Build a PC now or later?

[wbarnhill]

So my current PC is coming to the end of its life, after almost six years of service. I'm looking at piecing out a new system, but I'm wary with the new technologies that seem to be sweeping in for 2010. SATA III and USB 3.0 are the big ones I'm thinking of, as I'd like the new machine to last for at least a few years before being woefully outdated. What's the consensus with the tech crowd here? Build now or wait til at least spring of next year?

 

[ScottM]

What's the consensus with the tech crowd here? Build now or wait til at least spring of next year?

Buy a Mac and buy it now!!!

 

[fgcason]

If you wait until spring, they'll have better stuff in the summer or fall. But the next generation of stuff will be out the following spring too.

I don't know what the line in the sand is supposed to be however at some point you just have to say to heck with it and buy something..or give it up entirely. The new stuff in 2013 will eat alive anything on the market next spring.

I know what you're talking about though based on trying to find a laptop which is frustrating. (I'm in the process of tossing everything that runs off 120VAC) Sometimes I'm don't think I can figure out how to buy a 12V light bulb anymore.

 

[RJM62]

Well, there are some advantages to doing it now, including the fact that sales are waaaay down at my usual geek haunts where I buy my stuff. You probably will get a better deal now than when the economy (hopefully) improves.

I also wonder how much improvement SATA III will offer, frankly. It's hard to say. Real data transfer rates depend on both electronic and mechanical factors. There's only so fast data can be written to / read from the drive, regardless of what the logic is capable of handling.

Also, when SATA first came out, I found the drives to have a very high premature failure rate compared to EIDE. I have no data to back that up; I just encountered a lot more failed SATA drives than their small percentage of the whole should have accounted for -- and they were brand new, as well. It took a while before I trusted them after the first few failed.

As for USB 3.0, I wouldn't put off a building project just because of that. I mean, you can always add a card later on.

If you do decide to build, maybe you can take some pics of the process? I have an old instructional site for people who build their own computers, and it's in desperate need of a complete rebuilding / updating. Aside from being ugly, it's outdated. But whenever I build a computer, it always seems to be a rush job, so I don't photograph the process.

-Rich

 

[wbarnhill]

Buy a Mac and buy it now!!!

After being burned relentlessly by my Macbook Pro, I'll pass.

I might build a hackintosh if you're lucky

 

[wbarnhill]

If you wait until spring, they'll have better stuff in the summer or fall. But the next generation of stuff will be out the following spring too.

I don't know what the line in the sand is supposed to be however at some point you just have to say to heck with it and buy something..or give it up entirely. The new stuff in 2013 will eat alive anything on the market next spring.

I know what you're talking about though based on trying to find a laptop which is frustrating. (I'm in the process of tossing everything that runs off 120VAC) Sometimes I'm don't think I can figure out how to buy a 12V light bulb anymore.

Yeah, I know that in a few years it'll be at the bottom of the pile, but I guess I was just hoping to not have to build another PC for a few years. I spent 2500$ building a PC in March 2004, and all I've really changed is graphics cards. It's just finally to the point that it doesn't meet minimum requirements. I also haven't kept up on all the hardware (just started reading up on the i5/i7 processors) so I don't want to jump into anything without having a good idea for what's in store over the next few years, and that's where I was worrying that getting a machine with SATA II would be quickly overshadowed by SATA III and new solid state drives utilizing that 6Gb/s bandwidth.

Well, there are some advantages to doing it now, including the fact that sales are waaaay down at my usual geek haunts where I buy my stuff. You probably will get a better deal now than when the economy (hopefully) improves.

I also wonder how much improvement SATA III will offer, frankly. It's hard to say. Real data transfer rates depend on both electronic and mechanical factors. There's only so fast data can be written to / read from the drive, regardless of what the logic is capable of handling.

Also, when SATA first came out, I found the drives to have a very high premature failure rate compared to EIDE. I have no data to back that up; I just encountered a lot more failed SATA drives than their small percentage of the whole should have accounted for -- and they were brand new, as well. It took a while before I trusted them after the first few failed.

