Looking for an easy guide to high-performance computer shopping

[win7user2010]

Hi, I currently have the following laptop:

Asus F3Series (purchased in Winter 2008)
Intel Core 2 Duo (Centrino) T7500 @ 2.20 GHz 2.20 GHz
160 GB HD, 5400 rpm
2 GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 512 MB
15.4" WXGA Screen
Windows 7 Home Premium

The laptop is serving my purposes well, but I am thinking whether its worth it to purchase a high performance desktop system and then use my current laptop while I'm away at work or school, using LogMeIn (or any other Remote Access program) to perform tasks that would take advantage of the capabilities of the desktop sitting home.

If this is a good idea, then I do not know how to shop for this high performance desktop system. I have looked around online, but it is hard for me to determine which features I should get and which features are cutting-edge, but I don't really need or would probably not notice any difference in performance.

Some of the tasks I would need/like to do:

- Heavy Multi-Tasking: Multiple windows of internet browsers, word processors, pdf viewers, image editing programs, media players, email clients, chat clients, explorer folders, all open and running at the same time.

- Heavy use of Microsoft Office programs to make large reports, vivid presentations, etc.

- Use of multiple 3D Modeling and Image Rendering/Editing Programs (Photoshop, Cinema4D, CorelDraw, Sketchup Pro) at the same time.

- Possible use of calculation intensive programs related to Engineering studies


Here are some tasks that I am not interested in:

- Playing movies or dvds or making them

- Gaming


--------

I am really interested in speed, graphics, and multi-tasking. I want the system to do what I need it to do, without turning my mouse pointer into a blue-green waiting ring. If possible, I never want to see that waiting ring again.

I have no idea on whether computers have even reached that level. I see mention of quad-cores, six-cores, high-end graphics cards, hyper-threading, overclocking, and I found difficulty in finding information on whether these features are useful for me.

I would be interested on guidance on how to approach this issue, where I can find reliable information, and on whether the idea of remote accessing a high-performance desktop over a wifi connection is practical.

 

[Qmass55]

The only requirement you have that would stretch a computer is the 3D modelling, and only if it's complex. I use Sketch up too and it's not testing for my system. I doubt any desktop would need to have more than four cores as that would keep your cost down while allowing ample multi tasking. Remote accessing over a network or homegroup is possible. Reducing the time you see the waiting ring is obviously proportional to what you spend on your system, you don't mention budget. Unless you are doing really complex modelling or multi screen stuff you wont require a mega graphics card. Your best bet for research is forums like this or talking to your friends in the same industry as you for recommendations.

 

[GeneO]

A quad core i5 would fit the bill I think. One with hyper-threading will give an additional boost in some multi-threaded applications. That with at least 6 GB of memory, and SSD for the system disk (optional). If you get a motherboard that can overclock, you can go pretty far with and i5 (4 GHz) without much risk or effort - which will benefit your compute intensive work.

As for the SSD, I doubt you care if your program starts instantly the first time. However if any of the programs cache data to disk, you will want an SSD that has both read AND write performance for the cache.. Some SSDs write performance are not any better than a hard disk.
As an example, Photoshop has some conversion operations that cache large chunks of data to disk - on a normal HDD it takes 4-5 seconds because of this, on an SSD with slower write speed, same thing, on a high write speed SSD it isn't noticeable.

 

[The Howling Wolves]

If I were to buy a new system I would look at Costco or Sam's Club.
Reason being:
Return policy............90 trial period and no questions asked. Other's like Fry's or Best Buy charge 15% restock fee
Extended warranty.................Both Costco and Sam's extended warranties are cheaper there

Staples and Office Depot would be other stores to check out.
Make out a shopping list of items you want or would like your computer to come with.

Caution: These stores sometimes come loaded with trial software and items you may not need or ever use so do a system recovery disk and then remove all the bloated junk they come with.

Have fun shopping!

 

[Imperfect1]

If you change you mind and decide to get another laptop (rather than a desktop), there's an excellent forum with a What Notebook Should I Buy? section. Great discussions and advice. Take a look. The forum also discusses desktop in another section.

 

[win7user2010]

Thank you for all your beneficial comments,

I had no idea Sams/Costco have a trial period for computers, that's excellent. I didn't even know they sold computers.

About SSD, I've noticed they have less storage than HDD for the same price. Is there much difference between that and a 7200 rpm for my purposes?

As for 3D Modeling, when I do use Sketchup, my models can get complex, but my current laptop has been able to handle the workload in most cases. With Cinema4D, I'm usually rendering images which takes a while. I don't use those programs on a regular basis, but when I do use them, it can be intense.

 

[win7user2010]

As for budget, I don't want to spend anything too extremely high or low. If I can achieve all my goals for under $1000 that would be nice, but I'm not sure how possible that is until I actually start shopping.

