PC recommendations needed ASAP

[Engineer]

Thanks... Yeah, my wife is great. She did all the research, and I just stood there looking dumb[er than usual] while she filled up the shopping cart. LOL. Left to my own devices, I probably would have ordered a custom-built PC online and paid 2-3 times as much.

Thanks, wife! (She's been following this thread.)

[Guard Dog]

The parts are all here, but it isn't put together yet.

We picked everything up at Micro Center and Frys Electronics.

The mother board is a Gigabyte brand with 2 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots for the graphics cards.

We got 2 graphics cards -- both Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT. Each card has 2 DVI connections, so I could have 4 monitors if I wanted (but I likely won't ever do that). Three 23" wide screens should be more than enough.

The chip is an Intel i7 860, and we picked up 8 GB of RAM.

The hard drive is a 1 terabyte Western Digital, Caviar Black, 7200 RPM. I thought about going with a solid state drive (SSD) for the operating system and the applications (everything would be lightning fast that way), but I decided to wait on the SSD for now. Maybe in a few months I'll upgrade to an SSD for the operating system and use the 1T Western Digital drive for storage only.

The case is medium-sized with 3 large fans, which will make the machine pretty quiet since larger fans don't need to spin as fast as small fans.

Total cost: around $1,300.

Sounds like your wife knows what she is doing!!

Don't forget that, in order to make use of that 8GB Ram, you will want a 64-bit OS. 4GB is the max for 32 bit (Windows 7). You will need at least the Home Basic version to access more than 4GB.


I will be ordering parts for my new (personal) machine as soon as my affy $$ hits the account You got the 'bug' in me!

[Engineer]

LOL -- have fun ordering and building your machine!

Yep, she will install the 64 bit version to take advantage of the RAM.

[WCD Admin]

Only here for a second, but here is my 2 cents

GET A WATER COOLED SYSTEM WITH NO FANS you will thank me for this (I think)

I had a Sony Vaio which was watercoooled and is now the home PC for media, etc, and I replaced it with a Dell Xeon server, some thing that cost me quite a bit of dough. Its loud and obnoxious. The water cool systems basically emit no noise. I love them. I still need a new system. One day in the future this will be my thread.

Ok, yes I am out of coffee. must leave

[Renee]

This is sad as hell, but reading all this stuff makes me excited....

I'm a bigger nerd than I thought

[Engineer]

GET A WATER COOLED SYSTEM WITH NO FANS you will thank me for this (I think)

Thanks for the tip -- perhaps Version 2.0 will have water cooling and a solid state drive. For now, I'm very happy with what I have. It's been working perfectly, and it is a lot quieter than my old HP.

I still have a lot of catching up to do, but I'm getting there.

[bonusgeek]

I've been wanting to get a new computer myself and I ended up going with the Lenovo after reading this thread. So far its been great and much more efficient than my toshiba so thanks for whoever recommended it.

[AussieDave]

Thanks, wife!

See Dave (all) they are good for some other things too

Promise to refrain from adding a PC/woman joke right here...


Cheers

Dave