Time for a new PC

[Ron]

Due to a minor accident involving my laptop, a bed, a motorhome, an eager spouse bulldozing bedding, a barking dog and a toolbox, I am now looking for a new PC at least 6 months or a year before I wanted to undertake the project.

Of course I would like to get the biggest bang for the buck. I am drooling over the thought of dual quad CPUs and a full fledged 64 bit OS, and Office and good quality of movie editing/DVD authoring software. But I'd like to spend only $1,500 max. I think the level of movie software I'd like would be akin to "Prosumer" level on cameras, but I'd guess that'd be way over budget just for the software. (As an aside, on Sunday I saw a DVD authored on a Mac by an amateur and it looked really good, so maybe that level (whatever program he used) would be sufficient.)

I will also be needing a new monitor since this dinky 15" LCD will go with this computer to my bedroom to replace the laptop lost in the frenzied mayhem.

So, anyone have any suggestions for a pre-built machine in the $1,000 to $1,500 range with lots of horses?

Needs:
CPU, LCD monitor, Office software, video software.
Strong desire:
Full fledged 64 bit OS, dual quad CPUs (or perhaps dual dual cores?)
(Tell me if I'm being silly; will single quad CPUs or single duals be nearly as good say 4 or 5 years from now?)
2 Big disks Perhaps hardware RAID for both performance and safety.
Weak desire:
Yes, but I'm working on it.
No desire:
Anything gaming related. Just not interested in it, so fancy/expensive video cards are probably not needed at all.
Overclocking -- not interested. Thanks.
Fancy boxes/lights/peripherals: Think office rather than home.

(I might be interested in a used box if the price is right and specs are good to OK. Same issues: don't need the graphics, no overclocking etc., etc.)

[the_ancient]

Due to a minor accident involving my laptop, a bed, a motorhome, an eager spouse bulldozing bedding, a barking dog and a toolbox, I am now looking for a new PC at least 6 months or a year before I wanted to undertake the project.

Of course I would like to get the biggest bang for the buck. I am drooling over the thought of dual quad CPUs and a full fledged 64 bit OS, and Office and good quality of movie editing/DVD authoring software. But I'd like to spend only $1,500 max. I think the level of movie software I'd like would be akin to "Prosumer" level on cameras, but I'd guess that'd be way over budget just for the software. (As an aside, on Sunday I saw a DVD authored on a Mac by an amateur and it looked really good, so maybe that level (whatever program he used) would be sufficient.)

I will also be needing a new monitor since this dinky 15" LCD will go with this computer to my bedroom to replace the laptop lost in the frenzied mayhem.

So, anyone have any suggestions for a pre-built machine in the $1,000 to $1,500 range with lots of horses?

Needs:
CPU, LCD monitor, Office software, video software.
Strong desire:
Full fledged 64 bit OS, dual quad CPUs (or perhaps dual dual cores?)
(Tell me if I'm being silly; will single quad CPUs or single duals be nearly as good say 4 or 5 years from now?)
2 Big disks Perhaps hardware RAID for both performance and safety.
Weak desire:
Yes, but I'm working on it.
No desire:
Anything gaming related. Just not interested in it, so fancy/expensive video cards are probably not needed at all.
Overclocking -- not interested. Thanks.
Fancy boxes/lights/peripherals: Think office rather than home.

(I might be interested in a used box if the price is right and specs are good to OK. Same issues: don't need the graphics, no overclocking etc., etc.)

I have always had great luck buying referb gateways/emachines from newegg and upgrading them if needed. Esp if your wanting windows since the cost of the OS by itself is often more than the Referbs cost...

[Ron]

Thanks for the newegg idea... the prices look pretty good. Doesn't look like anyone is really selling dual CPU machines for the end user yet? Oh well.

I was thinking of running Solaris 10 or Open Solaris, but I probably don't have the time for the re- and new-learning curves as I haven't worked with it since Solaris 8, and I don't know what video software I could run.

[Spathiphyllum]

I build mine so I won't comment on pre-builts. There are just too many packages to consider and there is typically a corner cut somewhere only you won't know where until you open it up. Why not build your own so you optimize what you want/need?

What form factor are you considering? ATX? Micro-ATX? That will surely impact price and capabilities.

Some component recommendations:

Monitor - check out DELL. I believe there are only about three mfgs worldwide for the displays, and DELL, naturally, gets theirs bulk from one of them. DELL regularly has a coupon for their brand monitors and their performance is fine. Business quality for sure.

Mainboard - pretty safe to get a decent, dual CPU model with integrated sound and 10/100/1000 MB NIC from many mfgs. Stick with major brands and you can get by with a loaded one for ~$170, perhaps less if you package it with the CPU(s).

RAM - Unbelievably inexpensive right now for DDR2 from many mfgs. NewEgg regularly has rebate offers, too. Look for Crucial/Ballistix, Corsair, Patriot, etc.

Drives - If you go with RAID, SCSI is still probably the most hardened. A 32/64-bit, dual channel PCI card can be had for $50-$75. Check out Pricewatch.com. 36 - 72 GB brown box drives can be had pretty cheap if you shop. Put your OS and applications on that. You could use some cheaper, large volume SATA's for data, and possibly RAID them too if you get a mainboard with such capabilities. SATA RAID is available on more models these days.

