PC upgrade time. Advice, tips, great deals please!
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hiraethified
OK, so I'm warming to the Dell a bit more now.
9GB RAM? Phew!
*mops sweat off brow.
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
Thing that is a bit iffy on the SSD front about performance is the range of results. Some are blindingly fast some aren't, some (if memory serves) were slower than hard drives in nearly all cases, some play nice with Intel some don't. If you've got the cash to spend and are willing to take the time to research then they're great.
How much RAM do you use in a typical day out of curiousity? After all there'll be no advantage going to 9GB over 6GB if you're only using 4GB.
OK, so I'm warming to the Dell a bit more now.
9GB RAM? Phew!
*mops sweat off brow.
How much RAM do you use in a typical day out of curiousity? After all there'll be no advantage going to 9GB over 6GB if you're only using 4GB.
It wouldn't last long though and wouldn't be very reliable. And in three years it would start to look dated. I'd be going Quad Core at a bare minimum, and Eight Cores ideally...
Dell are with Quidco too so you get a bit of cash back on the purchase.
http://www.quidco.com/dell/
http://www.quidco.com/dell/
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
Are there any tests to back that up? It's a common theme but a lot of the reasons behind it are just down to improper cooling iirc (ie laptops have sod all room to work, leading to high temperature differentials, sticking the same components in a well ventilated case you'd have even less).
In the case of HDs especially i'm not sure why they'd be any less reliable than desktop ones. More so in some ways. Crap performance though.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
What won't be reliable? The SSD?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/samsung-puts-the-kibosh-on-ssd-reliability-worries/
As for all those cores, it depends what you're doing with it. Sheds - what's your computer used for?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/samsung-puts-the-kibosh-on-ssd-reliability-worries/
As for all those cores, it depends what you're doing with it. Sheds - what's your computer used for?
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
jaed means the laptop components idea, i hope, otherwise he's just wrong 
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Interesting stuff, i'm c&p'ing for a bit of research. Are there any figures on where the power usually goes (processor, hd, screen etc) in a top of range type puter like wot is being discussed here? I can hopefully then see what i'm going to have to trade off.
Hope i'm not hijacking the thread - i'll do my own for hopeful advice when i have better idea what i want.
Hope i'm not hijacking the thread - i'll do my own for hopeful advice when i have better idea what i want.
jaed means the laptop components idea, i hope, otherwise he's just wrong
Of course. I am never wrong. (Apart from once back in 2005)
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1
More info on SSD from the master reviewer than I can condense into a few words.
I was going to fork out for the OCZ vertex, but they are not available at the moment, only just got a listing in Dabs.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Work, so first need is reliable which is why i will go with RAID 5 like Bob suggests. So yes ok ok i admit it, mainly word processing
I don't do a lot of graphics work and don't play games. It's mainly waiting for programs to start up that i get impatient with. From what bosky and other people have said i'll give Windows 7 a try but will i think dual install ubuntu too. It's a bit complicated cos i do have a nice new lappy that I'm thinking of using for web access so that i have a layer of separation between the main puter and the web. What I'd really like to do is use main puter for work and then when i've finished my work transfer over to the lappy for low power during the rest of the day for playing music and playing on the web etc. i'd like to connect my Quad speakers up to the lappy so i'll look at how to do that too.
I'm thinking i might order it from someone who can build me a custom system.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Bob_the_lost
Elsewhere
Ta.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
I'd be more tempted to just change the motherboard/cpu, you've lots of parts in their that are still good, it seems a shame to get whole new machine.
Thing is, if you changing the motherboard, you may as well be starting from scratch in terms of effort, although I put builiding a PC in hours rather then weeks. Fair enough if you don't want to go that road though.
Have you considered the Win 7 beta? Its running stably on my machine, think its a great OS and saves you buying a copy a vista.
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
Sold
The 60Gb OCZ Vertex is what I'm gonna get for geek reasons, 180 quid.
