If you're thinking of buying a hard drive, better do it right now

[Doktor]

I have Toshiba Satellite.

It good on everything, but the keyboard is the weak link.

[bolo121]

Radeon 6870 should be around $200 and perfect for you.

Thanks GN, Any particular brand that you like?

[gunnut]

Thanks GN, Any particular brand that you like?

I have had 2 Radeon cards made by Power Color. They are reliable. I've heard Sapphire is good too but I have never used one. Asus is always good, but a bit more expensive.

[Dago]

The bigger question is how this will effect things down the line. Less hard drives being made means less computers being turned out. Less computers available means A) prices jump on those that are for sale and B) less computers in general are bought. Considering the entire world pretty much runs on computers nowadays, this could have serious repercussions in all fields of life...

I think computers in general are priced specifically at a certain range. For top end models typically 1,000 and over like Alienware. A harddrive isn't gonna make much of a difference. I think they just eat those costs or maybe add 50 bucks to it.

[USSWisconsin]

This mac is driving me maccy.. I have ordered a replacement for the dead Q6600 PC - The mini mac does internet fine - mail is another story..

My new box will have
AMD Thuban 1090T 3.2 Ghz 6 core - it will run at 4.0 Ghz with the flip of a switch.
Gbit 990FXA-UD3
Corsair Performance 128 SSD
2 x Seagate 7200 SATA3 barracuda 500 GB drives (RAID 1)
16 GB PC 1600 DDR3 RAM (4x4)
Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 - Dual 24" Widescreen ASUS 245 displays
LG Blue Ray Multi DVD
Win7 Pro 64
Thermaltake Midtower
Cooler master Extreme 500W PS
Titan Fenbir EVO cooler

I know the AMD bulldozer would be nice to wait for - but this thing should get the jobs done (it will hold a BD chip on the AM3 + socket - but I doubt it will ever see that). I worked with a nice engineer at 3btech.net to get it spec'd they will start building it today. It is a workstation - not really a gaming machine - but it should do ok at that too, if I get around to trying it. My Daughter is looking forward to having it as her machine in a couple years - it will get to play then.

An early Christmas I suppose - I was intending to buy some more mundane things for the house, like a refrigerator - but the PC is hard to live without.

So I have ben dragged into the current generation of PC's - timing on the HDD was terrible - the 500 MB disks were reserved earlier this week - they are already marked up 40% since then - they were ~50$ a week ago - now they are 140$ but I am getting them for 100...

I ordered a replacement 160 GB SATA 150 HDD for the old PC on Sat (along with an XP 64 CDrom) - the disk was 30$ - the same thing is now 70$ - if you can find one in stock

[Blue]

I have Toshiba Satellite.

It good on everything, but the keyboard is the weak link.

Mine's a bit "squishy" and I make a lot of typos when I don't use it for a few days, but I haven't had any failures, even after having a few fist pounding shit-fits on it.

[Doktor]

Well, to be fair, this one is exploited every single second of the day ;)

As I said, besides keyboard I don't have any issues.

[bolo121]

This mac is driving me maccy.. I have ordered a replacement for the dead Q6600 PC - The mini mac does internet fine - mail is another story..

My new box will have
AMD Thuban 1090T 3.2 Ghz 6 core - it will run at 4.0 Ghz with the flip of a switch.
Gbit 990FXA-UD3
Corsair Performance 128 SSD
2 x Seagate 7200 SATA3 barracuda 500 GB drives (RAID 1)
16 GB PC 1600 DDR3 RAM (4x4)
Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 - Dual 24" Widescreen ASUS 245 displays
LG Blue Ray Multi DVD
Win7 Pro 64
Thermaltake Midtower
Cooler master Extreme 500W PS
Titan Fenbir EVO cooler

I know the AMD bulldozer would be nice to wait for - but this thing should get the jobs done (it will hold a BD chip on the AM3 + socket - but I doubt it will ever see that). I worked with a nice engineer at 3btech.net to get it spec'd they will start building it today. It is a workstation - not really a gaming machine - but it should do ok at that too, if I get around to trying it. My Daughter is looking forward to having it as her machine in a couple years - it will get to play then.

An early Christmas I suppose - I was intending to buy some more mundane things for the house, like a refrigerator - but the PC is hard to live without.

So I have ben dragged into the current generation of PC's - timing on the HDD was terrible - the 500 MB disks were reserved earlier this week - they are already marked up 40% since then - they were ~50$ a week ago - now they are 140$ but I am getting them for 100...

I ordered a replacement 160 GB SATA 150 HDD for the old PC on Sat (along with an XP 64 CDrom) - the disk was 30$ - the same thing is now 70$ - if you can find one in stock

A few thoughts on the rig you mentioned.

