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Ste Manns

Ste Manns

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Hi everyone.

Please excuse any typos I'm posting this from my phone..

Our Mac has died, the backup disk was plugged in at the time and that's also died..lost a lot of my image Raw files, all my music etc etc. It's a shame about the images but what stings most is we've lost most of the personal images of my little girl growing up. Anyway I'm working on some data recovery, time will tell if we can get some of it back. There was a massive power cut nearby and I think this may have caused the failures. Our backup procedure wasn't robust I know but it's happened.

Anyway. I've been looking around for a new editing machine and my brain is frazzled. I used to feel quite knowledgeable when it came to PC specs but things have moved on somewhat since I last bought one! We've not got a fantastic budget - around £500 ish and we need some spare for a good monitor (we can stretch a bit I think). I have built my own machines in the long distant past but We'd prefer a built system, just don't have the time or energy to re learn everything that I've forgotten about building them. So, I'm still looking around but I would be very grateful if anyone could offer some suggestions for a good editing pc and where to buy. I prefer dealing with a human in a shop with pound notes really but if it has to be online so be it. CCL appear to have some good deals and they're local to me but the cheaper machines are mostly AMD based. I thought an AMD 6 core might be good until I read a few reviews last night and now I'm not so sure! See! I need help!

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Ste
 
Intels (at least the ix-xxxx variety) beat AMD hands down on instructions per cycle. It's generally felt that 1 Intel CPU = 2 AMD CPUs at the same clock frequency for most general purpose work. For stuff like video encoding, where you can use all CPUs all the time, it's closer to 1:1. Consequently, the general advice is go with Intel.

If it were me, I'd aim for something cheap and cheerful now with a decent monitor (if you are doing any photo editing, a decent monitor is a must). nrg_it are selling Dell U2412Ms on Ebay for £179, leaving you £320 for a PC (which isn't much). My machine recommendation would depend on your OS situation. If you have an old retail copy of Windows7 or would be happy running a variant of Linux, you could go for a machine with no OS which would get you a better machine for the price. I'd plump for something like this: http://www.ebuyer.com/395308-zoostorm-desktop-pc-7873-1074 which at £350 is a bit over budget. It's not going to have a brilliant PSU and the fans may be a bit noisy but these are really easy to change at a later date. You would also need mouse and keyboard, but you have a decent processor, good disk size and 8G of memory. When you had recovered from the spend, you could put a decent PSU in there and some cheap & quiet fans to quieten it down a bit. These are real easy things to change.
 
Thanks guys. I can go a bit over budget but not much.

I went to two PC World outlets last night just for a look. They seemed remarkably devoid of PC's. They seem to have shifted to tvs and coffee machines. Anyway what is clear is the boxes they do have are way under spec compared to online.

The machine will be mainly for editing and office tasks, we aren't into games but it needs wifi for internet too.

I will look at the links when I get home, only get 100mb of data on my contract!

Please keep suggestions coming it is very much appreciated.

Ste
 
I wouldn't discount all your data just yet. Chances are at least one of the drives will be readable. Get them out of all casings and plug in to your new pc via SATA cables. You may wish to use linux for any recovery, copying etc, as windows are rubbish reading a HFS drive, let alone doing anything more complex without mega expensive software.

For your backups consider another external drive at a different location, or cloud service. That is the only reliable way. A disk at the same location only covers against some failures, but not theft, fire, etc.
Also consider extension lead with surge protector or UPS unit.
 
daugirdas said:
I wouldn't discount all your data just yet. Chances are at least one of the drives will be readable. Get them out of all casings and plug in to your new pc via SATA cables. You may wish to use linux for any recovery, copying etc, as windows are rubbish reading a HFS drive, let alone doing anything more complex without mega expensive software.

For your backups consider another external drive at a different location, or cloud service. That is the only reliable way. A disk at the same location only covers against some failures, but not theft, fire, etc.
Also consider extension lead with surge protector or UPS unit.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've got some data recovery software running on the drive so fingers crossed. I have a feeling we experienced a "brown outage" caused by the power cut nearby. Surge protection doesn't protect against that! Its just unfortunate that our backup drive was plugged in at the time. In future we're going to be a lot more paranoid. A UPS would have been the answer but we can't afford one of those.
 
Ste Manns said:
Yeah I've got some data recovery software running on the drive so fingers crossed. I have a feeling we experienced a "brown outage" caused by the power cut nearby. Surge protection doesn't protect against that! Its just unfortunate that our backup drive was plugged in at the time. In future we're going to be a lot more paranoid. A UPS would have been the answer but we can't afford one of those.
Click to expand...

You can't afford not to have a ups. You can get single pc ones for about £50 ish. APC do one. It's a false economy as you've sadly discovered.

Is mac not booting at all? I noticed mine would fritz if it was unplugged from the mains. Sometimes just leaving them plugged in but turned off for 24 hours and trying them again can make them boot.
 
srichards said:
You can't afford not to have a ups. You can get single pc ones for about £50 ish. APC do one. It's a false economy as you've sadly discovered.