As for USB 3.0, I wouldn't put off a building project just because of that. I mean, you can always add a card later on.

If you do decide to build, maybe you can take some pics of the process? I have an old instructional site for people who build their own computers, and it's in desperate need of a complete rebuilding / updating. Aside from being ugly, it's outdated. But whenever I build a computer, it always seems to be a rush job, so I don't photograph the process.

-Rich

From what I've been reading, SATA III will really benefit solid state drives, which have saturated the SATA II bus. And yeah I've noticed that SATA drives tend to fail more often than IDE. I've still got a handful of IDE drives with various bits of data on them that still work. Meanwhile my work PC had a hard drive failure earlier this year. Thank goodness for external hard drives.

I'll definitely take pictures if I go ahead and make a purchase though.

 

[SkyHog]

Actually, you might be better off with a Macintosh if being on the cutting edge of technology is a concern....

At least you'll not have to worry about the ability to upgrade your system later

 

[RJM62]

Yeah, I know that in a few years it'll be at the bottom of the pile, but I guess I was just hoping to not have to build another PC for a few years. I spent 2500$ building a PC in March 2004, and all I've really changed is graphics cards. It's just finally to the point that it doesn't meet minimum requirements. I also haven't kept up on all the hardware (just started reading up on the i5/i7 processors) so I don't want to jump into anything without having a good idea for what's in store over the next few years, and that's where I was worrying that getting a machine with SATA II would be quickly overshadowed by SATA III and new solid state drives utilizing that 6Gb/s bandwidth.



From what I've been reading, SATA III will really benefit solid state drives, which have saturated the SATA II bus. And yeah I've noticed that SATA drives tend to fail more often than IDE. I've still got a handful of IDE drives with various bits of data on them that still work. Meanwhile my work PC had a hard drive failure earlier this year. Thank goodness for external hard drives.

I'll definitely take pictures if I go ahead and make a purchase though.

Thanks!

I forgot the link in the previous post. It's http://www.kitchentablecomputers.com . It was one of my early sites and I've patched it up here and there over the years, but I really would like to completely rebuild it. It still has tables, for gosh sake! And there are too many ads that are too... garish, for lack of a better word.

It still gets a lot of hits, though (mainly from kids, who send me a lot of entertaining emails and questions), but it's way past due for a makeover. One of those kids also put up a forum that I linked to, but it doesn't get any traffic to speak of.

-Rich

 

[rpadula]

After being burned relentlessly by my Macbook Pro, I'll pass.

Well, duh, you're not supposed to keep them on your lap! Those older models would fry yer nuggets.

My recent 13" MBP runs incredibly cool.

 

[SCCutler]

After being burned relentlessly by my Macbook Pro, I'll pass.

Not possible.

Macs do not fail.

 

[schmookeeg]

I'm in this boat as well, my 6yo PC, while running strong and still performing 95% of what I need it to do well, I just don't like dealing with component failures.

My strategy is to always buy "the best that 3 grand will get" -- and normally this works out well, however, these days, 3 grand for a homebuilt PC buys a retardedly overbuilt assortment of gear, and is actually difficult to spend without going off of the deep end.

My main problem right now is that the SSD drives do not seem mature yet, and I don't fully trust them to go the 5yr distance. The whole windows7 trim support, and the DOA drive issues are a nuisance -- also in a raid0 config, they seem to be saturating the SATA bus, which isn't really an issue for me, but it's annoying in a general best-practice sense to me.

I also like what they're doing with water-cooling, but I don't trust that to last 5 years either.

I'm waiting until spring. If you game at all, the nvidia dx11 cards should be out too, ensuring video support for awhile.

