Time for a new PC
Posted by: DJH on 30 October 2004
It's time to buy a new PC. I'd like to buy online and be able to customise various aspects of the machine*. Dell is the obvious first choice, but I'm put off by the amount of negative comment on reliability and customer service. What other options are there?
* - I use Photoshop heavily, with image file sizes up to 300MB, and am therefore keen on having a lot of memory - up to 4MB, for example. I'd also like to have a SCSI port fitted, as this is how my current scanner connects, although this isn't essential, as I may upgrade the scanner within the next year. I don't understand what the different options in video and sound cards mean, so some guidance here would also be helpful. My budget is up to GBP2,000, to include a decent monitor.
[This message was edited by DJH on Sat 30 October 2004 at 10:21.]
* - I use Photoshop heavily, with image file sizes up to 300MB, and am therefore keen on having a lot of memory - up to 4MB, for example. I'd also like to have a SCSI port fitted, as this is how my current scanner connects, although this isn't essential, as I may upgrade the scanner within the next year. I don't understand what the different options in video and sound cards mean, so some guidance here would also be helpful. My budget is up to GBP2,000, to include a decent monitor.
[This message was edited by DJH on Sat 30 October 2004 at 10:21.]
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Hawk
Its got to be worth looking at a Mac?
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by DJH
Hawk -- I've never used one, and so would be reluctant, but I suppose it should be on the possible list (if not the probable). -- D
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Roy T
Dell and Evesham are both names that have been recomended by friends for home use others for office and on top of that they are often seen topping the "best kit for under £xxxx" reviews seen in many PC mags. I can see your need for 4mb as being something that may cause problems with these "pile them high and sell them to home user type" configurations of kit so prehaps you may be better served looking for slightly for a slightly more focused type of supplier.
You might also like to pop a few manufacturer and model names into the Crucial.co.uk memory selector tool just to see what memory size limits relate to your desired bit of kit and what you can expect for 4mb of the good stuff.
You might also like to pop a few manufacturer and model names into the Crucial.co.uk memory selector tool just to see what memory size limits relate to your desired bit of kit and what you can expect for 4mb of the good stuff.
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by matthewr
I'd also recommend Evesham from personal experience. And add the following general guidelines:
-- Buy an Athlon64 not a Pentium IV as they are much better value.
-- For processors, graphics cards, etc. look one or two nothces below the top as the price drops massively. (Note that Nick has bougth a state-of-art, just released £300 graphics card -- you can save yourself £150 by buying one slightly less powerful that you won't notice unless you play 3D games)
-- As you do a lot of Photoshop, I'd buy from Evesham without a monitor and then research and choose a specific model separately. (It might of course transpire that Evesham sell your preffered model, but it's unlikely).
-- For your scanner I think you need to decide what to do now. If you are going to upgrade, then it would be massively preferable to do it at the same time rather than going through the hassle of adding a SCSI card. BTW If you have a high-end SCSI scanner (a Polaroid, Coolscan, etc) you might find that upgrading to the latest and greatest is slightly disappointing and not that much of an improvement, esp. if we are talking MF capable scanners.
A quick fettle with the Evesham site produced this spec:
-- Axis 64 "Dominator"
-- Athlon 64 3500+ (Note that 1 CPU faster = £260 + VAT)
-- 2GB RAM (400MHz Dual Channel DDR) (I think you need to phone Evesham to get a 4GB option)
-- 200GB SATA Hard Disk
-- MSI K8N Neo 2 Motherboad (motherboards are slightly esoteric, but becuase of that it's a place where lesser manufacturers like to cut corners. This is the sort of high quality mobo you would spec in a build-your-own PC and is a great choice.)
-- CD-RW, DVD burner, etc. as you see fit (I always deselect things like speakers, modem, etc. as either I don't want them or can slavage them from my current PC)
That came out at £1118.05 (inc VAT + delivery), although remeber this is without a monitor.
For a monitor you need to decide between CRT and flat panel. This might seem like a no-brainer -- indeed I thought it was when I bought a new monitor last month. However, if you want high-end graphical performance (esp. for colour) and you want lots of pixels then CRTs are a) still better (although it's arguable by how much) and b) *hugely* cheaper.
