What computer do you use

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artona

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Just wondering what computers people use, why and how they get on with them?

We are talking about completely changing our set up. Last year we bought a duo core PC, new from a dealer in Newark. Needed it in a rush as a laptop had gone down and having no idea of pricing paid #350 for what seemed like a good spec. Now with a bit more knowledge we realise all the components were dead cheap which is why it occasionally packs up for a rest.

Been using an early G5 mac for a while which is very stable and we are considering going over to mac completely. Macs though are expensive and we wonder if we spend that money on a quality PC would it be as good. We bought from a bankrupt auction a couple of Dell 450 workstation. They date back to 2005 but work superbly but with only 1gig of ram need upgrading and being early ram its expensive, not sure about spending £200 on ram for a 2005 pc.

Whats everyone using?

stew
 
Older ram can be very expensive and older motherboards can't always take much of it.

As to what pc, I build my own to the best spec I can afford and it's constantly evolving as I upgrade components.
 
Sniffing1987 said:
Why would you need to spend £200? RAM is relatively inexpensive, have a look on here.
Click to expand...

will check later on, got crucial to do a scan of the system and £200 is what they came up with but maybe misco is cheaper, thanks

stew
 
As you say Mac dont do low end so you have no choice but to spend £600+ if going with them.

Ideally you should build but if you dont want the hassle of learning how,
pre-builts are fine.
Things to look for: Vista home premium not basic
Ram, at least 2Gb, prefereably 4Gb, dont get 1Gb
Intel's do three types of processor, Celeron, Pentium and Core2. In that order from worst to best (they also do i7 but it is probably out of your price range)
Hard drive space - up to you really
Graphic card - anything will do unless you are gaming

Now Dells are good value for money, but then dont sell 64bit versions of Vista, all 32bit. So what that means is you are limited to using about 3.5Gb of ram, regardless of how much you fit, which might not be a problem now, but 4Gb is almost standard and in a few years you may be feeling stuck.
So Mesh computers are a good solution, with the 64bit OS.


As for your current memory, go here run CPU-Z and hit the memory tab, it will tell you a good range of info that you can use to figure out what you need to upgrade. And just post a screen shot if your stuck

p.s its difficult to give computer advice without knowing your level of knowledge so dont take offence if anything i've said seems complicated or basic.
 
Steep said:
Older ram can be very expensive and older motherboards can't always take much of it.

As to what pc, I build my own to the best spec I can afford and it's constantly evolving as I upgrade components.
Click to expand...

thanks steep. Back in the 80s I took time off from photography and I was buying up as many amstrads as I could get, fitting a state of the art 20 meg (yes meg not gig lol) hard drive and selling them for a healthy profit. Then some bloke in America revealed windows and it put me out of business lol.

So I reckon I could build my own but when I look at ebuyer for example it is just so confusing to know what to go for, can you make a few suggestions please

stew
 
Blue Eagle said:
As you say Mac dont do low end so you have no choice but to spend £600+ if going with them.
Click to expand...

Unless you buy second hand... mine was a flebay purchase, G5 tower, runs everything fine. Photomatix can be a little slow, but I remember running photoshop on an LC2.
 
Blue Eagle said:
As you say Mac dont do low end so you have no choice but to spend £600+ if going with them.

Ideally you should build but if you dont want the hassle of learning how,
pre-builts are fine.
Things to look for: Vista home premium not basic
Ram, at least 2Gb, prefereably 4Gb, dont get 1Gb
Intel's do three types of processor, Celeron, Pentium and Core2. In that order from worst to best (they also do i7 but it is probably out of your price range)
Hard drive space - up to you really
Graphic card - anything will do unless you are gaming

Now Dells are good value for money, but then dont sell 64bit versions of Vista, all 32bit. So what that means is you are limited to using about 3.5Gb of ram, regardless of how much you fit, which might not be a problem now, but 4Gb is almost standard and in a few years you may be feeling stuck.
So Mesh computers are a good solution, with the 64bit OS.


As for your current memory, go here run CPU-Z and hit the memory tab, it will tell you a good range of info that you can use to figure out what you need to upgrade. And just post a screen shot if your stuck

p.s its difficult to give computer advice without knowing your level of knowledge so dont take offence if anything i've said seems complicated or basic.
Click to expand...