If you were wondering, 3 grand these days buys:

2 x QuadCore HT Xeons (2.26ghz - baby nehalems)
either 12gb or 24gb ram (I forget which it was)
asus board
2 x 120gb SSD drives for boot
4 x 2tb caviar black drives for storage
2 video cards of choice (I have 6 monitors), PSU of choice, case of choice

and you still end up with like $600 left over.

$0.02.

 

[jesse]

Not possible.

Macs do not fail.

I think he might mean burned, as in BURNED. If my MacBook is really cranking on something you simply cannot put it on your lap because it will *HURT*.

 

[ScottM]

I think he might mean burned, as in BURNED. If my MacBook is really cranking on something you simply cannot put it on your lap because it will *HURT*.

My Dell gets that hot as well. I don't think it has anything to do with the OS a computer operates, jsut how batteries are charged these days.

 

[jesse]

My Dell gets that hot as well. I don't think it has anything to do with the OS a computer operates, jsut how batteries are charged these days.

Well. I didn't say it had anything to do with the OS. It has to do with the hardware, and with Apple, they built it.

Mostly it is just because the CPU and other internal components are permitted to run so incredibly hot these days (they are engineered to take it).

I can't see how it has too much to do with the battery. The battery may get warm when you're charging it, but IME, it's pretty cool when it's not being charged. I can make mine hot enough to cook an egg simply by opening X-Plane. (Yes, it gets hot enough, there are videos of people doing it)

 

[nyoung]

I remember seeing an advertisement for a motherboard that had a USB3.0 chip onboard, but, unfortunately, I cannot remember the vendor. It was fairly expensive ~$300 sans CPU. I suppose some Google-fu would find it.

I think USB3.0 is going to be great. Let's hope the peripheral vendors (like iphone) jump on board quickly. A sync of music/videos to the phone in under a minute would be great.

I would not wait for SATAIII... unless you are going to be running a solid-state drive and doing lots of video editing. Today, conventional rotating platter drives have a tough time saturating SATAI, let alone SATAII. And, if you need enhanced drive speed - you can always run a striped RAID array.

So my current PC is coming to the end of its life, after almost six years of service. I'm looking at piecing out a new system, but I'm wary with the new technologies that seem to be sweeping in for 2010. SATA III and USB 3.0 are the big ones I'm thinking of, as I'd like the new machine to last for at least a few years before being woefully outdated. What's the consensus with the tech crowd here? Build now or wait til at least spring of next year?

 

[jesse]

A sync of music/videos to the phone in under a minute would be great.

We're going to need a lot more storage throughput to accomplish that.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Nathan's point is the one I was going to make--it will be a while (maybe not too long) before vendors create products / peripherals with USB 3.0; so I'd not delay building a machine just to have on-board USB 3.0. Even when they DO start making the devices, are you planning to immediately go out and upgrade your mouse/keyboard/webcam/external hard drives to devices that support USB 3.0?

If not, build your machine now. When you buy your first USB 3.0 device, either buy a USB 3.0 expansion card or upgrade your motherboard... prices will have dropped significantly.

 

[Ghery]

Build it now. If you wait because you think something better will be available in 3 months or 6 months or whatever and you wait, you'll have the same concern then and you'll still be running your old machine.

Age of machines at my place? I'm running a Q6700 based PC (originally the E6700, but I got a quad core and dropped it in the socket) that I built almost 3 years ago. Originally Vista, now Windows 7. Has an nVidia graphics card (way overkill for my needs). 2 GByes RAM (put more in today, its cheaper than it was 3 years ago) and 2 SATA drives. The 250 GByte drive I put in it originally and a 750 GByte drive that was surplus around the house (don't ask). Am I thinking of building a new one? Not right now. This one is running fine and meets my needs nicely.

Wife's desktop maching is based on the E6700 processor (that's a Core 2 Duo) that was originally in my main machine. She's not using it now as it is downstairs (house built into the side of a hill) and her knees just can't take the stairs anymore than necessary. So, she how has a new Lenovo laptop running Windows 7 with Office 2007 installed. Meets her needs nicely.

