OT: New computer

[Chris J Dixon]

I know there is lots of experience out there, and it is always interesting to hear other views.

I am now seriously contemplating replacing my desktop, the present one is getting (comparatively) slow and long in the tooth, and I would like to sort it out before it becomes a distress purchase. {Providence duly tempted}

Having been through the trauma of Vista, I am thinking that Windows 7 (whilst it is still available) might be better than the widely criticised Windows 8.

Using a solid state disk for operating system and programs (only) appears to have significant performance benefits, though I have seen suggestions that their life can be shortened if overused.

I generally refer to the PC Pro A List, but they don't really seem to have categories for "large spreadsheets and photo processing" it is either budget or outrageous gamer.

Scan and pcspecialist have been recommended as good suppliers of configurable systems.

Any input (confined to Windows and PCs) welcome.

Chris

[F]

I uninstalled Windows 8 from two computers and reinstalled Windows 7...

A good option. Most have three year guarantees.

Have a look at

Helpful and usually a decent price too. Alternatively, buy the bits and plug them together yourself?

[Mentalguy2k8]

I would. Buy a "bare bones" system (usually case, motherboard, CPU and memory) and choose for yourself what else you want to put in there, and what OS you want.

Novatech do a good range, never had any problems with their stuff.

[Jim K]

Cs/All-CCL...

just bought from them, painless, friendly & efficient process - simple bare bones system few tweaks on one of their "Alpha" systems less than £200 incl VAT- a week to build but no biggy.

no connection other than purchased from em.

Jim K

[Bob H]

at

I usually buy all my computer related hardware from CCL, as they are only about a 25/30 minute drive away for me, and easy to take back if need be. That's never been the situation yet tho'

[dennis]

I installed win8 on two computers and put the win7 from them on two XP machines. Everyone happy with their new OS. I must try and find something to moan about in win8, I feel left out.

[David.WE.Roberts]

X-posted to uk.comp.homebuilt

What is the spec of your current PC? It is possible that you just have 'Windows Rot' in your Vista installation.

I have recently installed (then rolled back to try another install strategy) W8 on a Vista PC to try and get away from Vista slowness and get to a 64 bit OS.

On first install it absolutely flew compared to the Vista it replaced.

This particular PC has plenty of spare CPU (Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700) without any over clocking (which is still an option).

Performance limited by lack of USB 3 and 6Gb/sec SATA on the ASUS P5K SE but it still seems to fly along doing most things.

So first check where your bottle necks are by having a quick look at your performance. If you have more memory than you need and space CPU cycles you may get most of your performance gain by for instance just adding an SSD.

I must say in my limited experience I quite liked Windows 8 - having bought it at the knock down price for early adopters and installed a Start Menu fix so it looked more like Windows 7 (which I also have on another machine).

An idea of your budget would help as well.

The Vista machine in question was donated to me and was built by PCSpecialist and seems a pretty reasonable piece of kit.

I would guess you probably need:

Intel Core i5 processor on Ivy Bridge (unless I am out of date again) Whatever variant of above that allows over clocking, plus a board to support this.

8Gb RAM as a minimum. 128GB SSD (my W7 is running on 64GB SSD and there is still free space but not massive amounts). 1TB+ spinning rust for data storage Whichever is cheaper of W7 and W8 64 bit (assuming a significant difference in price).

You can probably scavenge things like CD/DVD drives from your old system, and re-use keyboards, printers and stuff.

Above might cost around £500 (at least if you bought the bits yourself). Again, I am about a year out of date since I built my SandyBridge system.

HTH

Dave R

[dennis]

The last time I looked at the a list the budget PCs were the ones for spreadsheets and photo processing. You don't gain much by having fancy graphics cards and eight cores for that sort of thing. Just make sure you have plenty of RAM (~8gig) and a 64 bit OS.

[John Miller]

I bought a new PC nearly 2 years ago now from PCSpecialist. Good configuration choices and they delivered when they said they would. I've had a couple of issues, both sorted out without fuss. I would use them again.

John M

[meow2222]

I built an 8 core with SSD, put win & linux on. Under win it has performance issues with video. Seriously.

Re your q, you may as well ask how long's a piece of string. Its budget vs desire these days. AMD certainly does much better deals.

NT

[Martin Brown]

The tricky question these days is laptop or desktop...

Vista was never quite as bad as it's very bad press implied.

Win8 is worth avoiding unless you are into cubism and LSD.

I wouldn't trust one that wasn't backed up. They are very fast for scratch bulk data that you need quickly and in small chunks.

You need to define what really matters to you and what doesn't. Also how much money you want to spend and how much 3D graphics it has to do.

