completely false economy. Do your research and read the reviews or ask someone knowledgeable for recommendations: there is huge variance in reliability and longevity between brands and the results do not follow traditional branding patterns. In other words famous Brand X in the HDD scene may not make (or be reselling) good SSDs, and vice versa.

Fully agree there. Mine is SSD with USB 3.0 and came with a 10 year warranty.

I do always try to reduce the amount of cables and adapters to the lowest possible. Can't stand it when my bag is cluttered with those.

What i also did is concentrating on one brand, in my case it is Samsung - got laptop, pico projector, mobile phone, camera, TV and the external HD from them and it is just brilliant as they are all fully compatible without any additional software/cable adapters etc etc.

E.g.
- place my mobile phone close to the laptop and it automatically synchronizes, got it set-up to do it 2 x weekly
- pico projector connects to laptop or phone; great when a customer is asking for a quick presentation. They are always so surprised when i take then my phone and that little projector (about double the size of a cigarette pack), connect them and project a 1x1m large sharp image on the wall. Just one short cable needed to connect the projector to the phone as it can run up to 2 hrs on battery.

EDIT: The external SSD hard drive does not have a power cable as it takes it from the USB port when i plug it in.

 

[thebigs]

Sorry we only have house upgrades left.

Wow Mark,i just knew you would not let me down on my 50th Birthday.Will be moving in very soon.

 

[Jono777]

Ermm, already occupied

Can you not see me waving, top right window

Tut, bloody tut

 

[vinylweatherman]

Ermm, already occupied

Can you not see me waving, top right window

Tut, bloody tut

Rubbish!! I just took a drive to the bottom of the garden, and there's no one in my summerhouse

 

[Jono777]

Hi all, I've been offered the following, thoughts please (mainly the value for money aspect)

Budget can't do SSD at the moment even after today's fantastic result but from my limited knowledge it would serve my daily needs (at least for now) and make my current PC look like a lego brick!

AMD 3.4 GHZ Quad Core
8GB DDR3 1600
500 GB HD 7200rpm sata 3
Biostar A88 USB3 Mainboard
2xDVD RW Drives

Would also include licensed copy of Windows and MS Office

Quoted £300



Cheers

 

[Harry_BKK]

Hi all, I've been offered the following, thoughts please (mainly the value for money aspect)

Budget can't do SSD at the moment even after today's fantastic result but from my limited knowledge it would serve my daily needs (at least for now) and make my current PC look like a lego brick!

AMD 3.4 GHZ Quad Core
8GB DDR3 1600
500 GB HD 7200rpm sata 3
Biostar A88 USB3 Mainboard
2xDVD RW Drives

Would also include licensed copy of Windows and MS Office

Quoted £300



Cheers

Looks pretty good. A few things:

- why 2 DVD RW drives - are you using them? I haven't had one in 6 years now and never missed it. If no, then leave them out and you might have enough for an SSD drive
- what Graphics card does it have?

Sorry can't say anything about the price as my last PC purchase goes back to 1996 with Win3.1, only had laptops since.

 

[Nicola]

Hi all, I've been offered the following, thoughts please (mainly the value for money aspect)

Would also include licensed copy of Windows and MS Office

Cheers

Have they stated what version of Windows and Office are included? If it is Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 you can upgrade for free to the latest version.

 

[dunover]

Hi all, I've been offered the following, thoughts please (mainly the value for money aspect)

Budget can't do SSD at the moment even after today's fantastic result but from my limited knowledge it would serve my daily needs (at least for now) and make my current PC look like a lego brick!

AMD 3.4 GHZ Quad Core
8GB DDR3 1600
500 GB HD 7200rpm sata 3
Biostar A88 USB3 Mainboard
2xDVD RW Drives

Would also include licensed copy of Windows and MS Office

Quoted £300



Cheers

Pointless DVD drives. 1 if you really DO need one.
HDD crud.
You can get 500GB Samsung SSD for 200.
What graphics card? You'll need a good spec for slotting/videoing.

Really, if you're up anything near what your videos show lately, get that SSD!!

You'll be peed off in 12 months when you try a SSD or use one and may regret not getting it now.