I've also got an almost 10 year old Pentium III based machine (1 GHz processor) that serves the needs of my ham radio station. Slow! by today's standards, but for digital modes and web browsing, it works.

Other old stuff lying around, too. Now, I'm not sure what my son is running, but I know that his latest machine is about a year and a half old and is running a newer processor than my Q6700. Multiple 750 GByte drives. Great graphics card. Runs WoW and web browing.

So, bottom line is this. If you feel you need a new machine, do it. If you wait, you'll just feel you need a new machine longer. And I know a company that makes great microprocessors (and it isn't that 3 letter company ) and there are lots of folks who would be happy to sell you one to drop in your new machine.

 

[wbarnhill]

Not possible.

Macs do not fail.

I meant by the 190F heatsink.

I know the solution to keep it from getting that hot (break it open and scrape the two metric tons of thermal grease off and apply appropriate amounts) but to do so would void the warranty that the state has paid for.

 

[RJM62]

Well, William, your post gave me the impetus to do what I've been putting off for too long: rebuilding that ugly site. I built all new backgrounds, eliminated all the tables and put all that stuff in the CSS, and did the whole thing in PHP to make my life easier. I also implemented PHP ad management scripts so I can rotate ads by different affiliate companies, if I want to.

I also updated some of the content, but it still needs some work there. It's still better than it was. Finally, I switched from the plural to the singular voice. I never knew who "we" were, anyway.

In case you don't remember, here's a screenshot of the old, ugly site:

http://www.kitchentablecomputers.com/oldsite.php

And here's the same page on the new one (just because I happened to take the screenshot of the page above):

http://www.kitchentablecomputers.com/hdrive.php

I'm quite happy with the result. Whether anyone else likes it or not, it's exactly what I had in mind; and the design part only took me about three hours, including making the graphics. Because visual design is actually my weakest point (I build sturdy sites, but I'm not a very good artist), I'm pretty darn pleased about that.

Thanks for inspiring me to finally get this done!

-Rich

 

[wsuffa]

I remember seeing an advertisement for a motherboard that had a USB3.0 chip onboard, but, unfortunately, I cannot remember the vendor. It was fairly expensive ~$300 sans CPU. I suppose some Google-fu would find it.

I think USB3.0 is going to be great. Let's hope the peripheral vendors (like iphone) jump on board quickly. A sync of music/videos to the phone in under a minute would be great.

I would not wait for SATAIII... unless you are going to be running a solid-state drive and doing lots of video editing. Today, conventional rotating platter drives have a tough time saturating SATAI, let alone SATAII. And, if you need enhanced drive speed - you can always run a striped RAID array.

I'm also looking at building another box - I'm pretty saturated on the one I'm using at home now.... heck, my second level firewall is a faster box than the desktop. My big issue is moving to Win7 and losing some hardware that I can use now and "rebuying"/"reinstalling" software that works fine now. There is no upgrade transition from XP (pbbbb microsoft). For example, my slide scanner software is supported under XP but not Win7 - I have not verified that ViewScan will work.

I suppose I can move the existing XP system to new hardware and deal with the MS activation brain-damage (wherein you have to call and get accused of pirating if you move from one hardware system to another). Seems like that won't take advantage of all the stuff a new motherboard will give.

Having said that, Gigabyte has a MB that has both SATAIII and USB3.0 on it. Unfortunately, if you use those features it disables the ability to use 2 video cards and limits the bandwidth to the one that you can use.

If you're not familiar with Tom's Hardware Guide/Review, you should be. Great reviews of motherboards and other hardware there.

 

[RJM62]

. . . .

I suppose I can move the existing XP system to new hardware and deal with the MS activation brain-damage (wherein you have to call and get accused of pirating if you move from one hardware system to another). Seems like that won't take advantage of all the stuff a new motherboard will give.

. . . .

