The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

A moderately-sized town on the outskirts of the city, not exactly within the city limits (Not close enough to be considered part of Greater London, nor within its travel restrictions on public transport fares and emissions limits) . Fortunately I'm on the tangent on which a fair amount of FTTC coverage has already been introduced. I'm not close enough to the city to get cable services, however, else I would have had faster internet for several years already by now. The bandwidth cap comes with the service type for me, FTTC is all BT-owned infrastructure, and thus ISPs have to pay for their bandwidth, and pay handsomely. Off-peak I can do whatever I like, and indeed, downloaded around 980GB in my first month, despite being away from home for a week.

 

I think my ISP(Charter) is Time-Warner owned, so I know a few people who've gotten cease and-desist letters for particular bit torrent DLs. But I have other friends who torrent constantly at full speed and have never heard a peep. I would imagine intelligence has a role to play...

And LOL 980GB in a month. I can't even think of that much stuff to download right now, let alone the multi-terabyte volumes you have full.

Yep went from 1.3Mb to 8Mb and I thought that was the end of the world. Now I'm averaging 20 and it's a bit overwhelming. I don't have to wait for anything, ever again

 

I have Cox Communication for an ISP. The highest speed they offer is 50 Mbps, however here is mine,
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1499836298.png

 

I have Firefox with ADBlock and your right the drop down ads don't show up so maybe I'll have to start using Firefox or even Avant again for AD as IE is just too annoying.


Speedtest is a joke and doesn't really mean shat!

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1500589421.png

Particularly with my connection it doesn't mean much. My first 10 seconds of bandwidth for any download or transfer is some 60+ then averages out to 20Mb.

 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1501849721.png

Pretty fast download and tranfer times. I only got 30mbps Fioptics throught my local phone land line

http://www.cincinnatibell.com/internet/fioptics/speeds/30Mbps/

Did a little ECO Radiator clean today. I found out the fastest way to get clean from dust is HOT water in the kitchen sink and the sprayer to spray thru and let it air dry and cleaned off all my fans with rubbering alcohol and Jumbo Cotton balls Each blade and housing and layed down some fresh IC Diamond Compound let it sit Hot water for about 5 mins to soften a Pea size drop on the cpu


Shot at 2011-09-25



I don't like seeing this Dust = Heat like a cover on a bed and it slow down the rpm of some fans also

 

Heyyy guys it's been a while lol. So yeah my parents crappy eMachines finally gave out. I've been outta the whole PC building loop for a while now. All I have is a HDD, DVD rom drive, and a CM690 to start off with.

I need recommendations for a Mobo, CPU, and videocard. It's for my parents so cheap is more in mind here. They wont do anything special on it.

 

Well look who it is!
You know the drill, budget, intended use, etc etc.

 

Haha, yeah, I feel like an idiot cuz I don't know anything anymore. Sigh.

Regular browsing, etc. Just an everyday machine, no gaming, no video editing. I need to get it as cheap as possible lol

 

To be completely honest, at the bare basic level there isn't much of a reason not to buy an off the shelf Dell/HP - with the sort of deals they get on entry-level components, self-building from the ground up doesn't usually save anything
if you want though, can either go i3 or basic pentium, the usual XMS3 memory and a basic gigabyte H67 board, or for the AMD route a dual core athlon, XMS2 and something like a 740G on microATX.

 

Hmm, alright, thanks

Maybe I can score a free one off someone. I swear people upgrade for no reason sometimes lol. They think their computers are slow and need to be replace when all they need is a fresh install.

 

Running my radiator under water in the sink sounds like too much work I just take a compressor, and an air gun and blow my PC out. Being extremely careful about the fan speed. As well as moisture spitting which COULD happen, but haven't seen it yet.

 

indeed its been a while. I say an AMD apu would suite ya perfectly

 

abuzar1,

Welcome back. We thought you fell off a cliff or something!

To answer your question, the AMD APU would be the best bet for your parents. For around $200 you can have a 2.7GHz A4-3400, motherboard and 4GB of memory. Pretty basic but very hard to beat, and a lot better than what they had. Or you could get another emachine Tower, KB and mouse, AMD 2.8GHz dual core AthlonII x2 with a 1TB HDD, 3GB DDR3 and a 16x burner for $298 with $0.97 shipping! probably your cheapest bet!
http://www.walmart.com/ip/eMachines-PT.NCV02.001/16608490

Best Regards,
Russ

 

You know Intel solutions are some of the most frugal you can get I can't believe you over looked a deal like this.... LOL

ASUS Rampage III Black Edition - LGA1366 Intel X58/ ICH10R Chipset Extended ATX Intel Desktop Motherboard $547.99

Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition Gulftown 3.46GHz $999.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 24GB (6 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 $599.99

So $200 or ($2147.97 +case+psu++) the Intel rules for price doesn't it? Shame on me....

Nice picks Russ,
Stevo

Kevin,

There was something I overlooked or didn't address with noise. Make sure all of your devices are on the same power plain with a unified ground. It also helps to have a power condition if you can afford one. I have to fix 60 cycle noise I'm getting through the 3.5mm TRS audio cables used on my KVM because my powers are from different power strips. I can fiddle with the cabling to reduce the noise but what I need to do is clean up my power distribution and get all of my grounds at actual ground.

 

There's a premium to pay for performance your rivals are completely unable to offer

 

Completely? How much faster really is it? Not 30% like they might try to claim and even at that is ii worth it? I think not, at least for me, even though it does look pretty cool. But if you have deep pocket what the heck it sure would be fun to play with, I'd take it for sure!

 

Given that the i7 quad cores are already more powerful than the Phenom II X6, I'd say at least 50%, perhaps more. When only the best will do, $1000 per CPU is acceptable to the hardware elite

 

For the life of me cant find my bookmark but Bulldozer just got a release date and some of the model specs were released. Very high stock clock speeds and promising wattage figures with good prices. Overclocking seems hopeful as well. Though too low of a price could indicate the technology flopped like Phenom I. Looks to me that Intel will soon have some very fierce competition.

 

It's October 12/13, but that's only a rumour at this stage, as far as I know AMD haven't verified it.
It is also suggested that only 8-core and 6-core versions of the CPUs will be released at this stage, with quad cores following next year.

The MSRPs are cause for concern though, $245/£190 for the high-end 3.6Ghz Octacore, is either seriously competitive, or it's making up for a shortfall.
The current gamers' CPU, the 3.3Ghz Hex, is priced at $175/£135, which is considerably less than its main rival, the i5 2500K.