The time has come to upgrade the abacus.

What is the best value/money these days in regards to:

1) Mobo
2) Graphics
3) Case
4) Power
5) Operating System
6) Etc

?

Kingy said:

The time has come to upgrade the abacus.

What is the best value/money these days in regards to:

1) Mobo
2) Graphics
3) Case
4) Power
5) Operating System
6) Etc

?

You can put one together yourself with wire and coloured beads.

Do people still do self-assembly desktop machines?

party_pants said:

Do people still do self-assembly desktop machines?

I do.
But the easy way is go to somewhere like Dell and just get something that’s pretty right. Or better still a company like Umart, though though don’t have a branch close to Kingy unfortunately.

• Do people still do self-assembly desktop machines?

Yes.

But seriously just get a good spec laptop, 8gig of ram, I7 chip, Nvidia dedicated video card, SATA hdd, Windows 10 and your up to date.

party_pants said:

Do people still do self-assembly desktop machines?

I do, but I run a fleet of 20-odd PCs and half a dozen laptops and I have a couple of Cert IV qualifications, so it’s easy and worthwhile for me. It’s a lot to learn if you’re just building your own machine once every five years.

Peak Warming Man said:

Kingy said:

The time has come to upgrade the abacus.

What is the best value/money these days in regards to:

1) Mobo
2) Graphics
3) Case
4) Power
5) Operating System
6) Etc

?

You can put one together yourself with wire and coloured beads.

If you do choose to build your own, you might find this useful: Do It Yourself

party_pants said:

Do people still do self-assembly desktop machines?

Yep

party_pants said:

Do people still do self-assembly desktop machines?

Yeah.

I’ve only ever mucked around fixing stuff that had one component broken

you have to set up mother boards I believe , this is normally done for you

Peak Warming Man said:

But seriously just get a good spec laptop, 8gig of ram, I7 chip, Nvidia dedicated video card, SATA hdd, Windows 10 and your up to date.

16 gig

what a gig

Kingy said:

The time has come to upgrade the abacus.

What is the best value/money these days in regards to:

1) Mobo
2) Graphics
3) Case
4) Power
5) Operating System
6) Etc

?

Android tablet? Not a “kids” one. Starting at about $54, the value for money is hard to beat.

Not that I have one, but I’m wondering if I should, my desktop is crashing several times a day.

Kingy said:

What is the best value/money these days in regards to:
5) Operating System

Android tablet? Not a “kids” one.

Starting at about $54, the value for money is hard to beat. Not that I have one, but I’m wondering if I should, my desktop is crashing several times a day.

According to http://www.learnopengles.com/tag/fortran/ , a 2.1 GHz laptop is only 13% faster than a 1.2 GHz Nexus 7 android for serious number crunching – in this case they’re solved a magnetohydrodynamics problem as a test.

OCDC said:

Peak Warming Man said:

But seriously just get a good spec laptop, 8gig of ram, I7 chip, Nvidia dedicated video card, SATA hdd, Windows 10 and your up to date.

16 gig

Buying something highly specced like that in a laptop is throwing money away unless you REALLY need the portability

A SSD is the best and most cost effective way of improving the performance of your computer. With a SSD you probably don’t need to invest in lots of RAM. Install the operating system on the SSD and use a HDD for storage.

For a typical desktop computer I would suggest 4GB RAM with a 128 or 256 GB SSD and a 1+ TB HDD for storage.

For a laptop use an external HDD for bulk storage.

fsm said:

A SSD is the best and most cost effective way of improving the performance of your computer. With a SSD you probably don’t need to invest in lots of RAM. Install the operating system on the SSD and use a HDD for storage.

For a typical desktop computer I would suggest 4GB RAM with a 128 or 256 GB SSD and a 1+ TB HDD for storage.

For a laptop use an external HDD for bulk storage.

My Alienware laptop has 16 gigs of memory a hybrid SSD/hard drive for the OS and programs and two pretty decent GPU’s. They are lovely laptops but are expensive

fsm said:

A SSD is the best and most cost effective way of improving the performance of your computer. With a SSD you probably don’t need to invest in lots of RAM. Install the operating system on the SSD and use a HDD for storage.

For a typical desktop computer I would suggest 4GB RAM with a 128 or 256 GB SSD and a 1+ TB HDD for storage.

For a laptop use an external HDD for bulk storage.

My next question was going to be about the benefit of SSDs. Thanks for anticipating.

OCDC said:

fsm said:

A SSD is the best and most cost effective way of improving the performance of your computer. With a SSD you probably don’t need to invest in lots of RAM. Install the operating system on the SSD and use a HDD for storage.

For a typical desktop computer I would suggest 4GB RAM with a 128 or 256 GB SSD and a 1+ TB HDD for storage.

