Hey All

I am in the market for a new computer. Any thoughts on the below? I mostly do dvd encoding, burning etc... and some gaming.

CORE 2 Quad Q6600 $2099

Our systems include:
Motherboard: Asus P5N32 SLI Motherboard
Memory: Kingston / Corsair 2GB (2 x 1gb) 800MHZ DDR2
Video Card: Geforce 8600GT 256mb with TV out and DVI
Monitor: Acer 22" LCD Widescreen
Card Reader: Shintaro Internal 30-in-One Card Reader
Hard Drive: 500gb 7200rpm SATAII Hard-drive 16mb cache
CD-Rom: ASUS DVD +/- 18x SATADual layer burner
Sound card: Intergrated 5.1 Sound
Speakers: Logitech X-530 5.1 speaker system
Case: Thermaltake Soprano 430w Black or Silver
Keyboard: Logitech MX 3200 combo Keyboard
Mouse: Logitech MX 3200 combo Mouse
Software: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
Warranty: 12 Month Return to base Warranty Parts and Labour
FREE Surge Guard

Your thoughts please? I am looking to spend around $2k

Cheers

Chris

Thats what i got very recently!

I CBF looking around and since i work around the corner i figure its too easy..

Its good for my uses (very little). I had some issues with vista (and i know SFA about computers but i never had any with my old pc running xp) but they fixed them

EDIT: i dont play games or anything. Just pictures / dslr etc and internet!

I spoke to lots of people and some people said it was great, some said it wasnt but it was easy for me Its been fine so far and i cant see it changing. Im sure some IT expert will disagree but u get that!

PLE were shocking though. The older guy there was great but the young guys couldnt give a fuck about customers. They looked disinterested when i asked for vista issues to be fixed (and i told them i'd leave it overnight etc).

hey dude....

only my 2 cents, but for what its worth....

The more ram the better, Kingston and corsair kick arse

That is a good graphics card, unless your playing games it may go to waste, but i'm not sure how much you would save moving to a cheaper one

if you want to back up dvd's ie not burn them the second you have ripped them, maybe another hard drive? you could run a 250(whatever) with the OS on it, then leave the other for dedicated dvd storage and what not, would reduce the amount of defraging you would do and save you time when ripping...

also, depending on how keen you are, raid drives will give you quicker access times so, ripping to and from them would be quicker

extra sata ports are handy, not sure what the board offers, but i run an average ASUS and that is pretty good.....

also, make sure there is room for extra HD's in the future, you'll be surprised how quick you can fill them

good power supply and good cooling....video/dvd/whatever ripping can be hard on component temps

and there is more pirate software available for Windows XP than vista at the mo.... but no doubt that will change.

good luck

__________________
aka [ITSNSTI]....... still noobish

13.097 ET stock MY02STi.... first time @ drag

"Whatever it costs you to fix that car, is pretty cheap therapy", Dr. Phill

Yeah, if you can source parts yourself, and build it you can save MASSIVE amounts of coin. From just spare parts i managed to build my brother a 2.0ghz (old i know heh) AMD and all he had to buy was a LCD screen and a keyboard....

That said, built a kick arse 1.8ghz computer (again, old heh) for $1700 back in the day. In a package it would of costed $2500+. Take the time, select parts over a period of time waiting for specials and whatnot (depending on the need for the computer) and you can really clean up, easily. That and if you can manage to get yourself, errrr, 'other' copies of Operating Systems like vista/xp you will, again, save mega dollars. Everything else from Office to anything you want can be 'obtained' through internet sourcing. Torrents in other words.

Agreed with corsair/kingston ram, best out there personally without going to NASA. Id suggest buying a 500GB portal HDD. They are handy and can be taken whereever you want, whenever. SPecially if you are into DVD things. And to cap it off, this will all be out of date tomorrow hah just to drive the stake into your heart. Cruel world of technology, produces great things, but moves quicker then you can keep up with it.

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Yamaha FZ1N - Purchased

Okay few things here that might help.

