Computers

[andrewducker]

My desktop is about 7 years old. My laptop isn't great for games. Logic dictates that I should get a new PC, but I couldn't really justify it.

Until this morning, when the laptop died. Totally refused to turn on, with the caps-lock light flashing 5 times in succession, a signal that the internet informs me means "motherboard fucked".

I phoned HP, who do out of warranty repairs, to be quoted £260. As it only cost me £400 this seems a tad silly. A part of me wishes I'd got the three year warranty with it. I'd never bothed with a desktop, but laptops don't have replaceable parts in the same way.

So it looks like I'll be buying a new PC in the near future. Not that we can really afford it. It's going to have to be a cheap one.

A quick google tells me that an Athlon 630x4 and an ATI 5670 are both at the right point on the price/performance graph for me. Anyone want to tell me different?

(Figures from here and here)

Comments

[andrewducker]

So far it looks like I could either spend £500-ish to get something perfectly fine, or £700 to get something with a small SSD boot disk and quiet case/fans/etc.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

My first instinct was "is that small reduction in noise and decrease in boot time worth £200?" ... and then I realised that my ideal machine would be for music recording as well as everything else, and so should be as fanless and noiseless as possible.

So, for that £500/£700 are you including buying an OS? 4Gb of fast RAM? (or more?), bluray burner?

[andrewducker]

4GB of RAM, no Blu-Ray, no OS (I have a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate on the shelf).