Building a PC

[loociddreemr]

I love building PCs. What's your primary function on the computer? Do you have a preference for any manufacturer? I see that you picked out an Intel based system. Any reason why? I guess just because I'm an AMD guy.  I am upgrading my dad's Intel pc right now. He has an "old" eMachine. Unfortunately when you go with one of the barebone kits or a ready to go pc, you might save a few bucks, but lose out on some crucial numbers in the specs.

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[loociddreemr]

By the way, I highly recommend newegg.com. guaranteed to be cheaper. With great customer service. Excellent shipping...

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[fxsarge]

A lot of people have talked about newegg.com so I will check them out.

My goal of the PC is to have something much more productive than a laptop. I want to be a let to play games, have a big touch screen monitor, possibly play around with Photoshop and things, and also hook it up to my 50" flat screen for media. I would like to replace my PS3 with it.

And the reason for Intel is that they've always seemed to be of the highest quality.  My Sony laptop is an amd and thats all I've  ever know.  I've had professor at school swear by Intel and he knows a lot about tech.

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[matt]

I assume anything on sale is flawed or soon to be updated. Bought a mb/cpu combo at Fry's long ago and after replacing the ps multiple times discovered a recall due to bad capacitors.

IF you can wait, look for the new haswell chipsets. New socket, better upgrade potential. For my purposes I'd be happy with a gaming ultrabook, after two years when I next upgrade, relegate it to htpc duty. I get cut on the bloody edge.

Maximumpc has pc builds periodically for budget, moderate, and insane levels.  Also deals on parts and systems, I check the main page daily.

Very few of the sales guys at electronic stores are very knowledgeable, or they would have better jobs!

Carpe diem, caveat emptor, soup du jour, cogito ergo sum. Imho. Semper fideles.

[loociddreemr]

Intel does put out some good quality products.  Unfortunately, you will pay for it.  You can get the same performance out of an AMD system at about a third of the cost.  They are going to be just as reliable as any Intel product.  The differerence is in pushing the envelope.  Intel has a slight edge on the technology.  So unless you are performing atom splitting calculations or running the graphics server for a gaming LAN, AMD can keep up.  Personally, I found AMD to be a bit more like android with the open customization.  I can even overclock my graphics card and tune my pc fans right from the supplied user interface.  I can attach certain application windows to a connected tv or monitor. 

[matt]

This looks interesting.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/07/asus-announces-the-transformer-aio-p1801-the-windows-8android-desktoptablet-hybrid-will-arrive-april-12th-for-1299/

[loociddreemr]

Heres an example

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113281

Very similar specs on this CPU and the one you selected.  They both include the GPU (video processing).  The AMD chip goes for a third of the price.  You will save on a compatible motherboard too. 

It is also possible to eliminate the need for a seperate discrete graphics card.  Unless you are doing intense gaming, the incorporated GPU will handle Blu-ray's and light gaming.  You could throw the extra dough that you would be spending on a graphics card into a slightly more powerful processor.  This is the case with both Intel and AMD cpu's. 

[loociddreemr]

Heres my two cents on memory.  I like to fill up all available slots for best performance.   Memory is rated at speed and timing.  In this case lets assume were speaking of DDR3 1600Mhz.  If your motherboard has a capacity of 32GB, I would purchase 4 x 8GB modules at the lowest possible timing.  Heres the thing, 4GB modules typically have lower timings than than 8GB modules.  So if you only plan on buying 16GB of memory, go with 4 X 4GB.  This will typically give you better performance than 2 X 8GB with the same DDR3 1600.   The factor that comes in here is if you want to upgrade the memory, you have to purchase all new modules.  I only leave slots empty if I plan on upgrading in the near future.

Now on hard drives, SSD is the way to go, but only for your operating system.  The daily use of writes to a SSD will eventually cause it to fail.  If it does fail, your data is practically irrecoverble. This is why people use an SSD for the OS and a traditional hard disk for everything else.  You will get the benefiits of a quick response, and a large ammount of safe storage.  Now larger a SSD will get better performance, but unless you are running massive games from them, you wont notice a difference, especially coming from a hard disk OS to begin with.