Optimum PC upgrade for under a grand?

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Been using 3 500gb Barracudas for more than a year now. No complaints whatsoever, except that bad firmware fiasco.

 

I think the WD Caviar Black will be the way I go. I may bite the bullet, pay the extra $15 and get the 1TB over the 640GB, but yeah - I've read enough on the WD drive now that I'm satisfied it'll be a good buy. I'll just make sure to pay extra for shipping to make sure it arrives as safely as possible.

Thanks for the tips, y'allz! I'll repost again after I purchase. Probably won't be until Halloween or so, but hopefully sooner.

 

Well, the order is in. Slightly different from originally spec'd, but a bit cheaper and more powerful. Waiting a month or two always seems to help! It is:

Intel i5 760 2.80G Lynnfield Quadcore CPU
ASUS P7P55D-E PRO P55 R Mobo
4gb GSKILL RipJaw DDR3 RAM
1Tb WD Caviar Black 6gb/s SATA HD

...for a grand total of $545, plus shipping. Dropping Windows 7 Home Edition off of the list saved me $99, as I just found out I can buy a full Pro version copy from the University I work for for just $14. And the 2.8 Ghz Lynnfield CPU was only $12 more than the 2.6Ghz version, so I figured what the hell. Also, both the HD and the Mobo run data at 6.0Gb/second (most I've seen are half that). I don't know if that's just a gimmick or what, but I like it.

I'll chime in again later in the week when I get her all fired up. Woot.

 

6.0Gb/second? Call it 'growth potential'. A nice thing to have in a computer Nice package. Congrats.

 

This build will be my first experience with both a multi-core processor and an SATA hard drive. I understand both are far superior to single-core and IDE by a wide margin.

 

Oh, in that case it'll be a difference like between night and day. It'll be nice. Enjoy it as long as it lasts

 

Okay. Got everything in (finally!!...damn you, labor day weekend) and installed everything. The machine started up beautifully, first time. I must note that this is the first time I've ever built a machine and had that happen. I usually put everything together, hit the power button, and when it doesn't start up spend the next hour diddling around until I figure out what I did wrong. This time, first time's the charm (woot). I did, however, have a panic moment when I heard a sizzle and saw a plume of smoke rise out near the power source...but turns out it was just a dust bunny getting fried near a power connector, and I haven't had any issues since.

Rags, you were right - totally night and day. From the windows loading screen to full boot up, it's about 15 seconds. Game load times are VERY short now. In short, this is easily the fastest, sexiest compy I've ever had. And now I can finally play the copy of Bioshock 2 that's been gathering dust on my shelf since April.

Thanks, Chandos, for the Lynnfield recommendation. Works like buttah.

I can't believe how easy everything was to install now, too. They've really improved the design of the heatsincs, man. That thing just pops on and off like a Lego brick; no screwing, no jiu-jitsu. And it's WHISPER quiet. So quiet that the first few times I turned it on I had to do a double-take to see if I even hit the button hard enough. The loudest thing in my machine now is my DL DVD drive.

Now, the upgrader's curse sets in...my 8800 GTX is starting to look like the weak link...and I caught myself browsing GPUs at NewEgg last night. I am so hopeless.

 

You will give in to your desires like we all do.

To strengthen your resolves. AMD's next generation of Graphics Cards are just around the corner. So pull yourself together and wait for the price war's next round.

 

In your defence, even so you'll be well under a grand

 

Wow dude...vacuum much?

 

It wasn't from my house, Mr. Eyeroll. Like I said, my PC had been dormant since April. So in addition to lack of use, the chassis collected a lot of dust from my previous residence (an apartment with cheap drywall, and therefore, a sh•tload of dust). I cleaned the case out as best I could before installing the new parts, but obviously I missed one of the little buggars with my vacuum.

 

I'm happy to report that I've successfully fought off the urge to upgrade my GPU. Everything I've played since the rebuild runs like a dream. My upgrade was relatively inexpensive, yet the difference in performance from my old machine is astounding. I really don't know that I could have done a better upgrade for the money. Just perfect. I can see me staying with this configuration for the next 3-4 years, easy (GPU is exempt, of course ).

Soon I will pick up Civilization 5, so we'll see how everything works there. But I'm satisfied in not upgrading the GPU for at least another year, maybe two. Anyone looking for an affordable upgrade, I highly recommend what I picked up. Very cool.

 

DR,
you still lack an SSD They perform nicely. Really

 

Oh I'm sure they do, they just aren't cost effective right now - at all. For the same money I paid for my reasonably-fast 1TB drive, I could (maybe) get an SSD with less than 50GB capacity. That makes no sense to me. 10 extra seconds of load time on average is easily worth the extra 900 or so Gigs, in my book.

 

Admittedly, with an Intel X25-M you'll only really benefit when doing a large number of small file operations. Unbeatable. And loading OpenOffice is like ...*snap* ... that fast.

You are undoubtedly more reasonable than I am as far as computers are concerned.

On the practical side - I have three drives - one for the OS, one for storage, one for back-up. However, none of them is as fast as your 6GBit one.

 

I also could not resist the taste of an ssd.

The silence, the speed.