Mesh look good. This model would cost about the same as we were looking at spending on a new Imac

R2S - XGS i7 920
Base Price £799.00
Additional Items:
upgrade 79776 26" Iiyama Prolite E2607WS-B1 (1920x1200) Full HD Monitor - (HDMI,DVI,Analogue,WS,Spkrs-2ms) [£300.00] Remove
accessory 51779 6-Socket Surge Protection [£19.80] Remove
accessory 168967 Complete 12 Month BullGuard Internet Security License (3 User Edition) [£20.00] Remove
Removed Items:

Base Price £799.00 inc VAT
Additional Items £390.77 inc VAT
Removed Items £0.00 inc VAT
Total £1189.77 inc VAT
 
JonnyWoo said:
It will hav advised what type/speed etc. you need, I may be able to help (PM me hen you have details)
Click to expand...

looking for as fast as I can get, with as much memory as possible, with as good a componants as I can get for as little as I can get :D:D:D Bet you have heard that before :D:D:D

What can you offer?

stew
 
68lbs said:
Unless you buy second hand... mine was a flebay purchase, G5 tower, runs everything fine. Photomatix can be a little slow, but I remember running photoshop on an LC2.
Click to expand...

I have looked at the G5s powermacs on the worlds premier auction house :) There was a 2.5ghz dual with 16 gigs of ram for about £750. The powermacs were pre intel chip and some are saying that the intel is miles faster. I like the look of the powermacs especially since the macpros are still over £2000, whats your view on an Imac intel chip verses a powermac non intel. The imacs seem to be limited to 4 gigs of ram so 16 gigs must be more powerful??

stew
 
artona said:
I have looked at the G5s powermacs on the worlds premier auction house :) There was a 2.5ghz dual with 16 gigs of ram for about £750. The powermacs were pre intel chip and some are saying that the intel is miles faster. I like the look of the powermacs especially since the macpros are still over £2000, whats your view on an Imac intel chip verses a powermac non intel. The imacs seem to be limited to 4 gigs of ram so 16 gigs must be more powerful??

stew
Click to expand...

There is no point at all in 16Gb with a dual core. Intel is MILES faster than powermac. If you are spending £750 then you could easily get a quad core, 4Gb of ram and a nice big screen.

What we need is a budget you say you are looking at as fast as possible for as little as possible, well what you do is pick a price and see what you can get with it.

Or if you arent concerned price wise, decide what you need it to be able to do, pick the parts around that and then decide if that is too much or too little. Very simple, but we need a price.
 
Now Dells are good value for money, but then dont sell 64bit versions of Vista, all 32bit.
Click to expand...

wrong.

dell do supply vista 64 on selected machines for no additional cost (on those i found).

edit - in fact it looks like anything above a mid range optiplex gives you the 64 bit option

edit 2 - the lower end (under mid range vostro) laptops have a surcharge.
 
Ask a hundred forum members for recommendation and you'll get 100 different answers, but here's mine anyway :)

Remember this is personal preference and yours may be different.
Firstly I wouldn't buy an operating system just now, download Windows7 64bit and buy it in october.

Monitor 26" Iiyama ProLite E2607WS-1 £275 (same as the mesh one for comparison)
Antec Nine Hundred case £75 Antec make good products
Antec PSU NEOPOWER 650W £76
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 810 2.6GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £157 I know nothing about Intel having always been an amd user.
Asus M4A78T-E AMD 790GX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express £99
Corsair 4GB PC2-8500 C5 XMS2 (2 x 2GB) £48 you'll need the 64bit o/s to make use of 4gb
nVidia PCI-E 9800GT 1GB graphics card £92 a few months ago this would have been a top of the range gaming card at many hundreds of pounds. Now it's well affordable.
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD DVD-ROM £80 Bit of future proofing and by far the cheapest way to get a bluray player.
500Gb Samsung EcoGreen F2 SATA-2 Hard Drive £38
Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard £107 I have the earlier version of this keyboard and love it.
Microsoft Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack Technology £42 MS make the best mice imo.