Mark Russinovich (formerly of Systernals before it was acquired by MS) has come up with a way to import an intact XP system into a virtual machine on Win7 Professional or Ultimate. I haven't done it, but a colleague of mine has; and aside from the activation nonsense, he said it works very well.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

-Rich

 

[gprellwitz]

Leslie's 18-month old quad-core Q6600 HP a6554f suddenly won't go past the startup screen on the BIOS. In other words, we can't even bring up the startup BIOS menu, and have been unsuccessful getting it to boot from any source.

So far, I haven't done anything with it, but I'll probably crack it open, make sure everything's properly seated, and pull out all unnecessary peripherals. If it still won't boot, my guess is the main board itself, since I don't think it requires any external memory to bring up the BIOS menu. So it's off to Fry's I'll go to pick up a new board. That way, if it turns out to be something else, I can return it.

 

[wsuffa]

So it's off to Fry's I'll go to pick up a new board.

Fry's. Ugh.

Good luck trying to fix an HP.

 

[RJM62]

Fry's. Ugh.

Good luck trying to fix an HP.

Whenever I get sick and tired of living in New York, I remind myself that living here means I'm only half an hour away from the closest MicroCenter, and only an hour away from the second closest MicroCenter.

Then I feel better.

-Rich

 

[gprellwitz]

Fry's. Ugh.

Good luck trying to fix an HP.

Whenever I get sick and tired of living in New York, I remind myself that living here means I'm only half an hour away from the closest MicroCenter, and only an hour away from the second closest MicroCenter.

Then I feel better.

-Rich

I've got a Microcenter about an hour away too, but I haven't seen that much of a difference between them and Fry's. How do you feel they compare?

 

[RJM62]

I've got a Microcenter about an hour away too, but I haven't seen that much of a difference between them and Fry's. How do you feel they compare?

I dunno... it's more like an atmosphere thing.

The MicroCenter by me I believe is superior because they carry everything from the most trivial case screw or dongle on up; and because their staff is outstanding -- mainly middle-aged I.T. professionals with a wealth of experience behind them. You get discussions, not sales pitches, when you ask for advice.

They're also pretty laid back. I had my goddaughter Kimberly with me for the summer, and she frequently went to work with me. When she pulled up a browser on one of the store-search computers in the Westbury store and started playing BombJack, the staff standing by just started laughing hysterically and let her play her game.

Of course, the fact that I've spent gazzillions of dollars there over the past decade may have had something to do with their tolerance...

-Rich

 

[RickH]

Not trying to act like a Luddite, but I've got a real question. Just what are you guys doing with computers these days that would justify, much less demand, some of these types of hardware? Flight Sim with multiple screens? That one I guess I could understand, but even though I've been at the personal computer game since 1976 with a kit-built SWTPC 6800, I can't find anything I want to do on the computer that I'm not able to do with less than 1Gb of RAM, 40 Gb of HD and a 1.3Ghz processor running XP. I don't want to watch movies on a 15" screen when I've got a 46" LCD, I don't want to listen to MP3's on second rate speakers when I can listen to my vinyl through the Magneplanars, and even though I've got several hundred digital photos (taken or scanned) I hardly ever look at 'em. I'm gonna strip XP off one of the laptops and load Ubuntu to use as a dedicated ham radio computer, but s'plain to me why I'd want to spend $3K on a PC when I could use it for a set of wheel skis for the Chief?

 

[wsuffa]

I've got a Microcenter about an hour away too, but I haven't seen that much of a difference between them and Fry's. How do you feel they compare?

I dunno... it's more like an atmosphere thing.

The MicroCenter by me I believe is superior because they carry everything from the most trivial case screw or dongle on up; and because their staff is outstanding -- mainly middle-aged I.T. professionals with a wealth of experience behind them. You get discussions, not sales pitches, when you ask for advice.

They're also pretty laid back. I had my goddaughter Kimberly with me for the summer, and she frequently went to work with me. When she pulled up a browser on one of the store-search computers in the Westbury store and started playing BombJack, the staff standing by just started laughing hysterically and let her play her game.