Good motherboard, i current have the same, memory is more than enough, i run vista with 2gig don't need much more than that (vista can only use up to 3gig anyways unless running 64bit). As for the gfx card i'd actually look at upgrading that, for gaming that gfx card will choke and die, try spending a little bit extra and going for the 8800 gt (512 mb version) this vid card will set u back around $340 (probably little bit cheaper) and will run pretty much any game at high gfx settings (pros: cheap [compared to other high end gfx cards], excellent performance... cons: none!). What you also might want to have a look at upgrading the monitor to the to 22" samsung, I found that this monitor gave me better colour definition, and overall seemed to be a better monitor. Also might want to look at after market cooling for your cpu, quad cores do run a bit hotter and if you are maxing out at 100% load while encoding the cpu is going to get a fair bit hotter maybe look at something along the lines of: HSF ZALMAN CNPS9700LED HEATSINK COOLER $85.00 Like a few people have already stated get the parts yourself and put it together, all parts from ple have a 1 year warranty from them already and usually the parts have an extended warranty provided by the manufacture. If you have 2k to spend might want look at something along the lines of:


CASE TT SOPRANO 430W P4 TOWER/BLK - $129.00

CPU INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.4GHz 4X2MB# - $329.00

HDD WD 500GB 7200RPM SATA2 16MB# - $135.00

HSF ZALMAN CNPS9700LED HEATSINK COOLER - $85.00

MEM TEAM XTREEM DARK PC6400 2GB KIT 800M - $93.00
(or if after more memory MEM TEAM XTREEM DARK PC6400 2 x 2GB 800MHZ# $229.00 )

MNTR SAMSUNG 22" LCD WS 2MS (226BW) # - $405.00

MBRD ASUS P5N32-E SLI DESKTOP MBRD # - $279.00
(or MBRD ASUS P5E X38 DESKTOP BOARD# -$299.00 - newer chipset)

VC XFX 8800GT 600M PCIe/512MB/DUAL-DVI # - $339.00

Prices are all from the ple webiste. Total: $1794 (or $1950 with the upgrades)
This ends up cheaper, give you better fps in games and still suits your needs/budget.

Hope this helps . Btw good choice on the quad core will halve the encoding times for most programs. PM me if you have any questions.

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- White 'Bug Eye' STi -

Might even pay off to get a Case fan or 10. Usually with 400W+ power supplies, or any for that matter, they generate a fair mass of heat as does everything else, specially when you CPU is trying to run more programs at the same speed (hence the quad core). I personally leave the side of my computer off and have a front mounted case fan. Helps, specially in 40 degree heat.

And dont forget the neons!

__________________
Honda Hannspree Edition CBR 600 RR - SOLD
Yamaha FZ1N - Purchased

I'd recomend that maybe he looks at a bigger case, one problem with that is that he will be looking at purchasing a power supply as current one comes with one. I'l looking at a new pc for myself, and my budget is a little bit more than yours ($3500 and i already have a minonitor and hdds).

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- White 'Bug Eye' STi -

you can get a better deal by getting the cheapest parts from all over the place, but then when something breaks where do you go?

PLE has pretty good systems, I would just go for a 8800gt instead of a useless 8600.

I also hardly see any point in burning dvd's just have a whole other computer driving your tv with a butt load of hdd space and store everything you ever wanted to watch on there :-P

or at least get a blu ray burner and make the move to HD.

in any case you chose the correct cpu.

I reckon if you know enough to build a pc, your more than half way there with PLE

Still good for people like me. Just walk in and buy one of their off the shelf systems.

*Any reason why you picked a SLI board? don't bother unless you plan to run dual/triple VGA cards go for one of the other boards which have a Intel P35 chip set. Also I would stay away for Asus for mainboards, Ive just bought a Striker 2 Formula this is totally fucked (as with many others from reading the Asus forums). I am sending it back this w/e its the 2nd board out of 3 Asus boards i've had that have been DOA go for a XFX board.

*Kingston / Corsair ram will be ok if you don't plan to OC otherwise go for the PC8500 DDR2 Crucial as its the best ram on the market.

*If you can stretch you budget go for the 8800GT 512Mb or 8800gGTS 512Mb VGA cards, even better if you can wait a month as the new NVidia 9xxx series VGA cards will be out which will force a heap of the 8xxx series down in price.

*Go for the Samsung 226BW (Austin computer's have these for $399 just ask PLE may price match this, same goes for the Q6600 Netplus have them for $319)

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