All in that would be say £1100 including delivery.
 
Blue Eagle said:
There is no point at all in 16Gb with a dual core. Intel is MILES faster than powermac. If you are spending £750 then you could easily get a quad core, 4Gb of ram and a nice big screen.

What we need is a budget you say you are looking at as fast as possible for as little as possible, well what you do is pick a price and see what you can get with it.

Or if you arent concerned price wise, decide what you need it to be able to do, pick the parts around that and then decide if that is too much or too little. Very simple, but we need a price.
Click to expand...

There is no upper limit but there is no point in just throwing money away. There will be no gaming just photo processing using photoshop. The unit will often have to be doing a number of things for example I am currently typing this post, photoshop is processing an image, Qimage is printing to a dye sub 50 12 inch prints and there are at least a dozen windows open

stew
 
Steep said:
Ask a hundred forum members for recommendation and you'll get 100 different answers, but here's mine anyway :)

Remember this is personal preference and yours may be different.
Firstly I wouldn't buy an operating system just now, download Windows7 64bit and buy it in october.

Monitor 26" Iiyama ProLite E2607WS-1 £275 (same as the mesh one for comparison)
Antec Nine Hundred case £75 Antec make good products
Antec PSU NEOPOWER 650W £76
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 810 2.6GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £157 I know nothing about Intel having always been an amd user.
Asus M4A78T-E AMD 790GX (Socket AM3) PCI-Express £99
Corsair 4GB PC2-8500 C5 XMS2 (2 x 2GB) £48 you'll need the 64bit o/s to make use of 4gb
nVidia PCI-E 9800GT 1GB graphics card £92 a few months ago this would have been a top of the range gaming card at many hundreds of pounds. Now it's well affordable.
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD DVD-ROM £80 Bit of future proofing and by far the cheapest way to get a bluray player.
500Gb Samsung EcoGreen F2 SATA-2 Hard Drive £38
Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard £107 I have the earlier version of this keyboard and love it.
Microsoft Explorer Mouse with BlueTrack Technology £42 MS make the best mice imo.

All in that would be say £1100 including delivery.
Click to expand...

thanks steep. What do you use it for and how does it stand up

stew
 
artona said:
whats your view on an Imac intel chip verses a powermac non intel.
Click to expand...

I'm no expert and don't get bogged down in all this technical stuff. For me, my Mac is a tool to do a job. Real world, I use one of two Intel imacs at work, and have the aforementioned G5 at home... and I don't really find a lot between them tbh. If I was doing intensive photoshop work on VERY large files it might be different, but for web size work, general photosharing and browsing, plus running of all the usual spreadsheets/word/etc, then I am happy with either.

I wouldn't have a clue when it comes to gaming though.

Oh... my G5 does sometimes stutter with youtube videos, but I'm not sure whether that's down to hardware, internet connection, or crap video in the first place.
 
artona said:
will check later on, got crucial to do a scan of the system and £200 is what they came up with but maybe misco is cheaper, thanks

stew
Click to expand...

I got 2 GB of RAM from Crucial for £85 and that was dearer than many have to pay.
Depends on your mother board.

£200 is verging on a price that would tip me towards a new pc,
 
My PC is an old AMD X2 DC 4400+, 2 gig and a 7800GTX. Cost me approx £1300 when I built it 5 years ago and still going strong.

Whenever I need to do a build for someone I pop along to overclockers.co.uk forum, post in the general hardware section something along the lines of "I have XXX to spend and I want to use it for XXX", you'll get several responses all listing stuff from that store, however, if you shop around for the same components you can get it cheaper :D
 
artona said:
thanks steep. What do you use it for and how does it stand up

stew
Click to expand...

artona, my pc is similar to that and is way over specced for what I need it for. It handles image editing, internet, office and what gaming I do standing on it's head.
 
68lbs said:
I'm no expert and don't get bogged down in all this technical stuff. For me, my Mac is a tool to do a job. Real world, I use one of two Intel imacs at work, and have the aforementioned G5 at home... and I don't really find a lot between them tbh. If I was doing intensive photoshop work on VERY large files it might be different, but for web size work, general photosharing and browsing, plus running of all the usual spreadsheets/word/etc, then I am happy with either.