Of course, the fact that I've spent gazzillions of dollars there over the past decade may have had something to do with their tolerance...

-Rich

IMHO, MicroCenter is much better. Better/more logical layout and more stuff. The folks - while annoying and overly helpful - at the local store are far better than he "dumb and dumber" folks at the last few Fry's I've been to. Generally, they have what I want at a reasonable price. It's also 15 minutes from my house.

That said, the "name and address" policy is annoying - sorta like the "name and address" ploy used by Radio Shack.

Overall, they run circles around my experiences at Fry's in California and Austin.

 

[RJM62]

Not trying to act like a Luddite, but I've got a real question. Just what are you guys doing with computers these days that would justify, much less demand, some of these types of hardware? Flight Sim with multiple screens? That one I guess I could understand, but even though I've been at the personal computer game since 1976 with a kit-built SWTPC 6800, I can't find anything I want to do on the computer that I'm not able to do with less than 1Gb of RAM, 40 Gb of HD and a 1.3Ghz processor running XP. I don't want to watch movies on a 15" screen when I've got a 46" LCD, I don't want to listen to MP3's on second rate speakers when I can listen to my vinyl through the Magneplanars, and even though I've got several hundred digital photos (taken or scanned) I hardly ever look at 'em. I'm gonna strip XP off one of the laptops and load Ubuntu to use as a dedicated ham radio computer, but s'plain to me why I'd want to spend $3K on a PC when I could use it for a set of wheel skis for the Chief?

In my case, it's probably subconscious sublimation of sexual energy.

-Rich

 

[ScottM]

So my current PC is coming to the end of its life, after almost six years of service. I'm looking at piecing out a new system, but I'm wary with the new technologies that seem to be sweeping in for 2010. SATA III and USB 3.0 are the big ones I'm thinking of, as I'd like the new machine to last for at least a few years before being woefully outdated. What's the consensus with the tech crowd here? Build now or wait til at least spring of next year?

Upgrade!!

 

[schmookeeg]

Not trying to act like a Luddite, but I've got a real question. Just what are you guys doing with computers these days that would justify, much less demand, some of these types of hardware? Flight Sim with multiple screens? That one I guess I could understand, but even though I've been at the personal computer game since 1976 with a kit-built SWTPC 6800, I can't find anything I want to do on the computer that I'm not able to do with less than 1Gb of RAM, 40 Gb of HD and a 1.3Ghz processor running XP. I don't want to watch movies on a 15" screen when I've got a 46" LCD, I don't want to listen to MP3's on second rate speakers when I can listen to my vinyl through the Magneplanars, and even though I've got several hundred digital photos (taken or scanned) I hardly ever look at 'em. I'm gonna strip XP off one of the laptops and load Ubuntu to use as a dedicated ham radio computer, but s'plain to me why I'd want to spend $3K on a PC when I could use it for a set of wheel skis for the Chief?

For me, the answer is "everything", just not always at the same time

To wit:

As a computer programmer: 6 monitors is a gigantic boon to productivity, since it is a "multiple trains of thought", "many moving parts" sort of work that I do. I actually struggle with less than 3 monitors anymore. Working on my laptop is painful when I'm forced to do it.

As a gamer: fat RAM and CPU

As someone who likes to do video editing: The SSD raid array.

As a digital packrat: The spindle raid array.

As a sort of undiagnosed ADHD kid, I want my computer to dance when I snap my fingers. That is worth the money to me. I don't want to ever see an hourglass, even when my jQuery effects are jacking up firefox (or more likely IE), or when my SQL query decided to slip a join and is now making cartesian products of a few million rows each.

At the end of the day, though, this is my primary profession. I want the best I can get, and it takes me weeks to get the computer setup "just right", and the longer it lasts that way, the quicker and easier it is for me to jump in and do work. Since my boxes last 5+ years, the cost is negligible, as far as a tool is concerned.

$0.02

- Mike