Determining When to Upgrade a PC - mine is 4yrs old this august.

[Zeste]

Okay, my PC was once "the shit", and now is just "shit", sans "the".

- P4 2.8 ghz
- 2 gigs of RAM, just whatever was normal in 2003. 400mhz bus?
- ASUS P4P800 motherboard
- a pair of 80gig SATA drives that *never* boot up right, I always hang on a black screen during POST and have to reboot... for the last 4 years.
- some IDE drives
- Whatever video card was at Bestbuy a year ago for 150 dollars when my old ones fan seized up.

Now the sad part. I work for myself as a web developer/graphic artist. I spend 10-12 hours a day in photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver, Flash 8, and various other utils like FTP software, winamp, trillian, and all the other standard stuff. My computer, THIS computer, is how I have raised my son the last 2 years, provided for a family, and bought a TON of cool stuff that isn't a new computer.

Well, it's getting pretty old. And slow. Some stuff it slower than others. It's just a rad computer anymore. I don't recall what version of Adobe and Macromedia was in late 2003, but I think theres been at least 1 new release of each application.

The problem I am having is that it does still work fine, it's just not fast. And it's stable enough. Some stuff it is snail-like though, sometimes in Flash it takes a few seconds after clicking to register a response at all, and that's pretty aggravating. Plus, I don't have a ton of hard-cash to spend on a new machine, I could finance it, but I'm right in the middle of working myself (and business) out of debt, and a few grand on a new machine that does nothing other than run a little faster seems like a bad choice right now. Oh, and I have ZERO modern knowledge of hardware. i don't know a PCI-E from an EVGA.

So, I have been thinking of maybe looking at a interim computer for the next year or so. Something that'll get me up to speed and run my software snappy, but not break the bank. I keep thinking either an iMac, or a Dell... but I know that a savvy PC person could build a fast, cheap tower for way less than both. I am not that savvy person... hopefully someone here wants to lend a hand.



Here are some needs/non-needs to help narrow it down.

- I do NOT game on the PC, and if I do, I'll get by on the shitty graphic settings.

- There will be no 3d, no video editing.

- In the last 4 years, I've barley broken 100 gigs of storage. I have about 400 gigs available right now, but half of that is external drives that are mostly archives and bakcups. FAST drives is really all I want, 10k RPM on the SATA or whatever is hot.

- I have all the peripherals (keyboard, mouse, monitors...)

- 2+ monitors would be great. 2 is required, 4 would be super.

- I don't need to burn DVD's.

- I am fine with XP, unless Vista would give me a huge increase in performance.

- just raw workstation power. I know it's not a game running 4xAA at 1920x1200, but working all day between photoshop, illustrator, flash, dreamweaver, maybe even Audition, constantly copying and pasting and switch from app to app, that has always seemed to kill a machines performance as much as trying to enter the Bazaar in 2002.

So, is there any way to build a box that'll run great with all my apps open, but stay in a cost effective range of maybe 1200-1800 dollars?

If anyone has questions, i am happy to clarify. I know there's alot of good info about building gaming rigs here, but I didn't know what parts I'd need, and what would be useless for a non-gaming machine.

(also, if "get an iMac" is a realistic answer, I'm open to that as well)

[Jabberwhacky]

Why are you looking at a whole new comp instead of just upgrading your mobo/CPU and tossing in a snazzy new Raptor hard drive? That seems like it's all you want/need.

[Zeste]

Originally Posted by Jabberwhacky

Why are you looking at a whole new comp instead of just upgrading your mobo/CPU and tossing in a snazzy new Raptor hard drive? That seems like it's all you want/need.

Well, my thoughts were I need a new CPU, which will require a new mobo, which will require new ram (this ram isn't great, or enough).

So with a new mobo, I assume they won't have AGP slots, and my card is AGP. So I need a PCI-E video card.

So at this point, I figure I might as well just get some hard drives and a tower, and I can use my old PC for a backup or something else.

If that's not the case, maybe I could just upgrade what I currently have, but I was under the assumption that buying a new mobo to fit my AGP video card and pc 2700 ram or whatever would be a poor decision. I am totally comfortable spending at least 1000 on this project, just to get by until my debts are paid off in a year or so.

[Vorph]

I'd consider two options...

AMD X2-4800+ (Brisbane)
eVGA nForce 590 or similar motherboard
4GB of DDR2-800 (g.skill or other quality but not overpriced brand--go with 2x2GB if you want to switch to 64-bit Vista and 8GB RAM later on)
150GB Raptor(s)

or

Intel Q6600
Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 or similar motherboard
4GB of DDR2-800 (see above)
150GB Raptor(s)

The difference is basically $400, the cost difference between a X2-4800+ and a Core 2 Quad 6600. Video card really doesn't matter; a 7600GT would probably suffice for anything you'd need.

[Cryptin]

If you get a mac go for the 20" iMac. I'm getting one this fall when Apple releases their new operating system. Also by then they should have the new Santa Rosa chipset in all the new iMacs. You can get this 20" iMac rig for around 1800.00 plus tax and shipping.