As GN already mentioned, Core I5 2500K is way better, even with two less cores.
the HD6850 is a bit long in the tooth these days, Ideally get a HD6950 from sapphire or if budget challenged a 6870 like i plan to.
At the consumer level no real benefit to RAID, waiting and getting a 7200RPM 1TB HDD for data plus another external one for backups would be better.
In any case your frequently used files and OS are going to be living on that nifty SSD.
Rethink Thermaltake for the Case, they dont have that good reviews. Plenty of good budget Antec, Coolermaster or NZXT cases available.
For PSU the cooler master extreme also are pretty basic and some in the extreme range have been known to quit on you. Take either Seasonic, Antec or Corsair 600w or above with at least 80% bronze rating.

[bolo121]

Here are the specs of my new PC, still waiting to get a decent Graphics card.

Intel Core i5 2500k
G Skill Ripjaws 1600 8GB
Crucial M4 SATA 6gb/sec 64 GB SSD
1x Western Digital Green Editon HDD
1x Western Digital Blue Editon HDD
Sony Optiarc Dvd Writer (Dont own any Blu Ray Content)
Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced Midtower
Zalman CNPS 9500 cooler
Seasonic 620w 80% Bronze PSU

[USSWisconsin]

A few thoughts on the rig you mentioned.

As GN already mentioned, Core I5 2500K is way better, even with two less cores.
the HD6850 is a bit long in the tooth these days, Ideally get a HD6950 from sapphire or if budget challenged a 6870 like i plan to.
At the consumer level no real benefit to RAID, waiting and getting a 7200RPM 1TB HDD for data plus another external one for backups would be better.
In any case your frequently used files and OS are going to be living on that nifty SSD.
Rethink Thermaltake for the Case, they dont have that good reviews. Plenty of good budget Antec, Coolermaster or NZXT cases available.
For PSU the cooler master extreme also are pretty basic and some in the extreme range have been known to quit on you. Take either Seasonic, Antec or Corsair 600w or above with at least 80% bronze rating.

Thanks for you insights, your recommendations sound very good for a normal advanced gaming user wanting a PC in this performance range, this won't be a game machine - I wish I had read your advice before I ordered - The case and PS reliability concern me a bit - but I specifically wanted a 450-500W PS - this is the one my preferred builder had in that size - with the specs I wanted (dual rail - large 135mm low speed fan). The case was selected on price and features (specs and photos).

I do have confidence in this builder (no time to do this - last few builds sat around too long being built - and one build never got finished - damn Athlon bare silicon CPU kept breaking when I put the heat sink on it - I finally gave it to someone whole had time to mess around replacing bad parts - they finished it and it performed pretty good... I like the AMD A10 core - it is perfect for my use (6 cores will serve me better in heavy multitasking than 4 faster cores with hyper threading, I agree, Intel would be faster for games) - that is what in in Cray Computers these days (the super scalar ones). The video card was very reasonable due to its place in the age curve, and will do what I want it to - a 6670 was in the original request - but it was out of stock. A work station like I really want - HP Xeon/Quattro or Cylestica-Cray Opteron/Quattro with similar performance would cost nearly 10 times as much. An i7 machine (which is what this chip is competing with in relevant bench marks) would be nearly twice as much, and on the benchmarks that matter most for me - it would not be much better (not worth the cost, IMO). For the average person RAID is not necessary - but managing backups is too much effort for me these days - I do intend to get an automated remote disk backup system after the disk mess. I have lost too many hard drives full of precious stuff - RAID is something I want on this machine - I work with RAID every day - and it will give some extra read performance and data security in my application: realtime, easy to recover backups in most catastrophes.

I don't want to pay for the ideal solutions (and am tired of remote connections timing out on the workstations I have available at work) and I am also interesting in having another AMD (had some good ones in the past the K5 was very good at one time) - part of it is being different.

Another thing that is import to me is a reliable builder - I have dealt with this one for 8 yrs and always had good service (I help a lot of friends and relatives get computers, normally business or basic home systems). I used to build elaborate machines myself - but I don't have time for that, and I am not a Windows Systems engineer anymore - I work with big unix servers these days - on the software end.

Here is the specs I presented -

I need a well balanced, reliable and
powerful system.

I would like it assembled - tested and ready to run - of course I will
customize, tune and add the user software

Want the SSD as the boot drive - with Windows installed on SSD
Want 16 GB RAM setup as dual channel - match RAM type to CPU FSB and MB
Want the Video card to have PCIE2 16x- 1 GB of DDR5 ram and dual display
capability
Want a regular hard drive as storage drive (would like a RAID 1 option)
Should have SATA3, USB3 an eSATA ports
Want to be able to read all current format optical disks (including Blueray) -
and burn CD's and dual layer DVD's
Want quiet air cooling - high ball bearing quality fans - low speed large
diameter (one case fan is enough, expect fans in PS, on CPU and Video )
Want a very reliable - efficient power supply ~500W, multi-rail, should be
matched to system requirements - to operate in peak efficiency range of PS
Want a Windows OS CD with the system - Win 7 Pro 64 bit seems to be the best
choice


The system will be used for
Desktop publishing ( I write large illustrated books - ~1000 pages, 100's of
photos)
Database simulations (Oracle 11g)
Digital Audio Workstation
Website design
Image editing: Picasa, Photoshop
VMware
File and print server
Office network control center
Open Office, Acrobat, PageMaker
email and internet
Movies (viewing)
gaming (but this is a tertiary function) will not run dual cards

It is desired to be able to perform many of these functions concurrently.


