Okay, resident techheads, advice time.

[Greymist]

I saw this computer at Sam's Club: http://www.samsclub.com/sams/h8-1417c-p ... 7910132.ip

I've never bought a main brand name computer before...but this one interested me. Would this be a good buy?

Oh, and by the way, today I bought a 27" Samsung monitor, upgrading from an old 19" non-widescreen one.

Might I say:

Oh. My. GOD.

I had a quick look around Sam's Club, and although the computer you linked is pretty decent, the graphics card will let you down (especially on the resolutions you're now rocking with your 27" screen, awesome aren't they?).

My thought was you could go for one of the machines around the $800 mark, Dell XPS 8700 or HP Envy 700-047, then spend the extra $200 on a Nvidia GTX 660. You could even sell (ebay) the graphics card that's included for $50 (at a guess) and use the money for one of two things: A SSD, or a power supply if the one included with the PC isn't large enough (didn't check).

BTW, ignore the man behind the curtian people who tell you to go with a larger SSD, 32GB is MORE than enough when you use Intel SSD caching (research suggests that 8GB is large enough for the average user, but I can't find the article).

[Aseglave]

Personally, I'm not a fan of HP. They are kind of hit or miss as far as quality goes and I've noticed even the reviews are 3 5's and 3 1's. I now have monitor envy.

[GBLW]

I've had too many friends who've bought Dell and had them simply DIE with no prior warning, so I wouldn't touch a Dell computer with a ten foot snake (and I hate snakes). Fortunately I'm able to build my own boxes with the help of my kids, who are computer engineers and software developers, besides that I'm not a gamer, so I'm not a lot of help to you when it comes to buying off the shelf computers.

[Grommley]

BTW, ignore the man behind the curtian people who tell you to go with a larger SSD, 32GB is MORE than enough when you use Intel SSD caching (research suggests that 8GB is large enough for the average user, but I can't find the article).

I disagree. There is quite a large performance increase if you can put more than just the bare OS on the drive which is all 32GB would give you (well a bit more than the OS, but not much) and caching is actually slower than directly using the drive. One of the stores I work with has set up both and we saw a significant difference just by installing a larger SSD so that the system WASN'T caching. With a 256GB drive installed (was about the same with a 128GB, but less space for installed applications), the system booted in less than half the time with a small drive or a combo SSD/platter drive. While the caching does improve the performance over just a classic hard drive, it is not as good as going with a bigger drive where your OS and applications can both be resident with only data stored on a larger drive.

Just my 2 cents....

[kirik]

First, I'm going to vote no for any off the shelf system. I've dealt with enough poor component failures (usually bad capacitors) that I can't recommend those.

One big question (with an important follow-up) that I'm not clear on is: Are you willing to go the DIY route? If yes, then my follow-up question is: Are you close to a Microcenter to take advantage of their walk in deals?

Do you plan on tinkering (aka overclocking) your CPU and GPU?


Overclocking and close to a Microcenter (see their eCatalog, link is at the right side of the homepage):
- i5 3570k - $190 (catalog p33)
- Cheap but effective CPU cooler: CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO - $30 (catalog p7)
- P8Z77M-Pro - $130 (catalog p33)
- 4GB (if 32bit OS, go with 2x2GB) or 8GB (if 64bit OS) DDR3-1600 ~$40 - $80 depending on selection and sales
- Gigabyte GTX660 OC - $207 (catalog p37)
- Corsair CX500M psu - $60 microcenter (with $10MIR)
- Case is a personal choice. My favourite companies are Corsair, Fractal Design, Antec. Choose something under $70 and check out reviews to make sure there aren't any major flaws.
- Storage will depend on what you need. IMO, go with a 1TB WD Caviar Black ($85, catalog p40) for general storage and some program installs.
- OS Drive should be an SSD, 120/128 GB size, Samsung 840, Crucial M500, Crucial M4, Intels would all be good choices. ~$100 to $120 (catalog p41)

Total: $972 before taxes on the high end

Of course this is without other peripherals since I'm assuming you are transferring them over.

Here's a build from Newegg assuming no overclocking or any tinkering (but still DIY).
- i5 4430 (haswell) or i5 3330 (ivy bridge) both quad core - $190
- B75 / B85 based motherboard - $80 and under (just pick one with a PCI-e x16 slot for the video card)
- 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1600 - ~$40, just choose one with a heat spreader with aesthetics that you like
- Video card: GTX660 or Radeon 7870. Both have units at ~$200
- SSD: all in the 256GB range. Samsung 840, Crucial M4, Crucial M500. $180 and under
- Same as above for the case. Just make sure you get one big enough for your motherboard (ie, don't get a mATX case for an ATX board)
- Seasonic S12II 430B PSU - $60

Total: $820

You can also save somewhere around $100 by dropping the CPU to an i3 and getting a smaller SSD (128GB range).