Obviously though flat panels are much more convenient, take far less space, generate less heat, don't require you to risk some horrific back injury everytime you move them, etc. You pays your money...
For CRTs I would highly recommend the Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 514 which is a 22" monitor based on Mitsubishi's latest incarnation of their Diamondtron Tube. Colour, contrast, brightness, etc. are all absolutely top notch and it will display as many pixels as your eyesight can cope with. Mine cost £396 (inc. VAT) which is fantastic value as without the rise of flat panels this would still be selling for £650. Dabs is now quoting £420 but a bit of googling ight find them slightly cheaper elsewhere online.
If you want a flat panel then it gets abit more tricky. 98% of performance by a flat panel monitor comes from the panel itself and the manufacturer does little more than attach power, some controls and put it in a case. However, they won't tell you what panel they use, or even, very often, what type of panel (there are different technologies involved).
Basically for Photoshop you want an S-IPS panel as these are the ones that have colour performance close to that of CRTs. You can tell if it's an S-IPS if a) it has fantastic, natural accurate colours b) it has a very wide angle of view >170 deg. and c) it's ruinously expensive. Apple's panels (which set the standard for flat panels for graphics use) are S-IPS.
It's hard to ake a specific recommendation for models as they are still changing very quickly and it's very important to see them in the flesh it at all possible as, as with most digital display technologies, people seem sensitive to different abberations and opinions and subjective experiences differ markedly. The important thing to note though is that a high quality 19" S-IPS panel with a native resolution of 1600x1200 is going to cost you upwards of £850 -- or at least twice the price of a CRT. Personally I like the LG and Eizo panels but I stress again that YMMV.
BTW Apple have recently replaced all their panels with new models, and you might, by the way, find a bargain (relatively speaking) last generation Apple panel if you hunt around. It will of course look absolutely gorgeous.
The other option of course is to keep the monitor from your current PC.
One final thing, new PCs are very, very noisy. My Evesham was so noisy that I basically gave in and bought a quiet power supply, CPU and graphics card coolers. This will cost about £100 to add after market as long as you are comfortable with pulling a PC to bits and putting it back together again. There are specialist PC manufacturers who will do this sort of thing for you but you should check the spec and pricing against a quote from someone like Evesham to make sure you are not paying too much for the priviledge.
Hope this helps.
Matthew
[This message was edited by matthewr on Sat 30 October 2004 at 13:01.]
-- Buy an Athlon64 not a Pentium IV as they are much better value.
-- For processors, graphics cards, etc. look one or two nothces below the top as the price drops massively. (Note that Nick has bougth a state-of-art, just released £300 graphics card -- you can save yourself £150 by buying one slightly less powerful that you won't notice unless you play 3D games)
-- As you do a lot of Photoshop, I'd buy from Evesham without a monitor and then research and choose a specific model separately. (It might of course transpire that Evesham sell your preffered model, but it's unlikely).
-- For your scanner I think you need to decide what to do now. If you are going to upgrade, then it would be massively preferable to do it at the same time rather than going through the hassle of adding a SCSI card. BTW If you have a high-end SCSI scanner (a Polaroid, Coolscan, etc) you might find that upgrading to the latest and greatest is slightly disappointing and not that much of an improvement, esp. if we are talking MF capable scanners.
A quick fettle with the Evesham site produced this spec:
-- Axis 64 "Dominator"
-- Athlon 64 3500+ (Note that 1 CPU faster = £260 + VAT)
-- 2GB RAM (400MHz Dual Channel DDR) (I think you need to phone Evesham to get a 4GB option)
-- 200GB SATA Hard Disk
-- MSI K8N Neo 2 Motherboad (motherboards are slightly esoteric, but becuase of that it's a place where lesser manufacturers like to cut corners. This is the sort of high quality mobo you would spec in a build-your-own PC and is a great choice.)
-- CD-RW, DVD burner, etc. as you see fit (I always deselect things like speakers, modem, etc. as either I don't want them or can slavage them from my current PC)
That came out at £1118.05 (inc VAT + delivery), although remeber this is without a monitor.
For a monitor you need to decide between CRT and flat panel. This might seem like a no-brainer -- indeed I thought it was when I bought a new monitor last month. However, if you want high-end graphical performance (esp. for colour) and you want lots of pixels then CRTs are a) still better (although it's arguable by how much) and b) *hugely* cheaper.