CPU - look for the price sweetspot (and there always is one) for Dual/Quad cores and get them instead of the latest and greatest product. Upgrade when their prices drop.

Office productivity - try Sun's OpenOffice

OS - Consider a 64-bit Linux distro.

With $1500 to work with, you could build a pretty nice system for some work but not so much as to be too burdensome. Once you get the parts and a good distro, the install should go relatively smoothly.

[Pawel Kowalski]

I would mostly agree with what Spathiphyllum said. What I don't agree with is linux for your OS. Why would anyone use linux as a home OS? People don't have enough stress in their lives as it is? I have similar feelings about open office.

If you weren't so set on dual processors you could probably save a lot of money. Most applications still aren't designed for true multi-core processing. I would go for a dual core with a high clock speed, quad cores with fast cores are too expensive at this time in my opinion.

[Ron]

Well, I just thought that if I was going to spend more then 4 or 5 hundred bucks I would like a machine that had dual CPUs. If that's not this go around, then maybe I could just look at an off-the-shelf dual core windows box.
Can ya really build something (and by build I mean open no more than 5 or 6 boxes) cheaper virtually guaranteed to work 1st try?

[the_ancient]

I would mostly agree with what Spathiphyllum said. What I don't agree with is linux for your OS. Why would anyone use linux as a home OS? People don't have enough stress in their lives as it is? I have similar feelings about open office.

If you weren't so set on dual processors you could probably save a lot of money. Most applications still aren't designed for true multi-core processing. I would go for a dual core with a high clock speed, quad cores with fast cores are too expensive at this time in my opinion.

Hey, I have OxgenOffice, Open Office, Office 2003, and office 2007..

I use Open Office the MOST of all of them....

As far a Linux, I have 5 Computers at home and 3 at my office, only 3 of them run winblows

[the_ancient]

Well, I just thought that if I was going to spend more then 4 or 5 hundred bucks I would like a machine that had dual CPUs. If that's not this go around, then maybe I could just look at an off-the-shelf dual core windows box.
Can ya really build something (and by build I mean open no more than 5 or 6 boxes) cheaper virtually guaranteed to work 1st try?

Why not go with Quad Core?

I just picked up a Referb Quad Gateway the other day, been Really happy with it thuse far... Even if it is a Intelecrap processor

[Pawel Kowalski]

Quad cores are good but you will pay a lot more for a higher clock one. I would much rather get this dual core because of the higher clock speed per core:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115054

over this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115043

By the time applications truly start using multi cores it will probably be time for you to upgrade anyway, so for now I'm personally going to stick with the higher clock speed on the dual cores.

Hey, I have OxgenOffice, Open Office, Office 2003, and office 2007..

I use Open Office the MOST of all of them....

Really? I can't stand Calc, the formulas on it don't seem to work properly. I also tried saving my company some money by loading it on a couple computers, I was forced to change it within a day because of complaints. It's a great concept, but it still has many bugs. Hopefully the next major release will be much better.

[Ron]

Don't most video programs make use of multiple CPUs and/or cores? I assume that CPUs and cores just all look alike to the proggies right now. Is that a good assumption? I'm thinking that perhaps someday they will be so optimized to know that a separate CPU is preferable to another core on the same die for some operations, so there is/will be a way to pin processes to certain resources.

Anyway back to video, don't these make use of multiple CPUs when encoding?
Do they make use of more than 2?
The reason for wanting horsepower is solely for video processing, otherwise my lowly P4 is sufficient for what I do all day (which is nothing).

[Ron]

...also, besides multi processing support, are there 64 bit versions of the video software yet?

[Pawel Kowalski]

You will have to confirm with each software manufacturer if their application actually does parallel processing and/or 64-bit processing. What video editing software do you use?

Edit: Sorry, I forgot you said you didn't find the software yet. I wouldn't think that the cheaper software would have multicore support. But since I dont know much about video editing I can't help you out there, sorry.

[Ron]

Right now I use stupid Studio 8 or stupider MS Movie Maker. I want to get into a much better package, especially with HD.

Right now I just don't have enough horsepower to do anything in under a lifetime, or with a professional quality about it.

[Ron]

As if on cue, today I got an email ad from Gateway:

Intel Core 2 Quad processor Q6700 operating at 2.66GHz
8MB (2 x 4B) L2 cache
1066MHz frontside bus
6GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM memory (2 x 2GB + 2 x 1GB); maximum memory capacity: 8GB
640GB 7200-rpm SATA II hard drive with 16MB cache
SuperMulti DVD drive with Double Layer capabilities
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1

Looks like motherboard integrated graphics, although they don't seem to mention the chipset.
I guess this is the kind of machine I'm looking at if I can't get a beefier one at a decent price.
Any comments on this at $750?

[the_ancient]

As if on cue, today I got an email ad from Gateway:

Looks like motherboard integrated graphics, although they don't seem to mention the chipset.
I guess this is the kind of machine I'm looking at if I can't get a beefier one at a decent price.
Any comments on this at $750?

whats the model number