2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
250GB Serial ATA Drive
ATI Radeon X1600/256MB VRAM
SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Apple Wireless Keyboard & wireless Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (US English)
20-inch widescreen LCD
AirPort Extreme
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

This is the setup I plan on getting. Only thing will change is probably the is processor/graphic card with the upcoming Imac lineup. I'll buy a gig of ram from newegg and install it in myself in order to bump my ram to 2gigs. I don't play PC games any longer so the graphic card is not an issue for me. I'm into photography, graphics and videography. Plus you can run windows on macs now using Bootcamp or Pararells if you need to run windows apps and games.

The new macbooks now come with the Core 2 Duo processors and gig of ram. Not a bad deal and wish I would of known that 4 months ago when I bought my Dell laptop. ;/

[Aulirophile]

Listen to Vorph, but just to note when you buy the parts if you don't feel comfortable slapping the thing together you can pay ~$50 at your local comp shop to assemble it for you. For a grand you can get some nice hardware. On your own for software, I've never used any of the stuff you do so no idea what part of your budget that'd compromise.

[Zeste]

Originally Posted by Aulirophile

Listen to Vorph, but just to note when you buy the parts if you don't feel comfortable slapping the thing together you can pay ~$50 at your local comp shop to assemble it for you. For a grand you can get some nice hardware. On your own for software, I've never used any of the stuff you do so no idea what part of your budget that'd compromise.

I've got all my software, I don't need to purchase anything like that.

I'll put together a price list of the stuff Vorph listed, it's not a bad idea.

[Twobit Whore]

If you can wait, Intel has some HUGE price cuts scheduled for July. Should be big news coming this week.

[Zarcath]

er, if you don't game hardcore and you don't do video editing or 3d modelling, why do you need to upgrade at all? I'd just buy a bigger SATA drive and consolidate your HD's so you can unplug the problematic ones.

and why the 2-4 monitors? what are you doing?

[Usha Starchild]

^ I disagree with Zarcath.

In my experience, and offices I have worked with in the past a machine that is slow will slow down production by MUCH more than the time delays from click to click. Users get fed up and shut down early, and productivity goes to shit.

With a good machine I would bet he could get 2x the work done in the same week as on his current setup.

Sweet spot for Value/performance right now is the Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe 2.13GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail at $189.00

or you could go for the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600 - Retail which costs a little more at 226.00 but you get a little more bang. They both have 4mb of L2 cache.

The processor vorph mentioned is a quad core, i think you would do perfectly fine with a good dual core.

$189.00-$226.00 for processor

Budget in
$300 for 4gb's of ram
$200 for a decent vid card
$150 bucks gets you a good motherboard

all that and your sitting at under $900 bucks with a pretty killer machine on your hands, you will make that money back pretty quick if your productivity goes up. Id suggest getting a power supply but you would still be quite a bit under $1000.00.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Usha Starchild

a good dual core

The X2 4800+ is a good dual core, it's just not the best for gaming. For business apps, he'd get comparable performance and save $100-150 for the cpu/mobo combo.

I'd agree that quad is probably overkill but I threw it out there because it should technically fit in his budget, and if he's multitasking so much that four monitors is a consideration then it might be worthwhile. It will look a whole lot more attractive after the next round of price cuts too.

[Zarcath]

I seemed to have missed the first part where he said he was doing photoshop and dreamweaver.

[Frawdo]

Just a side note, how much have you looked into your tax laws? Shouldn't you be able to write a lot of this shit off? Or, if you are a profitable company, use purchases to bring your taxation level down?

I admit I don't know much about the subject, just heard about it in passing conversation, but it might be worthwhile to look into if you haven't already.

[Zeste]

Originally Posted by Frawdo

Just a side note, how much have you looked into your tax laws? Shouldn't you be able to write a lot of this shit off? Or, if you are a profitable company, use purchases to bring your taxation level down?

I admit I don't know much about the subject, just heard about it in passing conversation, but it might be worthwhile to look into if you haven't already.

Yeah it can be written off, but I still have to find the cash for it. I make enough money to pay my office rent and pay myself, but not much more. I've still got around 7500 dollars on my "startup credit card" that needs to be paid back, so essentially I'm an extremely small business with no profit margin since I am carrying a credit balance.

[Zeste]

Here's what I priced on Newegg... it had suggestions for me when I picked out the CPU, so I just chose most of them since they sounded like what you were saying.

Inter Core 2 Quad Q6600 - $535
Asus P5W DH Deluxe MoBo - $215.99
G.Skill 4 gig pack - 2 x 2gig - DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) - $224.99
Western Digital Raptor 10krpm 150 gig - $199
Western Digital Raptor 10krpm 74 gig - $159
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - $5.99
Zalman CNPS9500 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan with Heatsink - $53
ASUS EN7900GS/2DHT/256M Geforce 7900GS GDDR3 PCIE - $179
CASE 0 CoolerMaster - $44.99
AMS pp-5503EPS EPS12v 550w Power Supply - $85


TOTAL - $1742



So 1800 bucks... that seems like a fucking SMOKING machine, am I wrong? I haven't bought a PC in 5 years... how would this box compare to my current box?

I am having a hard time wanting the iMac where I couldn't even touch this for under $2500, and a Mac Pro would be around $4000.

Can a "do it yourselfer" really put together a non-gaming MONSTER for 1800 bucks?

Seriously, help me get the right perspective, I still thought my Pentium 4 2.8ghz was "cool" and "fast" since it had more gigahertz....