Advice on desktop PC wanted

[Ivo]

It's time for me to buy a new machine. My laptop (which isn't even with me at the moment) is 4 years old, and Acer Aspire 1603 which I was very happy with (good machine at a good price IMO).
I always used it as a desktop replacement (indeed, if you bother looking at the specs you will notice the weight and power made it suitable for that type of use), so I was considering getting a desktop this time.

I was pondering "building" a machine for the first time, i.e. getting the components and assembling it. I have a buddy that has a degree in Computer Engineering that could help me with it, although it shouldn't be too complicated (and I already had a look at older machines to get an idea). However his own advice was:

a) I should consider laptops as they are very close in price (per performance) nowadays - he says with the exception of HDD and expandability, of course. However, I still have my old one for the times when I need to travel for conferences (and if needs me, I can borrow my father's almost new machine, as he barely uses it).

b) If I go for a desktop, consider brand pre-assembled machines so I don't need to worry about heating, fan distribution and so on (something which I hadn't thought about). I reckon that this has some advantages, as those are studied by true experts I suppose.

c) I keep hearing that Macs are very good price for performance nowadays, but I asked him about it and he says it won't suit me. I replied that one can now install Windows, but according to him there is a performance price if you do so (I guess it's not as well attuned to the different OS)

My goals for the machine are essentially gaming. I do some other stuff (browsing of course), and I will use it for work a little, but anything work related would be not nearly as demanding as games, or if it is, then I'd get some computers of the Dep. to do it instead. So although I don't plan on buying them just yet, I'd like down the line to be playing current stuff like Bioshock and Hellgate:London.

He specifically thought an HP machine was a good choice for me, I will see if I can find a good link (the one I saw is in Portuguese) so we can continue the discussion on this hypothetical choice, but this is getting long already so I'll just start the thread like so - added info is that I'm in Portugal and intend to buy the PC here - we might be discussing prices in Euros (I know the dollar is quite low on the rate, so I'm not sure it will be helpful to convert as everything will look relatively expensive).

Feel free to comment!

[Droid party]

My goals for the machine are essentially gaming. I do some other stuff (browsing of course), and I will use it for work a little, but anything work related would be not nearly as demanding as games, or if it is, then I'd get some computers of the Dep. to do it instead. So although I don't plan on buying them just yet, I'd like down the line to be playing current stuff like Bioshock and Hellgate:London.

Personally if I were looking at a machine for gaming I'd build it. ( which is what I did ) you'll get better value for money that way.

[racketboy]

I built mine. It was intimidating the first time I did it, but it's not bad. It's really just a matter of plugging a bunch of stuff in. The parts I didn't like was doing the CPU with the small pins and thermal paste for the heatsink. But I liked how the official Intel stuff made it easier than older stuff.

I like my desktop because I'm always throwing new hard drives in it and love the ability to expand. My wife and I each have older laptops that I picked up on eBay for our couch surfing and portable needs.

[Ivo]

I built mine. It was intimidating the first time I did it, but it's not bad. It's really just a matter of plugging a bunch of stuff in. The parts I didn't like was doing the CPU with the small pins and thermal paste for the heatsink. But I liked how the official Intel stuff made it easier than older stuff.

I like my desktop because I'm always throwing new hard drives in it and love the ability to expand. My wife and I each have older laptops that I picked up on eBay for our couch surfing and portable needs.

I don't do couch surfing, and the reason a laptop is useful to me is for attending conference and giving presentations. Perhaps I can just request the Dep. laptop for it or something, which is why I'm really leaning to a Desktop.

The one I was advised to is this one
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pt/pt/ho ... 28597.html

Another friend of mine says that for 1500 euros (1200 of the PC plus 300 for a 22 inch TFT) I can get about 40% faster if I build it myself.
I'm still worried about noise and heat if I build it, but that performance boost is probably good (as the vid card that comes in that one is allegedly not so nice - which wouldn't be surprising).

Perhaps this is a good time to discuss screens. I'd like to get a TFT that swivels both ways into vertical (guess why ) - my office one only swivels one way, and it turned out to be the wrong way (for Ikaruga, at least) and I couldn't find any way to flip it. Another thing I'd really like to know is if these screens can have TV in ports so that I'd be able to connect Saturns and such with SCART cables or similar (this is what I refer to as SCART http://tech.petegraham.co.uk/wp-content ... /scart.jpg)

Ivo.