If it is 2D only for photography then the later i5 and i7 core graphics isn't at all bad and makes for a lot less power consumption. Unless you are sure that your applications can use 2x4 cores efficiently I think the i5 is the better choice and which one depends on your budget.

If you want some 3D gaming then you will need a graphics card. Do fit 8GB ram and don't waste money on exotic faster parts.

My latest business machine was an overclockable i7-3770K gaming box with the graphics card deleted and an SSD added on Win7 64 Pro. The only mod I had to make was tweaking the fans to avoid case resonance noises. I wouldn't consider installing a 32 bit OS today. YMMV

[The Natural Philosopher]

I havent installed on in several YEARS, except in a virtual machine.

All machines here 64bit.

However, looking at my usual supplier of things PC, I note that CPU progress has virtually halted. I used to go in every couple of years and get the same cost board and expect that its performance had doubled. Today the same cost board handles more RAM but its only 20% faster CPU wise than what I have :-(

Moores law seems on the point of being broken.

[Bob Eager]

Faster on what benchmark?

[John Rumm]

Unlike the Vista debarcle, win8 is a fundamentally sound OS - in many respects probably the best so far. The shame is they tried to ruin it with the interface formally known as metro. Once you tweak it to get shot of that, it ought to work fairly well. (chances are Win 8.1 will do the same out of the box)

[John Rumm]

In the early days it really was! It was quite common for it to simply stop and apparently do nothing for a minute or more...

SP1 fixed most of the serious issues, although some remained to the end.

As long as you tweak it to banish TIFKAM, then its very much like 7

You should not trust any disk that is not backed up. However they are good enough now to be as reliable or more so than spinning rust. The performance gain having one as a system disk and applications host is significant and well worth having IME.

[Clive George]

They did c*ck up with the server version, Server 2012. Didn't get the hardware people on board in time, and there was several months waiting for drivers to catch up. Not sure their software has entirely caught up either. Pity, because there are some important new features in it.

[Bernard Peek]

That's so today but the first service pack for W8 is imminent and may fix some or all of its shortcomings.

An SSD is likely to be replaced long before it wears out.

For your particular application something like last-year's gaming machine is probably ideal. Spreadsheets and photoprocessing eat large amounts of memory so you need at least 8Gb and to make use of that you require a 64-bit OS. Before the fanboys arrive I'll just mention that there are perfectly usable Linux applications available. But if you have developed a lot of code using Excel VBA it won't be an option for you.

When you select the memory configuration only buy the largest size memory sticks that the mobo will take. Leave slots empty rather than fill them with undersize sticks. You will end up throwing away anything smaller than the largest possible because sooner or later you will want to fit as much memory as the board will take.

That's certainly possible. There is also a possibility that malware is stealing processor cycles. Reformat and reinstall may get you back some performance.

Some applications can use multiple processor cores and GPU horsepower for applications that are capable of parallel processing. The next generation of software will probably make more use of parallel processing so a multi-core processor is essential. Photoprocessing is one of the applications that is potentially suitable for massively parallel processing using a GPU. Select compatible hardware and software for that.

It's usable and 8.1 should be more so.

The OP's spreadsheets and photoprocessing could use lots of processing power so an i7 might be justified. A lot depends on the budget.

Eight-core AMD processors might give equivalent bang per buck. Expect future software to make better use of multiple cores.

The sweet-spot is currently between 2 and 3 TB disks. Whatever size you choose remember that you also need something to back it up to. Buy a second disk at least as big as the internal one and put it in an external caddy, USB3 or SATA connected.

You will probably want a new monitor too.

[Steve Firth]

Well, if you are going to tie your hands behind your back and ask people to hit you with a brick then it's your lookout.

However, doesn't the fact that Windows XP was s**te, Windows Vista was s**te, Windows 7 was s**te and Windows 8 was s**te begin to give you a bit of a hint?

At the very least why choose an OS that will be pwned by some scrote in Russia?

[Steve Firth]

I agree. I just updated a server with more kit from Novatech. I also have a NAS supplied via Novatech. One of the disks in the array went platters up last week. One call to Novatech technical support and they replaced it within minutes and let me know when to call at the showroom to collect the replacement. Not a quibble from them.

Server runs Ubuntu. I work with Windows at work. Anyone who installs that shit when given a free (literally) choice is certifiable.

[Bob Eager]

I just built an Ivy Bridge system for about £600. All new parts, but no new monitor (or keyboard, I'm sticking with the Model M).

No SSD (it's fast enough!) but it's running FreeBSD. I didn't get the overclockable CPU although the following week they were the same price, when I built a similar one for SWMBO. Two 1TB disks, plus two I already had.

Biggest single expense was the CPU (£167) then the case (£107).