Building a new PC

mauwf

My old PC is getting pretty slow (it's about 4 years old) so it's time to build up a new one but I'm not really up with current technology. I'm thinking of a base of an SSD and an i5 or an i7 but what's the best "bang for your buck"?

The SSD is only going to be used for the OS, etc. I already have SATA drives I'll be adding in

Motherboard-wise, obviously that's partly dependent on the processor. I'll be looking at microATX to fit my existing case.

It won't be used for anything too hardcore, occasional hefty Excel spreadsheets and video processing are the main heavy things so it doesn't need to be anything too top-end.

I have no idea about modern video cards, I run two 1920x1080 monitors, watch HD films, occasional gaming (nothing too recent) so again nothing too fancy.

Any suggestions gratefully received or any links to sites with decent reviews, etc.

Cheers

closed

If it's slower than when you bought it, reinstall windows or look what's running at startup

mr_fishbulb

closed wrote: »

If it's slower than when you bought it, reinstall windows or look what's running at startup

And then after all the Windows/Application updates it will be slow again.

I agree that rebuilding a machine will make it a bit faster, but if you've got a machine that was built 5 years ago, the demands on it now will be more than they were back then. Take websites for example; there's a lot more going on nowadays on a website than there was 5 years ago.

zaax

Windows thats your problem right there. Use another OS like Ubuntu or kubuntu. Both nice and quick and free.

gonzo127

recommendations will depend on your budget so could you let us know how much you have to spend?

paddyrg

How about a hybrid drive with an i7? Capacity and near cost of a magnetic one, but with some local caching to speed it up?

Video card, no idea, and I know I am not the man to ask if you want gaming stuff, but for *watching* video, well your onboard video card will do excel sheets and watching video just fine, maybe add a card for the second monitor if you're doing a lot of live 3D rendering (eg games)

closed

most websites throw a bit of text/images and maybe video/sound at a browser, run of the mill processors have been capable of handling that easily for some time, a 4 year old machine shouldn't have any trouble, with updates, or without.

mauwf

Thanks for the comments so far.

I could probably prolong the life a little with an SSD, new graphics card and fresh install but given the effort involved, that my current motherboard is limited to 4GB of RAM plus the fact that I'm planning to upgrade to Windows 8 (I'm currently running Vista) it makes me feel that it's easiest to upgrade all at once.

I run Ubuntu on other machines but for my main PC there are too many programmes I need that only run properly on Windows.

In terms of budget, probably around £400 for motherboard, ssd, graphics card and processor, although there is some flexibility.

gonzo127

ok my thoughts for rough spec would be

CPU - Intel Core i5 3570K for £170-180 - this is one of the best CPU's out due to the ease of overclocking, but is a little pricey if you are not going to overclock your system and could be replaced by one of the lower cost core i5 CPU's to save some money (these range for £140 upwards)

Mobo - Gigabyte Z77 DS3 mobo for £70-80 - excellent board for the above CPU, allows easy overclocking, however if you are not going to overclock this could be changed to shave some pennies, for a basic mobo for a ivy bridge chip you can get them for £40-50 but will limit overclocking(or at least make it harder)

GPU - ATI 7850 for £120-150, the 1gb version ships for around £120 and is excellent card if you are gaming at 1920 x 1080 anything above this and the card will start to lag (this is only in gaming - anything else will not be a problem above this res) through lack of ram but the 2gb cards seem to start at around £140 so is a extra you could avoid if not gaming above this

SSD - OCZ 120gb agiliy 3 for £70 this is a good sized drive at a cheap price, however for just a OS drive a 64gb one is acceptable but limiting for other programs a 64gb one will be about £50 (better would be the samsung 830 128gb but thats £80 or a 64gb samsung 830 for £55)

RAM - do you need this, DDR3 will be required and will be from £20 for 4gb, or £35 for 8GB

overall the above would set you back somewhere between £400 - £500

techno12

I'm looking to do similar..

I have a 5-year old system with only 3GB of RAM (it started bluescreening all the time a couple of years ago with 4GB, despite each individual stick being fine). As a result, it's now very slow and paging for up to 30s at a time, temporarily pausing the machine as a result. I'm now putting it under a lot more stress than previously, as I'm doing coding full time on it and running a lot of programs simultaneously.

To upgrade the RAM is expensive, as DDR2 is silly money compared to DDR3. Plus I've a niggling feeling that there's an issue with my motherboard and I'll still get occasional bluescreens (had them since day 1, about once every 2 weeks though they're now almost daily). So, I'm thinking of biting the bullet and upgrading.

Thinking of...

Intel i3 3220 (the i5 3550 was my first thought, but you get a lot more 'bang for buck' with the 3220)

2x4GB DDR3 1600 RAM

64GB SSD (just to hold Windows 7 on really)

Asus P8Z77 V LX motherboard.


I'll stick with my current gfx card as it's more than enough for the job (an old ATI 3550 I think) and runs the games I play perfectly well.

All comes to £250 from Amazon. I'm still thinking about it as my current system is just about usable, but each time I get a random bluescreen due to excessive paging I lean towards this upgrade more and more.

closed

Are you actually using 3GB of ram, what's using it all?

What does the bluescreen say?