[Fawks]

I am running a six core 3.3GHz AMD Phenom II processor from about three years ago. I like it, but will admit that an i5 or i7 quad core with hyper threading is probably a faster system. I'm running with 16GB of RAM and love that Windows is not constantly swaping with the hard drive. I recently upgraded to an nVidia GTX 670 4GB video card and a GTX 650. I had a 240 San-disc SSD that rocks for speed... But, after installing Winders7 U, Sins of a Solar Empire, Battlefield 2142, BF3, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike Global Offensive, Age of Empires II HD, Adobe CS4, Office Pro 10 and a few other odds and ends, I ran out of room on my SSD. The system started crashing and getting very unstable when the SSD free space was below 10%. It may have been just a bug in my system, or not.

Now I run Winders on a WD 500GB Velociraptor and use the SSD for a cache drive. So, after saying all of that, My recommendation is if you get a SSD, get one that is at least 400-500GB. Remember that new games take many GB of storage on your hard drive. Battlefield 3 Premium takes up 34GB of space by itself on my C: drive.

Also, use dropbox to back up your story files. That way if your HD crashes, you still have a backup. I have read about other online authors loose all of their working story files when a system crashes.

I have built all of my desktops. I started with a 486sx 25Mhz with 2 megabytes of RAM in 1994 and evolved that system to the current specs. Now I'll get off the bragging soap box now.

[Spec8472]

I saw this computer at Sam's Club: http://www.samsclub.com/sams/h8-1417c-p ... 7910132.ip

I've never bought a main brand name computer before...but this one interested me. Would this be a good buy?

Oh, and by the way, today I bought a 27" Samsung monitor, upgrading from an old 19" non-widescreen one.

Might I say:

Oh. My. GOD.

Welcome to the 27" Owners club. It's quite nice up here, isn't it? Also - keep the 19" around - two (or more) screens are even more awesome.

Moving into a new apartment at the moment, so I'll be able to set up my workspace properly soon.

I think that Sams Club link is overpriced.

I'm trying to find a decent custom-build place that'll let you pick the parts, assemble, test, install the OS and drivers and ship it. We've got several here in Australia. The ones I've found via Google are *expensive*. 2TB HDD for USD$180?! We're paying USD$150 for the same thing here - $90 if you're not after the 'black' edition.

General Recommendations:

Modern CPUs from Intel are stupidly fast. Don't go on the Ghz numbers - they're pretty much useless for comparing except within the same processor line. Anything more than 3Ghz is going to be more than fast enough.

Storage - SSDs are the number one way to make your computer just go fast. Even if you can't afford a 512 or 256GB SSD, a 120GB one will be enough to install your apps and a few games. If you have to - get a slower CPU to afford the SSD. Now, any time I use a computer with a spinning disk as it's boot drive I wonder if it's broken. That said - they have a terrible failure rate. Back. everything. up. Use something like Crashplan or Backblaze to do it automatically so you don't have to worry about it.
Get a spinning disk (2TB or two) for bulk storage - movies, tv, etc.

Graphics Cards - I know very little about, except in general terms. The last two digits are apparently a lot more important than the first. In the AMD/ATI space, a 7950 will get it's backside handed to it by a 6990, for instance. A graphics card should be your second priority for money, after the SSD, imo. I've got a Radeon 7950 running my 27" display. I can play Planetside 2 at full res (2560x1440) with everything turned up high fine - it's actually CPU limited most of the time.

RAM - 8GB is okay, 16GB is nicer. If you had more than $1k to spend I'd recommend going all out with 32GB. It's $80/8GB stick, so why not?

DVDRW - Do you really use one of these? I haven't used optical media more than a handful of times in years.

Power Supply - unless you're overclocking and putting two high end GPUs in there getting more than 450W is probably a waste of cash. Do make sure it's an "80 plus" one though, that means it's at least 80% efficient in converting from mains down the voltages needed.

OS - I'm not exactly a fan of Windows 8, but you can make up your own mind on that one. Windows 7 is still great imo.

I use 98SE for software development

Whaaaaat - 98SE? Are you kidding? It can't even address enough ram or storage to be useful for day to day usage for me.

