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Planning on building a computer but need some advice

by fisholiub
12 replies
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Hello Friends,

Can anyone help me for a pc configuration? I'd like to receive some advises from experts. What I'd need it's a really good machine which going to be used for work, multimedia and video editing and eventually Photoshop. I won't play with pc.
I was thinking a quadcore, 500 of harddrive space, 4 gigs of physical memory, etc.

What should be the configuration as well as the price around or less than $400?
Many thanks if you can help me with this, that should be all.
#building a computer #pc configuration
  • Profile picture of the author Kathy331
    I know someone who used this site and said the support was awesome. The builds are grouped into budgets and any questions are responded to quickly. PC Builds on a Budget - Custom PCs That Fit Your Needs
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    Originally Posted by fisholiub View Post

    Hello Friends,

    Can anyone help me for a pc configuration? I'd like to receive some advises from experts. What I'd need it's a really good machine which going to be used for work, multimedia and video editing and eventually Photoshop. I won't play with pc.
    I was thinking a quadcore, 500 of harddrive space, 4 gigs of physical memory, etc.

    What should be the configuration as well as the price around or less than $400?
    Many thanks if you can help me with this, that should be all.
    Not saying anything against Kathy or the suggestion. WHO KNOWS, maybe it's legit.

    YOU have the WRONG idea!

    QUADCORE? Do you realize that they range from VERY slow to very fast? Before you decide how many cores you want, you must FIRST decide what the cores should be.

    500GB? WHY!?!?!?!? TODAY, I wouldn't even CONSIDER building a system with less than a TB unless the like $50 you MIGHT save is THAT important.

    4GB of physical memory? AGAIN, I hope you mean main ram, and 4GB today is VERY little. Consider getting 8GB unless the $30 you MIGHT save is THAT important.

    That said, even with the specs I mentioned, the $400 is doable. BTW if you build it yourself, you may find that the motherboard can be a HUGE cost! Ironically, they have gotten SO complex that the range can be hundreds of dollars wide. Peripherals, features, and compatibility can change the price GREATLY. It is possible that it's selection can affect your case, and processor, choice. Processors have not necessarily been electrically compatible for decades.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Davebrab
      A couple of points to consider:

      First:
      Video editing, multimedia and Photoshop can all be very resource heavy. Do yourself a favor and do not go cheap on the RAM. 8GB should be a minimum and buy good quality ram. Do research because not all RAM is compatible with the processor you choose and the errors that result from the incompatibility are extremely frustrating.

      Second:
      Originally Posted by seasoned View Post

      QUADCORE? Do you realize that they range from VERY slow to very fast? Before you decide how many cores you want, you must FIRST decide what the cores should be.
      Steve
      Oh so true. Again you are looking for some heavy workloads. The more you require from your processor, the more that you will need. Again, do your research. Look for benchmark tests relevant to what you are planning to do.

      Third:
      I disagree with Steve on the Hard Drive size. 500GB should be fine for now. Expandable external memory is falling fast in price. If you are price conscious now, you can always add storage later when you need it. Spend your limited funds on the active hardware discussed above.

      Finally:
      Take a look at Pricewatch.com. They have bare bones systems that can make things easier for you and can save you money. I have always had good luck there, though it has been a while since I was last there.

      Good luck with your build.

      David
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      • Profile picture of the author fisholiub
        Originally Posted by Davebrab View Post

        A couple of points to consider:

        First:
        Video editing, multimedia and Photoshop can all be very resource heavy. Do yourself a favor and do not go cheap on the RAM. 8GB should be a minimum and buy good quality ram. Do research because not all RAM is compatible with the processor you choose and the errors that result from the incompatibility are extremely frustrating.

        Second:


        Oh so true. Again you are looking for some heavy workloads. The more you require from your processor, the more that you will need. Again, do your research. Look for benchmark tests relevant to what you are planning to do.

        Third:
        I disagree with Steve on the Hard Drive size. 500GB should be fine for now. Expandable external memory is falling fast in price. If you are price conscious now, you can always add storage later when you need it. Spend your limited funds on the active hardware discussed above.

        Finally:
        Take a look at Pricewatch.com. They have bare bones systems that can make things easier for you and can save you money. I have always had good luck there, though it has been a while since I was last there.

        Good luck with your build.

        David
        Thank you very much for all your advice and guidance. I really appreciate it.
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  • Profile picture of the author bizgrower
    Hard drive? Conventional or Solid State?
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    • Profile picture of the author Davebrab
      Originally Posted by bizgrower View Post

      Hard drive? Conventional or Solid State?
      In a perfect world, both. Run your operating system on a smaller Solid state to speed up background process and store data on a traditional rpm hard drive. The most cost effective approach is a single traditional drive, but there are many benefits to having both, not the least being if you need to wipe the operating system and start over, as happens from time to time (I try to do it every 6 months or so to keep the grime and crap from bogging things down), you already have your data backed up and just need to focus on the drive with the operating system. This is how many high end systems can run so efficiently. If it is not in the budget to do both, start with a traditional hard drive and add the solid state later.