 

[win7user2010]

Hi,
I could use some help on the following issue:

For my purposes mentioned in this thread, is there really a significant difference in performance between using an Intel i5 processor and its competing AMD processor?

Should I disregard AMD altogether?

 

[society misfit]

I wouldn’t write off a AMD CPU. You can get a great CPU for much lower cost than the competing Intel. Performance wise both a high end AMD and a Intel i5 will be pretty much the same. One may do something a “little” faster than the other but in the end there is not really much difference. I would concentrate more on the motherboard and which one will fit your needs. Personally I find AMD based boards offer more for the price than their Intel counterparts.

As for SSD’s, yes they are more expensive than HDD but the performance increase is well worth it. You can grab a small 80GB SSD just for your OS and programs then a larger HDD for files.

With a budget of $1000 you can definitely build a very nice AMD system with a SSD OS drive and a reg- large capacity HDD.

 

[Qmass55]

Like the man above said, theres probably not much between them. With the new AMD 8 core coming out and the Intel Sandybridge out now, theres great value to be had in the slightly older 4 cores, particularly the I7 9xx L1366 x-58 chips. With a $1000 budget I would definitely try to include an SSD even if it was a cheaper low capacity model, like Kingston, not the best but a big step up from a HDD. If you get a good MoBo you can easily overclock to give you a bit more performance in the future when your systems older. If you went for a 5770 graphics card, it might suffice while still having HDMI output at a low price and you could double up in the future if you needed more power. Cheers

 

[psychotron]

Go here

Budget Gaming PC | Hardware Revolution

Just scroll down until you get to the colored chart, it has 3 different tiers of high-performance budget gaming builds. This chart really helped me decide what to buy and where although it also taught me what to look for on items the chart did not list and I ended up just doing my own research and buying items not listed in the chart , almost all items brought me to Newegg. Also go to the top right of page and check out the "The best video cards for your money February 2011" being this item is thee most important and spendy. As for CPU's, there is no reason to go Intel being AMD has the same or near the same performance as Intel chips for a fraction of the cost. The motherboard was the most difficult decision for me being a newbie to raw builds, but it's always a good idea to match your motherboard with a related video card ie-AMD and Radeon go well together for Crossfire(multiple video cards) use where as Nvidia uses SLI multiple card system. One must also think of future add-ons so get a mobo that won't need to be replaced until your next build. As for everything else it's pretty simple, you get the speed and size hard drives you want, the dvd or blu-ray drives you want and so on. The power supply must exceed the total power consumption of your components, a good power calculator to use is

eXtreme Power Supply Calculator

Minus monitor/s, keyboard/mouse and sound system a cool grand should get you a great system to build. As for cases just do some math, get the dimensions of the case, video card, any cpu cooler as these items usually have a tight fit, even some larger power supplies. As for cooling forget about liquid solutions unless you're just grabbing a Corsair H50 or something basic and similar for the cpu, unless you're a top extreme gamer a 3-6 fan setup will suffice.

Good Luck.

 

[win7user2010]

Thank you all for your help, I found this website for building custom pc's and started playing around following the advices in this thread, here is what I came up with:

I don't meant to advertise in any way, but the website is ComputerLX.com - Computer Systems Reseller if someone can comment on what I put together, I would appreciate that (especially if someone can point out how I can make the price lower). I want to make sure I didn't combine something that will self-destruct when I turn it on. For a monitor, I am thinking to get a refurbished dell monitor from the dell site for $100.

The price of what I put together below (monitor not included) came out to $733.99



AMD Athlon II 64 X4 640 Quad-Core 3GHz Processor AM3

AMD STANDARD COOLING FAN

Asus M4N68T-M Socket AM3/ GeForce 7025/ DDR3-1800(O.C.)/ A&V&GbE/ MATX Motherboard

8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel

30GB Solid State Drive SATA 3.0 (As someone mentioned, I can put the operating system, Windows 7 64bit on this drive?)

Hitachi / WD 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB CACHE SATA 3.0Gb/s (This is for storage?)

22X DUAL LAYER DVD-RW W/LIGHTSCRIBE (PROMO ITEM)

nVidia GeForce GT430 1GB DDR3 DVI/VGA HDMI SLI PCI-EXP Video Card

REALTEK 8-CHANNEL DIGITAL SOUND ONBOARD

REALTEK 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Card (onboard)

Wireless-N Internal PCI Adapter

ALLPCZONE SCORPION MID-TOWER ATX CASE

hec X ORION 585 WATT POWER SUPPLY (MEDIUM LOAD)

I-MICRO 103 Keys PS2 Basic Wired Keyboard

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (W/LIFETIME OF FREE SUPPORT PACKAGE FROM ALLPCZONE, DVD & LICENSE INCLUDED)

3-Year Limited Warranty Plan with Lifetime of free USA based Support...Custom Hand Wiring For Ultimate Air Flow, Assembled in Cleveland, Ohio, USA

FED-EX GROUND SHIPPING "INCLUDED" (1-7 BUSINESS DAYS)

 

[Qmass55]

If it was me I'd perhaps spend another $60-80 and get the Phenom II 955 instead of the Athlon, the difference being L3 cache, which can make a difference.