[nightwalker]

I built mine. It was intimidating the first time I did it, but it's not bad. It's really just a matter of plugging a bunch of stuff in. The parts I didn't like was doing the CPU with the small pins and thermal paste for the heatsink. But I liked how the official Intel stuff made it easier than older stuff.

I like my desktop because I'm always throwing new hard drives in it and love the ability to expand. My wife and I each have older laptops that I picked up on eBay for our couch surfing and portable needs.

I don't do couch surfing, and the reason a laptop is useful to me is for attending conference and giving presentations. Perhaps I can just request the Dep. laptop for it or something, which is why I'm really leaning to a Desktop.

The one I was advised to is this one
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pt/pt/ho ... 28597.html

Another friend of mine says that for 1500 euros (1200 of the PC plus 300 for a 22 inch TFT) I can get about 40% faster if I build it myself.
I'm still worried about noise and heat if I build it, but that performance boost is probably good (as the vid card that comes in that one is allegedly not so nice - which wouldn't be surprising).

Perhaps this is a good time to discuss screens. I'd like to get a TFT that swivels both ways into vertical (guess why ) - my office one only swivels one way, and it turned out to be the wrong way (for Ikaruga, at least) and I couldn't find any way to flip it. Another thing I'd really like to know is if these screens can have TV in ports so that I'd be able to connect Saturns and such with SCART cables or similar (this is what I refer to as SCART http://tech.petegraham.co.uk/wp-content ... /scart.jpg)

Ivo.

If your worried about noise and heat that you can resolve easy with installing water base cooling. I used to have a thermaltake running at 6,500 rpm so you can imagine how noisy that was changed to a water based cooling and voila noise gone. And my advice built it yourself your gonna get more for your buck. Try building that same pc the hp you pointed out by yourself and your gonna see that you'll be saving a couple of hundreds. But if your still looking for one already built you can always look here:
www.ibuypower.com
A couple of friends their pc are from here and they look nice and have great performance and I find them cheaper than the other brands dell, hp and so on. Oh and if you ask reliability well two of them I think those pc are been running for 3 straight years 24/7 playing counterstrike source, doom3 and now bioshock and the orange box recently with no flaws.

Oh and more thing don't get Vista that thing doesn't work... for now. At work they bought some new ones and they don't even recognize a printer.

[Mozgus]

a) I should consider laptops as they are very close in price (per performance) nowadays - he says with the exception of HDD and expandability, of course. However, I still have my old one for the times when I need to travel for conferences (and if needs me, I can borrow my father's almost new machine, as he barely uses it).

Wrong. They are not much closer to desktops in the price/performance arena than they were years ago. It will be weaker, and it will be pricier. A laptop should NOT be considered unless you will seriously benefit from it's portability. Yes the expandability is severely limited, but even worse is that when parts die on you, and they die more often in laptops due to typical portable usage, chance are you can't fix the problem by ordering a replacement part. If you don't have a 3 year warrantee or greater, I would consider it a ticking time-bomb. Don't underestimate how handy some space parts are when you get a busted system for free and you want to fix it and sell it. But thats just me.

b) If I go for a desktop, consider brand pre-assembled machines so I don't need to worry about heating, fan distribution and so on (something which I hadn't thought about). I reckon that this has some advantages, as those are studied by true experts I suppose.

Wrong. Don't ever assume that just because it's brand name, it's well built. This is a huge fucking misconception. I've seen the "glorious" Dell machines burn up because the idiots only put one weak rear 100mm fan in the damn thing. Don't assume that just because a company has produced a million units in a new line of desktops, that they have any fucking idea what they are doing. More often than not, they will use shoddy parts with nice, quotable high specs, but they come from unsupported hong kong businesses. In retail, all they want are high specs and for the machine to barely outlast the warrantee. The truth is that YOU will become the true expert of your own home-built computer, because as you use it, benchmark it, and just study the combinations of parts, you will learn how to optimize something within in it every month for years to come. Again, this is just me though.

