build your own pc (2 Viewers)

[Entrant]

UHM, get a 4870X2, a i7980x, and 8gb of ddr3 1600 ram. seeing as you are pretty CPU heavy, but not very VPU heavy.

 

[Teclis]

UHM, get a 4870X2, a i7980x, and 8gb of ddr3 1600 ram. seeing as you are pretty CPU heavy, but not very VPU heavy.

Yea because you need a $1500 processor...

8GB of RAM is overkill... I do large music file editing, and my i7 and 6GB is still plenty... you dun need more than 4GB unless you're doing video editing/lots of heavy CAD work.

You obviously have never heard of a thing called money

 

[Gibbatron]

Nothing supports 6 cores atm anyway, the exception being specialised benchmark software. Especially not just for general uni work. Why pay $1500 for an extremely excessive overhead that ur never gonna use.

 

[appletoa]

You obviously have never heard of a thing called money

I think it's more that they haven't ever heard of a thing called a budget

Nothing supports 6 cores atm anyway, the exception being specialised benchmark software. Especially not just for general uni work. Why pay $1500 for an extremely excessive overhead that ur never gonna use.

Well, you have to consider that software develops quickly, along with the resources needed to run it. Spending some money adding things that might not be necessary now could save having to upgrade to a newer machine for a while longer, potentially saving money. For example, when I got the laptop I'm currently using (3 years ago now), the standard 1gb of ram was considered quite adequate for most things. I think if I'd kept it that way then I would have ended up buying a newer machine by now (this is a good train of thought to get parents into when you've got them considering paying for your upgrades, it worked for me )

Of course, that argument is pretty much neutered by the fact that the OP is obviously prepared to open up the machine, so it would be more cost effective to upgrade the parts down the track (well, my logic says that anyway). And considering that they have a limited amount of money to spend at the moment, I would say follow that option.

 

[Teclis]

Well actually there are plenty of programs that support 6 cores actually (i7 is 8 cores remember)... because it's all multi-threading and the operating system tasks those resources to the threads.

But I just don't know of any programs outside the professional field that NEED that kind of power!

 

[Gibbatron]

Well actually there are plenty of programs that support 6 cores actually (i7 is 8 cores remember)... because it's all multi-threading and the operating system tasks those resources to the threads.

But I just don't know of any programs outside the professional field that NEED that kind of power!

Yeh my bad. Wasn't thinking of hyper threading. But even with 8 cores operating the only time you ever need to use them to their fullest extent is in some pretty heavy cpu based rendering, because as you say their aren't any programs outside the professional side of things that need or can utilise that amount of threads.

There are no games out there that properly support 4 cores, let alone 8 (actually supreme commander might, and some of the soon-to-be-released ones).

Even rendering is beginning to be retasked from the cpu to the gpu (CUDA), if you were into video editing or something and had a nvidia card

 

[Teclis]

Yeh my bad. Wasn't thinking of hyper threading. But even with 8 cores operating the only time you ever need to use them to their fullest extent is in some pretty heavy cpu based rendering, because as you say their aren't any programs outside the professional side of things that need or can utilise that amount of threads.

There are no games out there that properly support 4 cores, let alone 8 (actually supreme commander might, and some of the soon-to-be-released ones).

Even rendering is beginning to be retasked from the cpu to the gpu (CUDA), if you were into video editing or something and had a nvidia card

Actually the only program I can think of that uses heaps of cores would be ProTools HD when you run out of processing power on an HD system

 

[SnowFox]

Yea because you need a $1500 processor...

8GB of RAM is overkill... I do large music file editing, and my i7 and 6GB is still plenty... you dun need more than 4GB unless you're doing video editing/lots of heavy CAD work.

You obviously have never heard of a thing called money

And im pretty sure its called GPU...

 

[Entrant]

a GPU is a weaker VPU, vice versa.
a VPU is basically an advanced GPU.

 

[SnowFox]

a GPU is a weaker VPU, vice versa.
a VPU is basically an advanced GPU.

define: VPU - Google Search

 

[proletariat]

Static band and someone to supervise, all you need is to shortout your CPU and snap the Motherboard putting PSU cables in.

ive built / modified heaps of desktops / laptops and never used a static band o.o


For what you're saying... I think you're best off getting something like a mobo with integrated graphics, core2duo (or even dual core if youre strapped for cash), 2 or 4 gb ram (1x1 / 2x2), a cheap, slutty 40 dollar case, a 20 dollar dvd drive and approx 2-4 TB of hard drive space

 

[aussie-boy]

This discussion is absurd. The OP wants to do uni work, listen to music and watch movies...
The computers of 10+ yrs ago could do all these things.

Unless you're doing an engineering/science/architecture course where you need to use complex software, you'd be wasting your money buying anything except the cheapest computer. Don't spend more than ~$500 (on the system itself)

Buy a big beautiful high-res LCD, some awesome speakers and a nice keyboard and mouse to go with it (these will last a lot longer than the computer itself)

Also remember that Microsoft sells Office Pro to students for $75 (itsnotcheating.com.au)