High spec pc

Yes, "Stella Artois".

I used PCSpecialist. They custom-build the PC and provide a great service.

I spent about £1500 (for a base unit), and I got just about the fastest processor available with 32Gb RAM.

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

i've just built my own for £1500

i reckon it's better than contrarians

I've used PC Specialist too and would highly recommend them.

Thanks lads, I'll take a look

first of all, go down the custom built route, as others have suggested. the main reason is that its component based and you it gives you the greatest potential to upgrade and to repair.

you could put it together yourself, it's really not hard at all, or get someone else to do it for you.

some considerations.

1. The motherboard

this is the printed circuit board all the other bits fit into. Whilst most bits of your PC will be pretty generic, the major issue of compatability is which processors can fit into which motherboards. Assuming you're going down the intel processor route, which you should be, there are no motherboards available at the moment that will support intel's next lot of processors (haswell) due to be released next year, whereas the new motherboards that will be released to support the next wave of processors, will also support the subsequent generation of processors (broadwell). If future proofing is really big on your agenda, you may want to wait until next year when the new motherboards are released.


2. Will you be playing games on your PC?

If not, you wont need a dedicated graphics card, get an Ivy Bridge Processor, which have the best integrated graphics functionality (go HD4000 rather than HD2500), which will be more than adequate for your needs. you can always buy an integrated graphics card later.

3. What are you going to be using for PC for?

I'm sorry to break it to Contrarian, but unless he's running databases which requires a bucket load memory, no normal user needs 32gb of RAM at the moment, 8gb will be more than enough for most people, 16 at a push. Again start low, there are 4 slots for RAM on most motherboards, so buy 2*4gb sticks, you can just slot in more if you really need it later on.

4. Do you really need a top of the range processor?

Once again, unless you're really demanding in your needs, you don't need a top of the range processor, and if you don't want to overclock the thing (or don't even know what that means), you dont need an unlocked one. (i know i recommend an unlocked one below, but that's for the graphics on it)

4. Drives

For a new PC, with an i5 or i7 processor, it is likely that the biggest performance bottleneck for most users will be reading and writing to your drive. Buy a solid state drive, between 120 and 180 gb to store you operating system on, and then an old skool magnetic drive for your data. There are some vendors out there with pretty unacceptable failure rates on their SSDs, and if you want the least potential for ballache, buy an Intel Cherryville: they don't benchmark as high as other ones, but no other vendor appears to have been as brutal in their testing; you wont notice a few hundred milliseconds here and there, you will notice repeated Blue Screens of Death, destructive firmware updates (i.e. having to wipe the contents of the drive) and possible total failure.

This would probably be a great little PC coming in at under £750. You'd still need a copy of windows and a monitor though.

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) Motherboard  £100
Processor: Intel i5 3570k (£180)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance (2*4gb) 1600Mhz: £40
Optical Drive: pioneer BDR -207MBK: £70
OS Drive: Intel Cherryville 180gb: £170
Data Drive: West Digital Caviar Green 1TB: £75
Case, Power Supply Unit and Fans: £100

DStyle,

I agree that 32Gb of RAM is overkill, but I do a LOT of multitasking (eg. 2 or 3 of my own programs, 5 web browsers, 2 instances of Visual Studio and Microsoft Excel/Word). I could be wrong, but I think that the fact that I have so much RAM, and therefore that percentage of memory that I am generally using is relatively low, is the reason why heavy applications like Visual Studio open/close almost instantaneously even when I'm multitasking. The other desktop I use takes perhaps 1 sec to open Visual Studio, which, for an impatient person like me, is just too long!

bottleneck for opening apps is likely to be drive read rather than available memory

are you using an ssd on your new pc and not your old one.

having just had to live with an old OS drive while i replaced my fecked up OCZ one with an intel one, the real issue was the drive. I use Visual Studio as well.

No, both of them use regular HDDs.

To be honest, I wasn't even aware of the advantages of SSDs until I just looked them up following your post.

Can I just add them to my current PCs?

you can and it should make a monstrous difference.

although i'm pretty sure it may not be as simple as just cloning your existing C drive. something to do with Windows 7 and AHCI which you would then need to do a registry hack on. plenty about it on the internet.

if you're not comfortable with that, pop the SSD into you case (into the 6GB port on your mobo) unplug the other two drives, , set the sata mode to AHCI in the BIOS and then install windows, drivers and your programs from scratch. set the boot order in the BIOS and then plug in the old drives.

Cheers Dstyle, that's great.

I'll just add the SSDs and then reinstall everything.

Is there any reason why I then need the old drives too? Suppose I buy a large SSD (500Gb) - wouldn't it just be easier to use that alone. I know it will be expensive, but I don't really mind about spending a bit more.

the real concern with ssds is that after time, they will stop working. they also have a much higher off the shelf failure rate which may not manifest itself immediately. in addition, from time to time, destructive firmware updates may be required to address stability issues.

ssd only would be fine, but

i. obviously back it up (i'd use a full clone with something like acronis (comes with the intel ssds) so that if it does die, or you're unlucky enough to have gotten a dud you can switch back to the hdd immediately).

ii. they're getting cheaper month by month. but £400 for 400gb is hardly prohibitive.

as i say, go cherryville. they (specifically the firmware) have been absolutely beasted by intel in testing and there's good reason why intel are offering the longest warranty (5 years) of all current ssd suppliers and you're far less likely to need a destructive firmware update.

Ok, thanks very much for that DStyle.

Much appreciated.