New Built over barebones bundle

[Wantonyson]

Hi
I am looking at replacing my current 7 year old pc which is mainly used for web browsing, streaming of music/films, photo/video editing. It will not be used for gaming that much although I do dabble occasionally.

These are the specs of my current pc which I believe was good at the time.

Central Processor - AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
Motherboard- K8V-X ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
2.0GB Ram
250GB Hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500

I would prefer to go down the barebones route although I have never built a pc and I am unfamilier with the compatability.
My budget is approx £600-700 including operating system and office suite

Would the selection in the attachment be a good option or would i be better going for a built unit like the Delta V3

Thanks

Tonyuntitled.jpg

[Mebby]

Looks pretty solid other than the 32bit version of Windows 7. No reason to get anything other than 64bit these days.

[Wantonyson]

Thanks,

So apart from the 64 bit OS is there anything else I should be looking to add/swap which will not increase the cost too much. And is there much difference between what I have put together and the Delta V3 built pc

[Peeej]

unless you have agood reason I'd go for an Intel set up, AMD are a bit behind the curve at the moemnt and an i5/i7 system would be better.

[Musthaveittoday]

Swap the drive for a WD blue and pick anything other than a Liteon DVD, Pioneer are generally the best of the bunch.

[Wantonyson]

Thanks,

Would this be ok?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...k.html#reviews

I am not sure I can stretch my budget for the WD Blue, whats the difference?

[Mebby]

In this case take the Green. It was the case that blue drives were faster than the green eco ones, but now they have a higher spin speed.

Also nothing wrong with Liteon either been using them for years never had one fail me yet.

[Musthaveittoday]

Blue model runs cooler and extends the life of the drive, Green is another way to say cheap, and the Black means full pelt, personally I think the Blue is the best value, Liteon, this is a strange one, they make the guts of DVD for everyone, but their drives are not good, I've put 4 in the bin previously because the door wouldn't open anymore and I found them disc picky.

Anyway, up to you, but a Seagate Barracuda would be a better choice than an eco green drive.

[Mebby]

Blue model runs cooler and extends the life of the drive, Green is another way to say cheap, and the Black means full pelt, personally I think the Blue is the best value, Liteon, this is a strange one, they make the guts of DVD for everyone, but their drives are not good, I've put 4 in the bin previously because the door wouldn't open anymore and I found them disc picky.

Anyway, up to you, but a Seagate Barracuda would be a better choice than an eco green drive.

Google's research found that temperature doesn't affect the reliability of hard drives very much, and certainly not in the way many people expect. In the first two years of a drive's life, it is more likely to fail if it is kept running at an average temperature of 35 degrees C or less than if it was running at over 45 degrees C. That's surprising, and it suggests that spending too much time worrying about air conditioning systems may be counterproductive - a warmer environment actually suits disk drives better.

From year three onward, disks running above 40 degrees C had a higher failure rate than cooler running drives, but could it be possible their higher temperatures were a symptom of their impending failure? It's not clear that that is the case, with Google concluding that "at moderate temperature ranges it is likely that there are other effects which affect failure rates much more strongly than temperatures do."

The only concern people had with the ECO ones was that the power saving mode could potentially cause some system lag when powering back up, but we're talking a few milliseconds at best.

[Musthaveittoday]

Mebby, I know you mean well but you are wrong, the blues are 7200 RPM, here's why I suggest this over the green

Ultra-cool and quiet - Keeping the drive cool enhances reliability. WD continues to develop new and innovative ways to keep drives cool while they are operating which helps protect the drive and the data stored on it.

Now that google muck you quoted is flawed, trust me a HDD lives longest if it's kept below 30 and ideally a low 20 degrees, I had mine running at 17 degrees when I had the 900 case,

I also for the last 3 years help in support for one of these companies, I was invited to do so because I was willing to help and helped a lot of ppl repair their drives, I have drives NT doesn't even stock yet sent straight to me from America foc to keep so I can help out having the experience of the particular drive,

Now, most of the problematic drives that I end up trying to help the user with are Green Eco drives, I have a WD 500 Green myself and it weighs half what a normal drive does, as if there is something missing inside, these drives are basically storage drives and they do that task very well, but as boot drives and even worse raid drives they don't last long.

And please don't think I'm having a pop at you, if the guy still wants a green one thats his choice, but my advice is aim higher, meaning a WD blue or a Seagate Barracuda.

[Pendragonuk]

I'll not get into the hardware discusion at this point, but looking at the software I have a couple of points...

As has been mentioned you need to select the 64bit version of Windows.

Secondly, do you really need MS Office? Have you had a look at the latest version? I know a lot of people hate the Ribbon interface. Also it's very powerful software. are you sure you need all of that power. 80% of users make use of less than 20% of it's features. Most people find that LibreOffice fits all of thier needs and has an interface that is a little easer to get along with. It had full compatibly with all of the MS Office formats, old and new. At the very least download LibreOffice before you make your decision to find out if it does what you need before dropping £200 quid on software... £200 spend on hardware would make a big improvement, go for the Oct core and may be a nicer G/Card for those times when you do want to play games.

http://www.libreoffice.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sloEMUt7n5Q

[Mebby]

Mebby, I know you mean well but you are wrong, the blues are 7200 RPM.

My mistake I was looking at the Scorpio drives the caviar ones are indeed 7200RPM.

[Musthaveittoday]

NP bud.

[Wantonyson]

Thanks for your help guys, it is very much appreciated.

I "found" a copy of MS Office Pro 2003 at work which has not been used, so I am hopeful that the product key is still valid. I'll give that a go first.

With the hard drive I notice that the 1TB WD Caviar black is actually slightly cheaper than the blue, is it not worth going for this or would you still recommend the blue?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...d1002faex.html
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c.../wd10ealx.html

Pendragonuk, as I said before i mainly use the computer for watching live streams and movies. would the graphics card i have selected handle this without lagging? or would i be better off going for something like this:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...x-m2d1gd5.html

[Musthaveittoday]

Thanks for your help guys, it is very much appreciated.

I "found" a copy of MS Office Pro 2003 at work which has not been used, so I am hopeful that the product key is still valid. I'll give that a go first.

With the hard drive I notice that the 1TB WD Caviar black is actually slightly cheaper than the blue, is it not worth going for this or would you still recommend the blue?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...d1002faex.html
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c.../wd10ealx.html

Pendragonuk, as I said before i mainly use the computer for watching live streams and movies. would the graphics card i have selected handle this without lagging? or would i be better off going for something like this:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...x-m2d1gd5.html

Nope, if you can get a black cheaper than a blue get one, I think you'll find the Seagates a lot cheaper than both right now though.


http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...1000524as.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...t500dm002.html


And these are every bit as good and fast as the WD's, in the end it's your choice so you decide.