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Rebuilding my home PC

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  1. #11

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    or..wait a little while and get a PS4 ?


  2. #12

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    if you are not tight on money, just get a dell alienware


  3. #13

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    ya i know , that scares a lot of peeps ( included me )

    for decent pc , go for i7 cuz bigger cache , anybelow 1500 mainboard , 8G ram should be around 400
    GF650ti if you can find one otherwise 760 approx 2200 , PSU any 650W should be enough

    but for case , i still recommend getting good one for better airflow


  4. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sando:
    ya i know , that scares a lot of peeps ( included me )

    for decent pc , go for i7 cuz bigger cache , anybelow 1500 mainboard , 8G ram should be around 400
    GF650ti if you can find one otherwise 760 approx 2200 , PSU any 650W should be enough

    but for case , i still recommend getting good one for better airflow
    Just out of curiosity, what games do you cram onto your PC?
    Last edited by Watercooler; 18-08-2013 at 11:30 AM.

  5. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob2020:
    HC - check out reddit
    Find something that seems similar to what you want, print out the shopping list and have a shop in the computer centre make it for you.
    Quote Originally Posted by wayland:
    Howard, there isn't much need to assemble it unless you are really looking to save money (which you don't seem to need since you're offering to pay someone). Any decent computer shop that you buy your parts from will offer to assemble it for a couple of hundred bucks.
    Thank you both for the suggestions but I'm not after a new box - I have a big and heavy box that works and it may be just a simple replacement of a graphics card or perhaps just a replacement of CPU + a bit of memory.
    This sucker is heavy, and I dont want to carry it either.

    What I want is for a enterprising young person to come to my place, look&run a few diagnostics to determine what is needed, go and buy the parts (or I can go and buy the stuff) and then come back and install. For the convenience and the service, I'm happy to pay for this person's time.

  6. #16

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    i assume you'r using full tower case too? ya those case + full built could weight approx 30kg
    if you gonna switch cpu , you might end up changing mainboard as well + ram , and lastly depends which PSU you'r using

    HowardCoombs likes this.

  7. #17

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    HC: I think that any takers are likely to be very young and inexperienced indeed. In my experience, IT people quickly become leery of working on computers for friends (never mind strangers), as such exercises often escalate into big spaghetti messes of complexity.

    I've very occasionally worked on friends' computers, but it has always been very carefully considered and it's always been very much for free as I do not want to feel any obligation to wade through more than I expected.

    I started off building PCs in a retail environment for a living. I would never have been even slightly tempted to work for minor pay for a single PC build for someone who I'd never met.

    Your idea of upgrading a 5 year old PC will probably require replacing the motherboard and CPU, installing a graphics card, possibly installing a decent chunky CPU cooler, recabling everything, and fresh OS-reinstall, possibly app reinstalls (unless you want to do apps yourself), and possibly mucking around with driver compatibility. Basically you're gutting the whole thing and keeping the case. It's a fairly time-consuming job if done to high standards, with a fair bit of potential for things to go off-plan. e.g. "Bugger, this graphics card doesn't fit" or "Hey, I'm getting weird bluescreens... I think there might some kind of problem with my SATA cables but I don't have any spare cables to test."

    I've been thinking of upgrading my own system- 5 years old but in an extremely high quality, 20kg, case. But the pain-in-the-arse factor of doing all the above has stopped me from anything more complex than throwing an SSD into it which should tide me over the next couple of years (I don't game). And once the computer truly reaches its end of life, I'm probably going to take the easy option and replace the whole thing with a small but powerful... Dell.

    If your computer is big and heavy, I'd suggest just loading it into a taxi and taking it to a reputable computer store to get whatever upgrades you need done to it*. It's likely to prove less time consuming in the end than having some young kid mucking around at your house and realising that he's gotten some small but vital detail wrong.

    * Taking care of whatever personal data you have on it first.

    Last edited by jgl; 19-08-2013 at 06:41 PM.
    HowardCoombs, kimwy66 and HK2A430 like this.

  8. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by dumbdonkey:
    if you are not tight on money, just get a dell alienware
    I made that suggestion here not long ago, but forgot to put on my flamesuit. The community went all apesh!t on my ass. Probably rightly so, considering I now find myself among the never-again Dell clients (not alienware).

  9. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by jgl:
    Your idea of upgrading a 5 year old PC will probably require replacing the motherboard and CPU, installing a graphics card, possibly installing a decent chunky CPU cooler, recabling everything, and fresh OS-reinstall, possibly app reinstalls (unless you want to do apps yourself), and possibly mucking around with driver compatibility. Basically you're gutting the whole thing and keeping the case. It's a fairly time-consuming job if done to high standards, with a fair bit of potential for things to go off-plan. e.g. "Bugger, this graphics card doesn't fit" or "Hey, I'm getting weird bluescreens... I think there might some kind of problem with my SATA cables but I don't have any spare cables to test."
    I just upgraded my computer after the graphics card blew up. I started before I went away for summer, and only got it finished this weekend, because it was never ending problems, complicated by a dead on arrival new AMD 7970 card.

    When a computer build goes well, I find it very satisfying, but always long-winded and complicated with making sure any existing gear will work with the new gear, will be future-proofed to a degree etc.

    When it goes bad, I want to throw it out the window and go and buy a Dell.

    With the age of your current computer, you might be as well off considering a new build. A new graphics card might require a new motherboard, which in turn would lead to a new CPU as you are unlikely to get the required sockets for your old CPU. This leads to a new power supply to cope with the new components, and then new memory....,it may be cheaper to get a new pre-built and donate your old (minus the hard drive) to the local geek kid to experiment with.

  10. #20

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnought:
    I made that suggestion here not long ago, but forgot to put on my flamesuit. The community went all apesh!t on my ass. Probably rightly so, considering I now find myself among the never-again Dell clients (not alienware).
    I admit that I briefly entertained the thought of a little Alienware flaming but decided that the HC would not be in the kind of... demographic (to use the nicest possible word) to go down this route

    I thought that standard Dell desktops were pretty harmless though- at least they are pretty easy to work on if you decide to open one up, and not noticably more defect-prone than any other brand? I've had to make warranty calls on them occasionally and it's been relatively painless.