Computer Questions

[Whosyodaddy]

I built one recently, it was a " father and son " project... Went into Tiger Direct and hunted down a geek ( which wasn't hard, as most of them are! ) We spent about forty minutes picking out what we needed, and the best part was, was that the Geek was right into it! We were building an I 7 based gaming and graphics system. We definately saved some bucks as the geek knew what was needed, what was just flash and what was on special. It was nice to hear a sales person say " Oh, sure, you could buy that power supply, but I've got this one on special. It's cheaper and better." or " Well, if no one is ever going to see the case, you might as well get this one, it's just as good and you'll save fifty bucks."

At the end of the day, I got a killer I7 based gaming computer for around $1300.00, including windows 7 64 bit. Me and the boy put it together in about two hours. Good times, great fun, and he got to learn a lot about computers and the value of reading the instructions. Never underestimate the value of as geek!

 

[Geographic]

tigerdirect is a good place. It sells parts, kits to put together a computer at bare bones prices. I have bought two refurbished computers from them in the last year. Had no problems.
Can buy online or go to their stores.

 

[Mister K]

TigerDirect is excellent. As Whosyodaddy says their staff are both knowledgable and extremely helpful.

Putting together a quality system from scratch makes it far easier to upgrade individual components. I have a system built in 2003 with an Intel P4 2.4GHz processor which is still going strong. I started with 1GB of RAM and over time I eventually upgraded to 4 GB. Still using the system, although it is now getting a little long in the tooth. I will probably get a new system built in the next year incorporating all of the newer technologies like SS SATA hard drive, faster graphics card, etc. I am currently running two 80GB WD hard drives which would be nice to replace with a couple of 250 GB drives.

 

[james t kirk]

James, which version of Norton is it?
Apparently the one that came out under a year ago is MUCH better than the stuff they put out over the past few years.

If not, uninstall it, go with Avira, Avast for the (good) free stuff.

It's about 6 months old and a collosal pain in the ass. Now it has even started with pop up sales Ads - trying to get me to buy some new net nanny product they have developed to protect Rug Rats from the evils of internet porn. (Hate to tell them, but I was looking at porn when I was 8 and look where it got me - whoops, bad comparison.)

Anyway, I find Norton to be way too heavy. It's always scanning, updating, and it causes your computer to come to a standstill.

I have an HP Laser Printer MFP 35 which I use a lot for scanning. Fucking Norton was blocking it from doing what I was telling it to do for Christ's sake. That took about 4 hours to sort out.

A friend in the same line of work as me recommended AVG as far superior and less invasive.

 

[WoodPeckr]

A friend in the same line of work as me recommended AVG as far superior and less invasive.

I dumped Norton in 2006 for Avast which runs lean and less intrusive. Put Microsoft Security Essentials on my new PC and like it even better than Avast. Both are highly rated and free.

 

[FunSeeker27]

Thanks for all the info everyone! I actually found Tigerdirect more expensive than some of the other online stores, and when I wandered into their physical store, none of the staff seemed too helpful or willing to get into much detail on things. I've made the purchase of the new i7 system so I'm just waiting for it to be built for me. And after doing some more research online, it seems that Norton has made some pretty good changes to their programming so that it doesn't bog down the computers anymore, and apparantly seems to be rated higher than AVG on Windows 7.

 

[fuji]

Norton was really bad a few years ago and is now not so bad.

If it's not too late make sure and get a big honking aftermarket fan and overclock that i7 at least a little. If you don't you aren't getting everything you paid for. I run my 2.8 i7 at 3.1 which if the stories on the net are to be believed is pretty conservative. I've heard of some crazy people running it up near 4. You spend a few extra dollars for a much better fan than it comes with and you get processing power that would cost you 50% more in price.

 

[FunSeeker27]

Yep, got the big honking fan in there as well. As for overclocking, not so much. I've got the i7-950 chip, and I went with a SSD so I should be good to go, besides, I'm working from a dead P4-2.8GHz computer, so anything I come out with now is gonna seem like night and day. Now the only thing left is to pull the files from my old hard drive.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Here`s a great thread on AV reports/ratings:
https://terb.cc/vbulletin/showthrea...-difference.&p=3261514&highlight=#post3261514

 

[rhuarc29]

Just don't get a AMD. Get Intel and also I'd stay away from HP. I purchased a brand new one 2 years ago and within 6 months the network card went (got it back 1.5 months later from HP) then 12 months later the monitor died. I contacted HP and they said it was a known problem with their monitors but since my warranty was 2 months over they could'nt do anything for me. So now they wanted $400. to replace the monitor AND get this there's no guarantee the new monitor wont flake out within another 2 years cus it seems to be an on going problem.wft?
I would never buy a HP again. I forgot to mention that I was on the phone with HP for 4hours the first time the Network Card fried. Customer support is lousy with them.

I'd recommend Toshiba or Sony.

Good luck

Had an HP myself. Everything worked great for 4 years, then my programs starting failing. Kept having the reinstall them. Thought maybe it was a virus or something. Eventually windows went down, so I did a system restore. Everything was great for about 3 months, then it repeated. Took it to Best Buy (my mistake) to see if I could salvage it. They said I had a faulty copy of windows or something like that. Did a system reboot for $213. Got back a computer that didn't work at all. Went back and they finally correctly diagnosed the problem. Apparently the capacitors on my motherboard were blowing, and eventually it just couldn't put up with it anymore. Thought about going after Best Buy for that $213, but they took my original receipt when I returned the computer the second time and apparently lost it. Too much of a pain in the ass to go after them. Now i'm using my old Intel that's going on 6 years. Still runs great...

 

[fuji]

Yep, got the big honking fan in there as well. As for overclocking, not so much. I've got the i7-950 chip, and I went with a SSD so I should be good to go.

Yeah at 3ghz you've got enough power to run anything, play any game. I'll just point out that i bought an i7-930 and I run it at the same speed as your i7-950. Intel expects you to overclock their cpu's these days and many motherboards now come with software that you can run and click the "turbo" button to overclock.

If you do decide to give it a try the trick is to run this program for a few hours in its "torture test" mode:

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

If it runs successfully for 5-6 hours you're fine. If it crashes lower the clock speed until you can run it 5-6 hours with no crashing. There is literally nothing out there that makes a CPU hotter than that prime search software, if you can survive it, you can survive anything, from a heat/OC perspective.