Obviously though flat panels are much more convenient, take far less space, generate less heat, don't require you to risk some horrific back injury everytime you move them, etc. You pays your money...
For CRTs I would highly recommend the Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 514 which is a 22" monitor based on Mitsubishi's latest incarnation of their Diamondtron Tube. Colour, contrast, brightness, etc. are all absolutely top notch and it will display as many pixels as your eyesight can cope with. Mine cost £396 (inc. VAT) which is fantastic value as without the rise of flat panels this would still be selling for £650. Dabs is now quoting £420 but a bit of googling ight find them slightly cheaper elsewhere online.
If you want a flat panel then it gets abit more tricky. 98% of performance by a flat panel monitor comes from the panel itself and the manufacturer does little more than attach power, some controls and put it in a case. However, they won't tell you what panel they use, or even, very often, what type of panel (there are different technologies involved).
Basically for Photoshop you want an S-IPS panel as these are the ones that have colour performance close to that of CRTs. You can tell if it's an S-IPS if a) it has fantastic, natural accurate colours b) it has a very wide angle of view >170 deg. and c) it's ruinously expensive. Apple's panels (which set the standard for flat panels for graphics use) are S-IPS.
It's hard to ake a specific recommendation for models as they are still changing very quickly and it's very important to see them in the flesh it at all possible as, as with most digital display technologies, people seem sensitive to different abberations and opinions and subjective experiences differ markedly. The important thing to note though is that a high quality 19" S-IPS panel with a native resolution of 1600x1200 is going to cost you upwards of £850 -- or at least twice the price of a CRT. Personally I like the LG and Eizo panels but I stress again that YMMV.
BTW Apple have recently replaced all their panels with new models, and you might, by the way, find a bargain (relatively speaking) last generation Apple panel if you hunt around. It will of course look absolutely gorgeous.
The other option of course is to keep the monitor from your current PC.
One final thing, new PCs are very, very noisy. My Evesham was so noisy that I basically gave in and bought a quiet power supply, CPU and graphics card coolers. This will cost about £100 to add after market as long as you are comfortable with pulling a PC to bits and putting it back together again. There are specialist PC manufacturers who will do this sort of thing for you but you should check the spec and pricing against a quote from someone like Evesham to make sure you are not paying too much for the priviledge.
Hope this helps.
Matthew
[This message was edited by matthewr on Sat 30 October 2004 at 13:01.]
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Roy T
Something else that might be possible is that for the price of an extra sata disk you may have the option of configuring them as RAID +1, thus offering some protection against an act of God being visited upon one of your disks. This does not free you from the task of backing up your data to external storage via dvd, cd or whatever but it offers you a chance to keep working after a disk dies. This is something to consider if you earn you cash by working on this machine.
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Steveandkate
I recently needed a new pc, and spent many months looking, reading reviews and fretting - I too needed something a little different from the usual...
I ended up finding a small company in Scotland, Kustom pcs (kustompcs.co.uk) and dealt with Jack. He was amazingly helpful, honest and guided me through all my questions. I ended up with the pc I wanted, and am very pleased.
Recently, it went wrong. As the pc is in Spain, I wondered what they might do about sorting the problem (it having been one of my questions when buying) and took it to a local pc shop for repair, and then contacted Jack. He immediatly agreed to replace whatever the Spanish guy deemed broken, no question.
To me, this makes him and the company well worth recommending, as service, like we expect from Naim, seems not to go with many of the big pc companys !
Have a look at their website, read the forum, and see what other customers have to say. They may not be as cheap as some companies, but as I wanted quality componants, I got a quality machine for what I believe to be a good price, and the backup I also wanted !
Good luck,
Steve
Kustompcs.co.uk
I ended up finding a small company in Scotland, Kustom pcs (kustompcs.co.uk) and dealt with Jack. He was amazingly helpful, honest and guided me through all my questions. I ended up with the pc I wanted, and am very pleased.
Recently, it went wrong. As the pc is in Spain, I wondered what they might do about sorting the problem (it having been one of my questions when buying) and took it to a local pc shop for repair, and then contacted Jack. He immediatly agreed to replace whatever the Spanish guy deemed broken, no question.