I wouldn't have a clue when it comes to gaming though.

Oh... my G5 does sometimes stutter with youtube videos, but I'm not sure whether that's down to hardware, internet connection, or crap video in the first place.
Click to expand...

Its the intensive photoshop work thats causing the problems. We create a lot of 24 inch x 20 inch canvas prints, created frm multiple layers. We also shoot a lot of images, I have just checked one folder of images from one morning and its 12 gig in size, it takes a lot to open that folder

stew
 
Steep said:
Ask a hundred forum members for recommendation and you'll get 100 different answers, but here's mine anyway :)


Antec PSU NEOPOWER 650W £76


.
Click to expand...

Wow, that figure alone would steer me away from any thoughts of buying a PC again :eek:

I have used Macs for years now. To me a PC is a noisy bloated box of oversized components held together with an awful operating system.
Thats my experience when fixing my Daughters and Mother in Laws Vista powered pc's. I speak as I find! ( :schtum: stands back and waits for the abuse)

Anyway, I use a 2.66ghz 20" iMac. Silent running and using less power than a 100watt lightbulb.(Info here) With no anti virus software either.

Allan
 
I use a Dell Dimension 5150, which i've had for just over two years,i upgraded the memory to 4GB and recently put in a 640GB hard drive,also recently the PSU packed up and i had to buy and fit another, apparently the PSU,s tend to go quite a bit on Dell,s so for that reason alone i wouldn't buy another, as they seem hard to come by, unless you buy from Dell themselves at extortionate prices.
 
allanm said:
Wow, that figure alone would steer me away from any thoughts of buying a PC again :eek:

I have used Macs for years now. To me a PC is a noisy bloated box of oversized components held together with an awful operating system.
Thats my experience when fixing my Daughters and Mother in Laws Vista powered pc's. I speak as I find! ( :schtum: stands back and waits for the abuse)

Anyway, I use a 2.66ghz 20" iMac. Silent running and using less power than a 100watt lightbulb.(Info here) With no anti virus software either.

Allan
Click to expand...

what sort of use do you put it to Allan

stew
 
allanm said:
Wow, that figure alone would steer me away from any thoughts of buying a PC again :eek:
Click to expand...

eh? that is a maximum rated output not a constant..

imac tech specs..

Maximum continuous power: 200W (20-inch model); 280W (24-inch models)
Click to expand...

granted its still less but as your link suggests they dont necessarily need to use all of that power.
 
allanm said:
Wow, that figure alone would steer me away from any thoughts of buying a PC again :eek:

I have used Macs for years now. To me a PC is a noisy bloated box of oversized components held together with an awful operating system.
Thats my experience when fixing my Daughters and Mother in Laws Vista powered pc's. I speak as I find! ( :schtum: stands back and waits for the abuse)

Anyway, I use a 2.66ghz 20" iMac. Silent running and using less power than a 100watt lightbulb.(Info here) With no anti virus software either.

Allan
Click to expand...

Haha, yes as neil_g mentioned that is the maximum power supplied, and it's unlikely a normal PC will go above 200 watts (unless you stick a massive graphics card or 4 in). Also remember an iMac is essentially a Laptop/desktop hybrid, when compared to a Mac pro there will be no difference as the hardware is identical.:)

As for the OP, lots of ram and lots of disk space, no need for a fancy graphics card (built into the motherboard would be fine).
 
exactly, you only really need 650w if youre running overclocks, and lots of internal hardware such as beefy graphics and lots of HDs.

i run my stock 2.2ghz, fairly big graphics htpc on a 380w and im damn sure it doesnt need all that..
 
neil_g said:
wrong.

dell do supply vista 64 on selected machines for no additional cost (on those i found).

edit - in fact it looks like anything above a mid range optiplex gives you the 64 bit option

edit 2 - the lower end (under mid range vostro) laptops have a surcharge.
Click to expand...

Lol, i stand corrected. From what i can see, inspirons are 32bit only, the option of XP. Studios are 32bit only. XPS's have the option of 64bit.