Is mac not booting at all? I noticed mine would fritz if it was unplugged from the mains. Sometimes just leaving them plugged in but turned off for 24 hours and trying them again can make them boot.
Click to expand...

I know I need one :-(

I came home from work to find the mac wouldnt boot up at all. The screen flickers a bit, you can see the apple just and then you get the orange screen of death so something is very dead inside. Advice suggests the hdd and the ram at least, and most likely the motherboard. It might be useful as a monitor later but as money is tight I can't afford to spend on expensive adaptors until later. Apparently there is a vga to minidisplay port adaptor available. I'm not bothered about the mac really, its over 4 yrs old now so not really worth spending money on for the time being. I can look into fixing it later. What I need to do is get the best pc I can with the money I have available. I can always upgrade later on as funds become available I suppose.

Thanks everyone.
 
Can't advise on which PC to get, but if you plan on getting something you may upgrade later, avoid getting a Dell, as they have a history of using some non standard parts (namely PSU's and motherboards).

In regards to a UPS, if you can't afford one now, get yourself a good surge protected power strip. You can get these for as little as £10. On another note, have you checked o see if your computer is overhead on your home insurance?
 
Ste Manns said:
I know I need one :-(

I came home from work to find the mac wouldnt boot up at all. The screen flickers a bit, you can see the apple just and then you get the orange screen of death so something is very dead inside. Advice suggests the hdd and the ram at least, and most likely the motherboard. It might be useful as a monitor later but as money is tight I can't afford to spend on expensive adaptors until later. Apparently there is a vga to minidisplay port adaptor available. I'm not bothered about the mac really, its over 4 yrs old now so not really worth spending money on for the time being. I can look into fixing it later. What I need to do is get the best pc I can with the money I have available. I can always upgrade later on as funds become available I suppose.

Thanks everyone.
Click to expand...

Did it have AppleCare on it when it was younger? I'd try a visit to a Genius Bar and see what they can do. Give them your best sad face and 'its Christmas' pleading look and see what happens. If they don't budge just tell them it leaves no option but to buy a PC. See if that breaks them :)
 
Everything in my home with a hard disk is attached to a UPS, including the sky+ box and freeview recorder, I have three of them dotted around various rooms.

They actually came from ebuyer before I'd heard about upstrader on ebay.
 
I'll be sorting out ups and surge protection, and more robust backup procedures. Does anyone have any more pc recommendations? I think on advice already given it will be an intel chip, at least 4 gb ram..

I'm not going to discount self build if people could help me spec the parts?
 
Ste Manns said:
I'll be sorting out ups and surge protection, and more robust backup procedures. Does anyone have any more pc recommendations? I think on advice already given it will be an intel chip, at least 4 gb ram..

I'm not going to discount self build if people could help me spec the parts?
Click to expand...

Make that 16GB; it only costs £60 from Crucial and is very useful. i7 quad core is nice, and maybe an SSD. I'd get Intel motherboards with all standard wifi and perhaps integrated graphics as they are certainly very capable. That will stop any issues with BIOS, problems running linux, random overheats and etc. For display you want displayport 1.2, dual link dvi or at least HDMI, and certainly USB3 for all the rest.
 
daugirdas said:
Make that 16GB; it only costs £60 from Crucial and is very useful. i7 quad core is nice, and maybe an SSD. I'd get Intel motherboards with all standard wifi and perhaps integrated graphics as they are certainly very capable. That will stop any issues with BIOS, problems running linux, random overheats and etc. For display you want displayport 1.2, dual link dvi or at least HDMI, and certainly USB3 for all the rest.
Click to expand...

Did you see my budget? An i7 is out, I think I could stretch to an i5, maybe.

Thanks :)
 
Hiya Ste , a friend helped me build mine . All bits from ccl , we spent around an hour in there picking the bits and seeing if they had any bits in there deal section . I opted for a amd quad 3ghz I think . 4mb ram and a 2mb geforce card . If only I had spent some more on a faster hd . Other than that it runs very quick . Open cs3 in about 8-10 seconds .
 
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Hi John how are you these days?

I think a trip to CCL is in order. I've had a bit of a browse tonight, and although I have found a few cheaper options overall CCL appear to offer good deals, and they're on my doorstep. Hopefully someone there will be in a helpful mood and advise me on components for a self build.
 
I'm good thanks . Just make sure you get the correct ram for the board as they don't take it back if it's wrong . I can't remember the full SPEC of mine , but it seems quick and cost me around £350 I think. I have kept it free from rubbish though and even keep all files on external hd . I've even considered an sshd to put windows on to speed it up even more
 
Quick update...

I'm currently recovering all our files using Photo Recover. This wonderful piece of software is free and works. :)

The Mac may well be repairable but for now we've replaced it with a PC from CCL - seriously recommend these guys. It's an i5 system with Gigabyte m/b and 8Gb of RAM, we had to scrimp on the monitor for now but will upgrade soon.

Thanks for all the help anyway :)

Ste
 
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