To me, this makes him and the company well worth recommending, as service, like we expect from Naim, seems not to go with many of the big pc companys !
Have a look at their website, read the forum, and see what other customers have to say. They may not be as cheap as some companies, but as I wanted quality componants, I got a quality machine for what I believe to be a good price, and the backup I also wanted !
Good luck,
Steve
Kustompcs.co.uk
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Joe Petrik
DJH,
Keep in mind that no matter how much RAM you install, Photoshop can use only the first 2GB. In other words, having 4GB or even 8GB available will not make more RAM available to Photoshop.
See Photoshop memory allocation and usage for details.
Joe
quote:
I use Photoshop heavily, with image file sizes up to 300MB, and am therefore keen on having a lot of memory - up to 4MB, for example.
Keep in mind that no matter how much RAM you install, Photoshop can use only the first 2GB. In other words, having 4GB or even 8GB available will not make more RAM available to Photoshop.
See Photoshop memory allocation and usage for details.
Joe
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by P
If you want state of the art and you're prepared to pay a bit extra Poweroid are the best in the business.
Highly recommended
P
Highly recommended
P
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by DJH
Some great replies - thanks - I will be following up.
Joe - even if Photoshop can only use 2Mb, but the PC has 4Mb available, doesn't that make everything work just that bit faster?
Joe - even if Photoshop can only use 2Mb, but the PC has 4Mb available, doesn't that make everything work just that bit faster?
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Joe Petrik
quote:
Joe - even if Photoshop can only use 2Mb, but the PC has 4Mb available, doesn't that make everything work just that bit faster?
I assume you mean GB, not MB, but yeah, more RAM is a good thing as it lets you run more applications at the same time. I just wanted to point out that no matter how much RAM you get, Photoshop won't be able to access more than 2GB of it, so don't splurge on a pile o' memory (4x1GB DIMMs, say) in the hopes it'll all be available to PS.
Joe
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by Martin Payne
If PS is going to use a maximum of 1.7GB, then I can't see any point in taking the memory over 3GB unless you have something else running which is also memory intensive.
A lot of motherboards have 3x DIMM slots, so it might be easier to go for 3GB over 4GB.
cheers, Martin
E-mail:- MartinPayne (at) Dial.Pipex.com. Put "Naim" in the title.
A lot of motherboards have 3x DIMM slots, so it might be easier to go for 3GB over 4GB.
cheers, Martin
E-mail:- MartinPayne (at) Dial.Pipex.com. Put "Naim" in the title.
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by DJH
Oops, yes, I meant Gb, not Mb
Posted on: 30 October 2004 by matthewr
Or rather GB not Gb 
Matthew
Matthew
Posted on: 31 October 2004 by Simon Perry
I would also recommend getting an Athlon based system, although they are just about to become PCI-e compatible, so if you can wait a couple of weeks you will have a good upgrade path going forward. However, others will be able to advise you as to whether or not PCI-e is really going to worth it compared to a decent AGP system. Anyone?
Posted on: 31 October 2004 by DJH
quote:
Originally posted by matthewr:
Or rather GB not Gb
Matthew
My 13 year old daughter spotted this as I was typing it, but I said no-one would notice ...
Posted on: 31 October 2004 by garyi
Perhaps you should consider a mac, with 64 bit going on you can stick 8gigs of memory in it if it turns you on.
Moreover you won't have to spend half your day beating of viruses, spyware and microsoft. Always a bonus.
Moreover you won't have to spend half your day beating of viruses, spyware and microsoft. Always a bonus.
Posted on: 31 October 2004 by Roy T
A short visit to arstechnica as they run through configurations such as the Budget Box, Hot Rod, Performance Gaming Box, Ultimate Gaming Box & God Box will give you some idea of what is hot and what is not.
Remember prices are in USD.
Remember prices are in USD.
Posted on: 31 October 2004 by J.N.
Another vote for 'Evesham'. I've had my new PC since April, and am very pleased with it.
I like the fact that I have a local shop to visit, if I need to do so.
A 'mail ordered' PC with problems, is a total pain in the arse.
I like the fact that I have a local shop to visit, if I need to do so.
A 'mail ordered' PC with problems, is a total pain in the arse.