 

[win7user2010]

Thank you, here's my update. I took out the monitor, mouse, and keyboard, because I can probably get a good deal through ebay on those for about $120 total.

I also took out the operating system, because I'm thinking as a student, I can purchase Windows 7 64bit for a discount from TheUltimateSteal.com website (but the site says "Windows 7 64bit Upgrade"... does that mean I will be able to install it on a new system with no operating system?)


The price now (not including montitor, mouse, keyboard, windows) is about: $670. Is this a good deal?

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Quad-Core 3.2GHz AM3 Processor

AMD STANDARD COOLING FAN

Asus M4N68T-M Socket AM3/ GeForce 7025/ DDR3-1800(O.C.)/ A&V&GbE/ MATX Motherboard

8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel

30GB Solid State Drive SATA 3.0

Hitachi / WD 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB CACHE SATA 3.0Gb/s

22X DUAL LAYER DVD-RW W/LIGHTSCRIBE (PROMO ITEM)

nVidia GeForce GT430 1GB DDR3 DVI/VGA HDMI SLI PCI-EXP Video Card

REALTEK 8-CHANNEL DIGITAL SOUND ONBOARD

REALTEK 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Card (onboard)

Wireless-N Internal PCI Adapter

ALLPCZONE SCORPION MID-TOWER ATX CASE

hec X ORION 585 WATT POWER SUPPLY (MEDIUM LOAD)

3-Year Limited Warranty Plan with Lifetime of free USA based Support...Custom Hand Wiring For Ultimate Air Flow, Assembled in Cleveland, Ohio, USA

FED-EX GROUND SHIPPING "INCLUDED" (1-7 BUSINESS DAYS)

 

[marsmimar]

Last year Maximum PC magazine decided to build their "dream machine". You might find this interesting should the day ever come that money is no object.

Maximum PC | Dream Machine 2010

 

[society misfit]

Flicks power switch and………..

Sorry I couldn’t resist! LOL!

Everything looks good except the motherboard for 2 reasons. First, the motherboard has onboard video and you listed a separate video card as well. There nothing really wrong with that but why pay for something you will never use. Second: to my knowledge nVidia has stopped making motherboard chipsets (North and Southbridge). It may be fine now but there may not be further driver development down the road. I would look at a AMD chipset motherboard. The AMD 8XX series motherboards are the latest and greatest and it will somewhat future proof your purchase (if there is such a word!). For a little more have a look at this. Newegg.com - ASUS M4A87TD EVO AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

 

[Unknown ID]

You're PC spec is Very Good

 

[win7user2010]

For the motherboard, I just went to the link:

ALLPCZONE <div id="productname" >BRAND NEW - ICEBERG Gaming System Special - (FREE SHIPPING - CUSTOMIZE IT)</div><div id="productdesc">- AMD PHENOM II 965 QUAD<br>- ASUS HDMI Motherboard <br>- 8GB DDR-3 PC3-12800<br>- 1000GB SATA2 HDD <br>- DVD-RW W/

and picked the cheapest one available.

Then there is this motherboard listed on the site:

Asus M4A78LT-M Socket AM3/ AMD 760G/ A&V&GbE/ MATX Motherboard

but its $35 more, is it really worth it for my purposes?

 

[society misfit]

Both boards have an onboard video chip. The M4A78LT-M has both DVI and HDMI whereas the M4N68T-M only has the older analog VGA interface. To get the best picture out of your monitor you will want to use DVI or HDMI for there is no conversion from Digital to Analog like what is needed with VGA. Not to mention more and more monitors are being shipped now without a VGA interface

You mentioned 3D Modeling and Image Rendering. I would recommend a dedicated graphics card over a on board graphics chip. Not only will you have a more powerful GPU, you will also have dedicated memory with the card instead of slower, shared memory with the onboard chip. The trade-off is of course a dedicated card will be more expensive.

If you are really tight for a budget then perhaps hold off on the SSD drive and go with a better motherboard and a separate video card.

Attached is a quick build I did on Newegg minus monitor, keyboard/mouse and Win7. As you can see for less than $10 more you can get a much better PC

 

[win7user2010]

Building my own pc from newegg parts seems like it would save me a lot and get me a faster computer, but I have no experience in putting together my own computer...