Anyway, the point for our friend is 64bit is the way to go.
 
yeah seems to be mid range machines and up that have the option for 64 bit. the lower end of that mid range appears to be a chargable upgrade where as the more expensive kit its free.

:)
 
Something similar to this system might do (though there are many other options so dont take this as the perfect solution)(all prices from overclockers.co.uk)

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 - £99.99
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66Ghz 8mb L2 cache - £134.99
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 6400C4 800MHz - £35.98
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 1TB - £58.64 x2
Coolermaster CM-690 - £62.99
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA - £17.99
OCZ StealthXStream 500w - £42.99
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4350 - £34.99
Samsung SM2433BW 24" Widescreen £212.99
Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM - £81.98

Total = £842.17

Comments: Quad core, 4gb of ram, huge screen and stacks of hard drive space are the main points. Went with the case because thats the one i'd get as it can take 7 120mm fans, so could be super quiet. I also went with the silent graphics card because you wont need much power if you aren't gaming and i like quiet stuff so why not have a silent one. The motherboard and PSU seem like good deals.

2 hard drives allows you to back up stuff across the two, though a better solution would be to get a NAS (network attached storage) and keep everything there with maybe a 500Gb physically in the computer but that could be expensive.

But you could change alot of that based on personal taste (eg the case/monitor)
 
Have a Dell quad core extreme, 4GB ram, 8800GTX and haven't had any problems with running anything including video encoding, video editing, high res photo editing and top end gaming.

The only bit which I feel could be improved is the hard drive, perhaps a 10,000rpm one would be nice :)
 
gman said:
Have a Dell quad core extreme, 4GB ram, 8800GTX and haven't had any problems with running anything including video encoding, video editing, high res photo editing and top end gaming.

The only bit which I feel could be improved is the hard drive, perhaps a 10,000rpm one would be nice :)
Click to expand...

Nope, they are pointless, 750Gb and 1Tb's are as fast, if not faster. SSD's are great though.
 
Blue Eagle said:
Something similar to this system might do (though there are many other options so dont take this as the perfect solution)(all prices from overclockers.co.uk)

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 - £99.99
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66Ghz 8mb L2 cache - £134.99
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 6400C4 800MHz - £35.98
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B 1TB - £58.64 x2
Coolermaster CM-690 - £62.99
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA - £17.99
OCZ StealthXStream 500w - £42.99
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4350 - £34.99
Samsung SM2433BW 24" Widescreen £212.99
Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM - £81.98

Total = £842.17

Comments: Quad core, 4gb of ram, huge screen and stacks of hard drive space are the main points. Went with the case because thats the one i'd get as it can take 7 120mm fans, so could be super quiet. I also went with the silent graphics card because you wont need much power if you aren't gaming and i like quiet stuff so why not have a silent one. The motherboard and PSU seem like good deals.

2 hard drives allows you to back up stuff across the two, though a better solution would be to get a NAS (network attached storage) and keep everything there with maybe a 500Gb physically in the computer but that could be expensive.

But you could change alot of that based on personal taste (eg the case/monitor)
Click to expand...

many thanks for the effort put into the listing, fantastic. And thanks for all everyone elses comment as well, plenty to think about


stew
 
My last two PC's have been from Mesh and before that Dan. Mesh seem to produce good quality kit with real, not clone inners. We've also got and iMac of the same age to my current XP Mesh and of the two the Mesh is the esay winner. Cheaper, no stupid vertical CD drive (the iMac overheats after a couple of hours) that can only load standard disks and loads of free software. I was very hopeful of a sudden revelation when we got the iMac but it does most things the PC can but at more cost and puts Form (rotten keyboard) before function. A real disappointment for me at least.
 
Like the look of some of the overclockers machines. I really love the macs.

At present I use the pc to create the images as its faster and then transfer them to the imac we have to print them. Haven't a clue why but the 24 inch canvas prints that come of the HP3100 when put through the mac driver are better than from the PC.

I think we have ruled out the powermacs as there are some programs we use that are PC only and it would be a pain to keep a pc just for those. So its down to an Imac or a top of the range machine from overclockers. Although I am confident of building my own machine I do not think we will go that route

stew
 
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