If there are cables or other things needed please add them to the quote - It is
my intention to spend around 1000$ (flexible) - but price is third behind
functionality (2) and reliability (1)

The general description of what I need is a Work Station - I am an engineer
(senior design engineer in IT). I don't want to skip any details that will
require time and attention soon after purchase. The system will be on 99% of the
time - so reliability and high MTTF is essential. I am delegating this work
because I don't have time to do it myself.

*I would like RAID 1 on the storage hard drive side - would like about 320
GB usable of 7200 rpm disk storage with large cache buffer on drives. If you
have different packaging for components w/o unneeded retail accessories, this
would be great.

Upgrades would consist of adding additional disks and software - possible - I do
not expect to change Video, CPU or MB during life of system (enough PS power to
support two additional disks needed)

Expect a 5 yr system service life - normal warrantee is fine - but parts should
have minimum 50,000 hrs MTTF (I understand fans may wear out sooner). I would
expect several years of trouble free service from this system.

[astralis]

speaking of alienware, anybody own one? how reliable is it? one of my friends said that it was one of those "used to be good, but..."

[USSWisconsin]

speaking of alienware, anybody own one? how reliable is it? one of my friends said that it was one of those "used to be good, but..."

I've seen them, they are very fast and cool, never owned one - I looked at them recently and was surprised now they had come down in price - used to be way up there - now they are priced very competitively. I wonder about quality. They still get good performance reviews - but reliability is a question in my mind too.

[gunnut]

speaking of alienware, anybody own one? how reliable is it? one of my friends said that it was one of those "used to be good, but..."

Laptop or desktop? I think bluesman bought a laptop from Alienware a few years ago. Desktop wise, you can probably build one that's better for the same price.

[Red Team]

speaking of alienware, anybody own one? how reliable is it? one of my friends said that it was one of those "used to be good, but..."

It's a good computer (laptop a bit prone to overheating in long periods) but a bit overpriced for what it offers you...but yeah like gunnut said could probably build a similar spec computer for around half the price.

[bolo121]

Thanks for you insights, your recommendations sound very good for a normal advanced gaming user wanting a PC in this performance range, this won't be a game machine - I wish I had read your advice before I ordered - The case and PS reliability concern me a bit - but I specifically wanted a 450-500W PS - this is the one my preferred builder had in that size - with the specs I wanted (dual rail - large 135mm low speed fan). The case was selected on price and features (specs and photos).

I do have confidence in this builder (no time to do this - last few builds sat around too long being built - and one build never got finished - damn Athlon bare silicon CPU kept breaking when I put the heat sink on it - I finally gave it to someone whole had time to mess around replacing bad parts - they finished it and it performed pretty good... I like the AMD A10 core - it is perfect for my use (6 cores will serve me better in heavy multitasking than 4 faster cores with hyper threading, I agree, Intel would be faster for games) - that is what in in Cray Computers these days (the super scalar ones). The video card was very reasonable due to its place in the age curve, and will do what I want it to - a 6670 was in the original request - but it was out of stock. A work station like I really want - HP Xeon/Quattro or Cylestica-Cray Opteron/Quattro with similar performance would cost nearly 10 times as much. An i7 machine (which is what this chip is competing with in relevant bench marks) would be nearly twice as much, and on the benchmarks that matter most for me - it would not be much better (not worth the cost, IMO). For the average person RAID is not necessary - but managing backups is too much effort for me these days - I do intend to get an automated remote disk backup system after the disk mess. I have lost too many hard drives full of precious stuff - RAID is something I want on this machine - I work with RAID every day - and it will give some extra read performance and data security in my application: realtime, easy to recover backups in most catastrophes.

I don't want to pay for the ideal solutions (and am tired of remote connections timing out on the workstations I have available at work) and I am also interesting in having another AMD (had some good ones in the past the K5 was very good at one time) - part of it is being different.

Another thing that is import to me is a reliable builder - I have dealt with this one for 8 yrs and always had good service (I help a lot of friends and relatives get computers, normally business or basic home systems). I used to build elaborate machines myself - but I don't have time for that, and I am not a Windows Systems engineer anymore - I work with big unix servers these days - on the software end.

Here is the specs I presented -

Ok I see yes, if you look at it from a multi threaded heavy load professional workstation point of view, what you said makes very good sense.

Its great that you have a reliable builder, out here in the subcontinent its super difficult to get a decent builder who wont try to rob you blind.
Many people i know pay the extra for a branded PC just to get the warranty and service cover.