250Mb sequential read. Thats double the speed of a VelociRaptor!
No seek time.
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
Until the beta runs out in a few months.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
That sounds ace. Hopefully will see some sane prices next year. Funnily enough I was just going to start a thread asking if anyone had one yet and their experiences.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Well 4 months until it does (August 2nd), by which time there will be another RC.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Can you use one SSD and two HDs in RAID configuration, or do they have to have same R/W times and things?
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
You'd be limited by the slowest drive. A pointless exercise.
In most home computer cases, RAID has no performance benefit at all. It's only worth it if you do RAID 1 for redundancy.
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
Personally I'd not use a raid set up like that. Not going to get a benefit from the SSD. RAID for personal use, unless you go out an buy a proper hardware SATA raid controller and by that I do not mean a shitty non-cached one. I mean a proper enterprise one for a few hundred quid minimum. Its not going to be very effective use of the SSD because if the data is spread across all three disks, its just going to be as fast as the slowest disk on average. All the sequential read speed would be wasted.
I would put the OS onto it but once I'd installed the OS, I'd move off the internet cache/history and the swap file onto a mechanical drive. Save wear. Still gonna get some writes to the registry and local app config files but nothing too bad.
This shows that to load 3 apps on this drive, 14 seconds just after boot. I doubt that the best raid controller to do much better.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=28
I would put the OS onto it but once I'd installed the OS, I'd move off the internet cache/history and the swap file onto a mechanical drive. Save wear. Still gonna get some writes to the registry and local app config files but nothing too bad.
This shows that to load 3 apps on this drive, 14 seconds just after boot. I doubt that the best raid controller to do much better.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=28
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
I'm just going to get one to see.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
I'll be interested to hear you experiences.
editor
hiraethified
I've built a PC or two in the past and have never particularly enjoyed the experience, to be honest. I'm fine upgrading and swapping over components but it all gets a bit stressful when it's my main machine at stake.
I definitely want to get Windows 7 when it comes out, but don't fancy gambling my precious work on a beta OS.
UnderOpenSky
baseline neural therapy
Fair enough, If its for you job and you want it just to work, I can see the appeal of just buying a new machine and using vista.
You do a have a nice graphics card though, so would be good if you could use that it you new build and save some cash. Would it be worth seeing if their were any local computer shops who could build one to your requirements?
ohmyliver
poppin' like a cork
I've got that Dell, albeit with 6 gig of ram. Photoshop cs4 flies on it. The only way I could generate a progress bar that I could see was to use liquify on a large psd file (well ok it was a 3 layered psd file which originally started out as a 600dpi A4 scan).
I've left it running for a couple of days without any issue. Fiended Fallout 3 for about 6-7 hours or so without complaint from the machine. I've had it since early Feb, and have had no complaint.
But the downsides are it's a small case, the power supply is relatively underpowered (360w I think, that's ok enough to run an ati 4850 in there) and it can be a bit noisy. It runs quite warm as well. It seems very easy to mod though, both powersupply and new quieter fan. There are a number of threads on the Dell support forums talking about such modifications.
I'd look to see if you can find a dell voucher (which is what prompted me to buy one as I got 15% off the price, and I ended up paying 650 (inc vat and delivery) for it in total with the ati 4850 graphics card and 6 gig of ram albeit without monitor, and via the small business part rather than the home part of the dell site)
here's an example voucher http://www.vouchercodes.co.uk/dell.co.uk?q=718ecfb1ba5443cf278 although I found the one I used via http://www.hotukdeals.com although that code doesn't work for the small business side of the site
Sunray
Its sunny somewhere.
I've just realised that the reason people are offering the strange multiple of 3 for ram sizes is that the Core i7 has a triple channel memory controller. Not only do all Motherboards have 6 DIMM slots, it runs faster if all 6 slots have DIMM's in them, hence the 6Gb and 9Gb values.