[Darksparkru2]

Spec1987 if you are looking at parts for him, the best website to find computer parts the cheapest is newegg.com

[ettoren]

For a "tell them what to put into it" site I like ibuypower.com and cyberpowerpc.com. Build it yourself I tap newegg.com and tigerdirect.com

[Spec8472]

Spec1987 if you are looking at parts for him, the best website to find computer parts the cheapest is newegg.com

It doesn't look like newegg will assemble a custom config though.

Here we've got places like AusPCMarket where you can pick out the parts, and they'll assemble, test, install the OS and drivers and then ship it out to you.

[nicolai]

OK, for buying a complete system, I go with TigerDirect, then I go over to the refurbished section. You get what is essentially a brand new system at about 40% of the cost of new, usually including a full factory warranty. I just placed an order on a 17" HP AMD quad-core that lists there for about $1300 new, paid $447 and change, $461.19 with second day shipping. The unfortunate thing with this is that you don't get any options, but if you get a bit lucky you might find something a gamer had. It's just luck and timing. Although if you find a system you really like, don't delay ordering.

The laptop I have now is an HP AMD dual core that I've had for about 5 years, that I got exactly that way. I'm getting a couple warnings on bootup that tell me the motherboard is failing. Makes me a tad grumpy (since I'm an old curmudgeon), but the durability actually isn't that bad. And at about 5-6 years it's time to look at your hardware anyway.

I worked at Dell (briefly) and they are not a company I would buy from. They use a lot of proprietary hardware, which can make it very difficult to add on. Compaq used to be notorious for that, adding a second hard drive required ordering a set of their proprietary mounting rails and they usually cost more than the hard drive did. And about half the time a standard hard drive wouldn't mount even with their fancy rails, the mounting holes weren't spaced right.

When I build a desktop for myself, I tend to overbuild, and wind up paying out a lot more $$$ than I planned on. So if you're on a tighter budget, I'd have to recommend buying a complete system and upgrading components as you are able to. Just make sure that the durned thing is upgradable without major hassles.

For example: I paid close to $300 for the Lian-Li case for my desktop about 12 years ago, and it's worth every penny. But it can also be a budget buster. I like that case because it has 5 internal drive bays and 6 external, in an uncrowded mid-tower form factor. Oh, and there are NO raw metal edges anywhere inside the box; if it isn't a folded edge, it has an edge protector installed. With the size of my hands, it has saved me a lot of bandaids. Plus it's modular. Take out two thumbscrews and the hard drive bay slides out. Take out two other thumbscrews and the motherboard tray slides out, and it's all aluminum so it isn't that heavy. If you're a gamer and have the money to spend, it's probably the best case you can buy. I recommend it unconditionally.

I just need to get the mobo, CPU and RAM replaced. I hate being on fixed budget.

[Wolfee]

I'd go with tigerdirect.com. I start to tell you what to buy and what to spend from newegg.com - but I wanted to spend more so I figure it would be just easier to give you a number of systems ready to go to look at. Remember you can always add harddrives!!! If you have a copy of win7 I'd wipe the machines below and reload with win7. Or live with it and hope win8.1 makes it more user friendly. I also agree with staying away from HP machines. I recommend Nvidia over Radeon any day... but either way you've got to spend the cash. If these systems come with monitors, you should be able to get them to subtract the monitor if you don't want/need. I'd go with the 27 inch any day.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... &CatId=114 (or just have them reload it win7) "2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 620 GPU; enhances your system’s graphics quality"

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... &CatId=114 (if they won't reload with win7, do it yourself) "2GB AMD Radeon HD 8760 GPU; improves your PC’s visual performance"

[arargh]

Welcome to the 27" Owners club. It's quite nice up here, isn't it? Also - keep the 19" around - two (or more) screens are even more awesome.

Three is even nicer - been running with 3 for many years, now.

I actually had 2 CGA cards working WAY back in the DOS days. Had to dig out a soldering iron to do that, though.

I use 98SE for software development

Whaaaaat - 98SE? Are you kidding? It can't even address enough ram or storage to be useful for day to day usage for me.

Nope. For what I use it for, it works just fine.

Could do with a somewhat faster CPU, though.

arargh

[gnume]

ill recommend http://pcpartpicker.com/ to searching parts in the usa it doesnt have all the rare or extra exotic parts but most things can be found there. doesnt work for Israelis like me thru.

[Darksparkru2]

Spec1987 if you are looking at parts for him, the best website to find computer parts the cheapest is newegg.com

It doesn't look like newegg will assemble a custom config though.

Here we've got places like AusPCMarket where you can pick out the parts, and they'll assemble, test, install the OS and drivers and then ship it out to you.

Ah didn't thank about that. Now that you said that I remember that newegg.com is the best place to get parts by themselves, but just parts and nothing else.