Be Excellent To Each Other

The PC at work has blowedupdiedpoofkaput so I'm thinking, sell my home PC to work and get something spiffy from ebuyer. But then is it really worth it?

Reasons to get a new Pc:

Watch nice high definition stuff from my PC as my old one isn't quite powerful enough for the 1080p version of Fifth Element that I have downloaded.

Make red alert 3 prettier.

Make dvd-avi conversion much faster. (something I do quite a lot)

It'd be cool.

Reasons not to:

I don't really need a new pc and it's less than a year since my last upgrade.

Red Alert 3, though not spectacular on my current PC, plays perfectly fine even if the graphics aren't as good as C+C3.

Will the DVD-avi conversion really be that much faster on a quad core intel chip?

Will a just a new graphics card enable the hd playback?

If I do go for it, I've probably got a budget of about £350 total for a new PC, so any suggestions are welcome.

Oh yes, this is what they are built to do. Depends on the software and what you've used before, but with some decent multithreaded programming, it'll fly.



Any of the new generation of GFX down to the entry level have some HD acceleration, again with the right software hooks.

Is £350 enough? The quad-core will cost about £100, then about £100 for the MB to run it, £50 for RAM, £100 far an okay GFX card and you've got no money for a case or hard drives.

Usually I use DVDx and DiVX to convert DVD-avi. When I do so it detects two cpus on my dual core athlon 3800. I expect it would detect 4 on the Intel.

Intel are better than AMD these days, right?

Very much so. I'm a fan of AMD so it's a shame, but the new Intel chips knock them for six.

Right, to Ebuyer then!

Again with the point that you don't seem to have budgeted much.

£400 was enough to upgrade my PC to a pretty toot'in level, assuming you're reusing most of your other components.

He's using his old PC for work though.

No, don't.

If you want to avoid mass-produced stuff, the Cyberpower configurators here begin at £250. You might be able to leave out some parts you have spares of (HD, etc) and tweak things to suit.

http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/syste ... m_builder/

...is the base model. And for all the fun I've had with my (somewhat posher) model I'd buy from there again, particularly seeing as one doesn't have to compromise with a single screw.

STOP! All very well but you need to make sure you can allocate enough memory per core and that the software can actually thread the processes to take advantage. Most software struggles to use 2 cores, let alone 4.

Final Cut Studio specifically comes with a special application that lets you split encoding between as many cores as you need. In fact I'm using it at this moment. It actually cuts the encoding job into bits and then sends different bits off to each core

So if you are buying a system for the encoding at least make sure you will get more than a small advantage over your old system.

I assumed he's not, as he mentioned 'selling his PC to work'.

Here is how I would spend the £350 on eBuyer:

Gigabyte Motherboard - £73.91
2.4 Core 2 Quad - £137.99
GeForce 8600GTS - £47.25
2GB semi-decent RAM - £36.36
250GB Hard Drive - £29.99 x 2 (for RAID fun)

Right, how much have I got left for a case..? -£5.51. Arse. Well, here's one for £14 with a PSU - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151904

+ Optical Drive + Keyboard + Mouse + Monitor + (Legally Obtained and Licensed OS - Ed)

Well I've no way of knowing for sure I suppose.

I figure £350 should about cover the components.

After all I don't have to buy hard drives for it, I've got plenty of those around. Although space has been getting a bit tight lately.

Motherboard and ram shouldn't come to much more than £100, processor is about £140. That leaves around £100 spare for other stuff like Graphics. Though a gfx card is going to get to close to £100 if I buy a really good one. But do I need a really good one?

My current PC can encode a 90 minute film in maximum divx quality setting in around 2 1/2 hours.

WHAT SHOULD I DO??

I need a PC quick so that I can get back to seeding things on Cinemageddon..

HD speed can impact a system hugely remember.

The motherboard is the key to your entire system - get the best one you can*. And what Chinny said about the HDD - go for a RAID setup if possible.

And yes, I completely forgot about an optical drive in the stuff I listed above - mind you, you probably have one of those lying around, same with keyboards and mice.

*An old rule of thumb used to be to divide your budget by 3, then spend that amount on your MB, Processor and GFX card. Then spend more money to buy the rest of the stuff.

Wait another year, spend double that, do it properly.

Realistic-feex

What about if I wait 2 and spend double that?

I don't need a DVD writer. I can use my old one. I need a new case to put the old gubbins in, but it's going to be at the market so it doesn't matter if it's noisy as hell.

I don't really understand RAID. I know basically what it is but still..
?
One mode makes two disks act like one and one makes both the same or something right? Which mode are you suggesting?

RealFix^TM

If you want zippity speed, use the 'two disks act like one' (striping). If you want to safeguard your data, use 'both the same' (mirroring).
I'd go for striping + a backup solution of some kind.
If you had a huge budget, you'd get four drives and have both.

Maybe I should buy an Amstrad instead

Nah, if you're not getting a monitor £700 will buy you everything easy.

That would depend entirely on how you define 'properly' (or 'easy').

Is the two disks as one mode faster because of loading data in paralell or something?

Yup.

Would such a mode be recognised at startup then and make windows load faster? Also I was thinking about getting the 4GB corsair ram for about £40. Corsair's a good make, right?

RAID is handled by the motherboard. You have to set it up, but that's easy-peasy with modern boards.
4GB of RAM for £40? Is it the right kind of RAM?

It's slower than your suggestion (800mhz) but it won't make that huge a difference right?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130429

As long as it fits, it should be okay.
It will make a difference, but not a huge one.

mine eyes!

/bans self

what would be really cool is mini badgers from the badger badger song

All together now:

mushroom, mushroom.

THREAD HIJACK ALERT!

Fuck me my head hurts.

even on my 22", those banana's fill the fucking screen!

They'd fill a 100" screen - it's the resolution that's important

alright smarty pants. 1680x1050... they still fill the screen.

Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring.... Bananaphone!

Doop dooby dooby do!

Sometimes I answer the phone to my gf and say 'bananaphone!' in the appropriate style. She doesn't like it. I keep doing it.

Cause-and-effect FeeX.

Is it one of these?

Doop dooby dooby do!

Cellular, modular, interactivodular!