For a laptop use an external HDD for bulk storage.

My next question was going to be about the benefit of SSDs. Thanks for anticipating.

I bought a hybrid WD drive for my laptop
128 gb ssd + 1 TB of normal Hard drive space

Gave it a much needed speed boost

4gb ram…if u only use word that’s probably sufficient…

I prefer WordPerfect 1.0.

OCDC said:

fsm said:

A SSD is the best and most cost effective way of improving the performance of your computer. With a SSD you probably don’t need to invest in lots of RAM. Install the operating system on the SSD and use a HDD for storage.

For a typical desktop computer I would suggest 4GB RAM with a 128 or 256 GB SSD and a 1+ TB HDD for storage.

For a laptop use an external HDD for bulk storage.

My next question was going to be about the benefit of SSDs. Thanks for anticipating.

I gots 64GB RAM.

poikilotherm said:

4gb ram…if u only use word that’s probably sufficient…

For most people 4 GB of RAM is plenty with a SSD.

Lots of RAM allows you to have many applications open at the same time.

Without a SSD then Windows will prefetch applications that it thinks you will require and puts them into spare RAM. This can make the system appear to be more responsive but can make the startup time terribly long. With a HDD, if the RAM gets low Windows will write data off to the pagefile and this can bring a system to a snails pace. So, lots of RAM is probably a good idea on a HDD based machine.

With a SSD the prefetch system gets disabled as the SSD is so fast that prefetching becomes redundant and so the system does not require lots of spare RAM. Also, SSDs never require defragmentation so defrag also gets disabled. If RAM gets low then Windows will write data out to the pagefile. The pagefile on a SSD is so fast that paging becomes a non-issue.

If required, adding more RAM is an easy and cheap future upgrade. If you use two sticks of RAM of matched size then a modern motherboard will run in dual-channel mode. This allows both sticks of RAM to be used simultaneously, effectively doubling the speed of the RAM.

My hybrid laptop starts up in less than 10 seconds from power on to using it and that includes the facial recognition to log on

Cymek said:

My hybrid laptop starts up in less than 10 seconds from power on to using it and that includes the facial recognition to log on

Yes, using a SSD spoils you and you cannot ever bear to use a non-SSD machine ever again!

• With a SSD the prefetch system gets disabled

Does that happen automatically in the OS or do you have to tell it that when setting it up?

fsm said:

Cymek said:

My hybrid laptop starts up in less than 10 seconds from power on to using it and that includes the facial recognition to log on

Yes, using a SSD spoils you and you cannot ever bear to use a non-SSD machine ever again!

+1

Got new lappy a few weeks ago and it flies.

fsm said:

Cymek said:

My hybrid laptop starts up in less than 10 seconds from power on to using it and that includes the facial recognition to log on

Yes, using a SSD spoils you and you cannot ever bear to use a non-SSD machine ever again!

I’ve gone away from SSDs, because their MTBF is so much shorter than HDDs. It’s been my experience over several years that if the machine is used daily the SSD will only last a year to 18 months. (Note that this only applies to MSC SSDs, not SLC. I haven’t used SLC sufficiently to comment.)

btm said:

(Note that this only applies to MSC SSDs, not SLC. I haven’t used SLC sufficiently to comment.)

Sorry, that should be MLC.

furious said:

• With a SSD the prefetch system gets disabled

Does that happen automatically in the OS or do you have to tell it that when setting it up?

Windows 7 and 8 will automatically detect they are being installed on a SSD and configure themselves accordingly. Older operating systems may have to be manually setup.

btm said:

fsm said:

Cymek said:

My hybrid laptop starts up in less than 10 seconds from power on to using it and that includes the facial recognition to log on

Yes, using a SSD spoils you and you cannot ever bear to use a non-SSD machine ever again!

I’ve gone away from SSDs, because their MTBF is so much shorter than HDDs. It’s been my experience over several years that if the machine is used daily the SSD will only last a year to 18 months. (Note that this only applies to MSC SSDs, not SLC. I haven’t used SLC sufficiently to comment.)

Modern SSDs are much more robust than their earlier counterparts. An average user could probably expect 5 – 10 years of service life.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/solid-state-drives-outlast-pc-hosts/

fsm said:

A SSD is the best and most cost effective way of improving the performance of your computer. With a SSD you probably don’t need to invest in lots of RAM. Install the operating system on the SSD and use a HDD for storage.

For a typical desktop computer I would suggest 4GB RAM with a 128 or 256 GB SSD and a 1+ TB HDD for storage.

For a laptop use an external HDD for bulk storage.

If you do this, do not rely on a USB for connection or it will take forever. 256 GB at a USB speed of 1.5 Mbit/s is 170,000 seconds.