[OT] Custom computers

[Björnke von Gierke]

I built all my gaming pc's from scratch, as well as some machines for workplaces.

The tasks you are planning to do is the deciding factor.

For mail, word processing, livecode and basic photoshop you do not need a quad core. Actually, almost any new processor will be overdoing it. Not that is in any way a bad thing ;)

for indesign, movie editing, high end gaming and some audio task you want a top half cpu (in cost). Much money can be saved if you go for the second or third fastest processor, no matter which brand. Although the speed of a year ago, those are sufficient to run almost everything, at a fraction of the top-tier product offerings. (They do that to milk the "best stuff is the only stuff" crowd)

A similar rule applies to ram, and graphics card (if you do not do 3d, a integrated graphic card will be enough). 

In hard disks, if you're cost sensitive, nothing beats default one disk setups. raids are sometimes hard to setup, and solid state disks are horribly costly. So if you don't do video editing, want the geek factor, or play games with lots of loading time, I'd suggest against those.

Note that the i7 is a virtual 8 core processor. you can disable the virtual cores via BIOS settings, and get a small advantage for single core tasks due to that (ie. livecoded stuff). Dunnow if the same thing goes for AMD.

On 2 Dec 2010, at 17:43, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> I was looking for a beefy quad core system and my brother convinced me that the cost savings and customizability makes it well worth the time to assemble the parts.
> 
> So I'm curious:  How many of you here have built your own computers? Did you go with a barebones, or do it from scratch?  Did you go with Intel or AMD, and why?
> 
> I'm leaning toward AMD myself given what appears to be an excellent price/performance value, and will likely build from scratch because I'm picky about the case.
> 
> Seems a surprising number of people I know build their own systems, kinda makes me wonder why I ever bought an off-the-shelf PC.