      Hope that helps.

      David
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  • Profile picture of the author lanfear63
    Originally Posted by fisholiub View Post

    Hello Friends,

    Can anyone help me for a pc configuration? I'd like to receive some advises from experts. What I'd need it's a really good machine which going to be used for work, multimedia and video editing and eventually Photoshop. I won't play with pc.
    I was thinking a quadcore, 500 of harddrive space, 4 gigs of physical memory, etc.

    What should be the configuration as well as the price around or less than $400?
    Many thanks if you can help me with this, that should be all.
    As Seasoned rightly pointed out, the specs you are quoting would be a dream for 2007. Given that, you could just go go out and buy a tower in Walmart (or big box store of your choice) for $399.00 and have windows and a warranty.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joe Mobley
    Best Buy

    Clearance or Open Box

    Quad-core

    4 gigs of ram

    With bigger hard drive

    Laptop with 17" screen.

    Comes with full warranty, usually one year

    $300 - $325

    You wouldn't have to "build" anything and comes with operating system.

    Originally Posted by fisholiub View Post

    Hello Friends,

    ...

    I was thinking a quadcore, 500 of harddrive space, 4 gigs of physical memory, etc.

    What should be the configuration as well as the price around or less than $400?
    Many thanks if you can help me with this, that should be all.

    Joe Mobley
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    .

    Follow Me on Twitter: @daVinciJoe
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  • Profile picture of the author DJL
    Unless you're really into building it yourself for the fun of it, you're much better off buying a reasonably priced box with operating system & warranty, as others have suggested.

    One thing I would recommend, if possible: open up the case and figure out how easy it is to add or remove components.

    Recently, I installed a Blu-Ray burner in one of my Dell machines. I had to remove the power supply to get at the drive bay, but I had to remove the CPU cooler to get the power supply out of the way. Thoughtless design made the task much harder than it ought to be. I've seen other boxes where I had to remove memory sticks to change out a hard drive!

    As for solid-state drives, I'm not so sure they're ready for prime time yet. I had one from Intel recently that failed after two days! I've got WD hard drives that are rock-solid after eight years.

    If you get a Windows system (version 7 or up) the upgrade to Windows 10 is free for the next year, but I plan to wait at least a month and roll it out carefully, one machine at a time.
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    • Profile picture of the author fisholiub
      Thanks all for your feedback.
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by DJL View Post

      Unless you're really into building it yourself for the fun of it, you're much better off buying a reasonably priced box with operating system & warranty, as others have suggested.

      One thing I would recommend, if possible: open up the case and figure out how easy it is to add or remove components.

      Recently, I installed a Blu-Ray burner in one of my Dell machines. I had to remove the power supply to get at the drive bay, but I had to remove the CPU cooler to get the power supply out of the way. Thoughtless design made the task much harder than it ought to be. I've seen other boxes where I had to remove memory sticks to change out a hard drive!

      As for solid-state drives, I'm not so sure they're ready for prime time yet. I had one from Intel recently that failed after two days! I've got WD hard drives that are rock-solid after eight years.

      If you get a Windows system (version 7 or up) the upgrade to Windows 10 is free for the next year, but I plan to wait at least a month and roll it out carefully, one machine at a time.
      A lot of companies today assume you will do NOTHING to substantially expand your system. You are lucky if they even provide a connector and/or cable for a secondary drive. MOST standards today allow at least 2 drives per cable, but they provide only one connector. And the lack of standards is especialy likely with name brands. SOME cases, though they look similar, have another way to access the expansion area.

      For solid state drives, they would be FAR more sensitive to ESD than hard drives. So you have to be more careful. The readability should be at least as good as with normal drives if installed right. Still, the technology is VERY FRAGILE! Regular drives have a MTBF based on running time. This was, last I knew, rated in tens of THOUSANDS of hours! As I recall, this was often somewhere around 6 years! MOST drives I have had lasted like TWICE that long! The old SSD drives were rated in like tens of thousands of WRITES! As I recall, that would be as little as about 13 HOURS! You could EASILY cause a failure in a day or two. Luckily that isn't likely, but it is SCARY, especially with a system like windows that always seems to be writing. There is SUPPOSEDLY a newer technology, as I recall, they call it NAND, after the NAND gates it uses. It IS more expensive though. It is STILL not great! HERE is an article on it:

      How NAND flash degrades and what vendors do to increase SSD endurance

      I should say that the type of SANDISK card you by is apparently the cheaper and less capable variant. Of course, if you don't keep updating the same area, you may never see it degrade. A defrag package I recently bought even speaks of how they BYPASS or limit defrags on SSD drives for this reason.

      Steve
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