c) I keep hearing that Macs are very good price for performance nowadays, but I asked him about it and he says it won't suit me. I replied that one can now install Windows, but according to him there is a performance price if you do so (I guess it's not as well attuned to the different OS)

Wrong, at least on the price/performance of Mac hardware. I know nothing of Windows operating on Macs, so I'll leave that alone. But Mac systems just plain cost too damn much. Now OSX actually might suit you. It just depends on a few factors, like how used to Windows are you? Are you willing to adapt to something new, while suffering for a few months in the process? Also if you plan on gaming in any shape or form, Windows is your only option. And in general, Windows is far more expandable than Macs are, both in terms of hardware and software. In my setting, there are a lot of uncommon devices I use and activities I do on Windows that I simply cant do on a Mac, as there is no software to allow me to do so. If you are a very casual user, than OSX is supposed to be a godsend. I'm not.

I'm not going to spend much time guiding you, but to game, you're ganna want DDR2, Intel Core 2 Duo, SATA drives, a very safe and strong PSU with no flair, and an ATI X1950XT (under $200), or an nVidia 8800GTS (under $300). There are better cards, but they cost much more and offer gains not proportional to the price.

[racketboy]

On a side note, if I want a cheap, quiet PC for somebody else or a project like a home theatre PC, I pick up a used Dell Optiplex for a couple hundred dollars from my employer's "investment recovery center" (get rid of old stuff place). I throw new hard drives in it and extra RAM or a new video card can turn it into a decent machine.

I don't know if you have similar opportunities....

[Mozgus]

On a side note, if I want a cheap, quiet PC for somebody else or a project like a home theatre PC, I pick up a used Dell Optiplex for a couple hundred dollars from my employer's "investment recovery center" (get rid of old stuff place). I throw new hard drives in it and extra RAM or a new video card can turn it into a decent machine.

I don't know if you have similar opportunities....

Now those aren't bad. They are slim and silent. I went to a class that upgraded all their machines to those and the newfound silence made it easy to study again. But they definitely are not gaming rigs.

[Droid party]

The one I was advised to is this one
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pt/pt/ho ... 28597.html

I sold one of those to a guy on Saturday just gone. He seemed happy with it ,but if you ask me it is over priced ,especially when you consider it is only running an nvidia 8500.
Good for a lounge room environment ,but for a game rig I wouldn't bother.

On a side note,if you build your own buy an nvidia card. I bought an ati x1950pro a little while back and while it is a good card the drivers are absolutely hopeless.

[Ivo]

Thanks for your inputs. Going for parts might be the way to go indeed. Some specific remarks and queries.

Indeed I want to game, so OSX is out of the question. I had already ruled out Macs so perhaps shouldn't have made the remark (was just pre-empting someone advising me to get one).

Remember I'm not exactly and expert, water cooling is probably tricky (and not necessarily cheap?) so maybe not such a good idea for me. I hear there are some large copper fans that are quite silent nowadays.

Is going to a Quad instead of duo perhaps a good option? They had price drops recently, might be worth it.

Nobody really addressed the monitor question yet. I will look into it myself, but just thought considering this is the retro gamers place that someone might have had similar concerns (being able to plug in older consoles) and might know exactly what I need.

I don't really have access to a good source of "used" PCs to retool.

So basically:
I want 2 GB of DDR2 RAM, possibly 2x 1GB with 2 slots left free for future expansion
Something like a quad core Intel E6600
a nice vid card (perhaps like the ones Mozgus suggested)
Wireless and wired network cards
Not really concerned about hard drives atm, but was thinking a small, fast one for the most used stuff, and a large storage one that can be slower (I already have an external, as my laptop only has 30 GB which you can imagine I had to stretch ALL the time).
A motherboard and slots to accomodate all that (any specific features to look for?), probably with inbuilt sound card as Im not demanding on sound.
Some nice TFT screen, 20 inch or so (wide?) that can swivel both ways and preferably have some sort of TV in to connect older consoles.
I could also use an in-built card reader (for SD, MMC and that sort of junk), but I can just pick up an external one very cheap.
Efficient cooling that isn't too noisy.

Did I forget anything?