$3k, Need Desktop, Monitor, Netbook and Laptop.

S

sdotcarter

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 23, 2009
Messages
177
Looking for this to be a microcenter (Cambridge) Build. Pricematch of newegg where available. Can order odds and ends online but he doesn't prefer it.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Document Storage, PS, Office, Surfing, light gaming.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
~3000 for all
3) Where do you live?
Boston,MA
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
A Full Desktop + Monitor, Cheep Netbook, Solid Laptop
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No, but I may do a little one just to play.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Need to find a 21" > 25" , 19X12 Minimum.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Next Week
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
FutureProof Mobo
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
Has a copy of 7 x64 I beleive, if not we can get the system builder at MC

Desktop:
Mobo: EVGA P55V
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0326189

Proc: i7 860, Maybe i5?
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0317378
Eather this or a 920 depending on board.

Memory: $150 > $200
Unsure about memory. What does microcenter have that is good? If nothing im sure the Ripjaws will be suggested online.

Power Supply: TX 650
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0273361 // http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005&Tpk=corsair tx 650

Case: Antec P180 Mini, Possable MC Price Match if they have (Newegg lists at $89.99)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129041&cm_re=p180\-_-11-129-041-_-Product

CPU Cooler: H50 Best Buy
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Corsair...oler/9503771.p?id=1218115623560&skuId=9503771

Video Card: XFX 5770
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0321833

HardDrive1: OCZ Vertex SSD 30Gig.
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0304102

HardDrive2: Seagate Barricuda 1TB
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0281709

Netbook:
Anything Solid and reliable, Any Suggestions Welcomed.
Laptop:
Looking for something in the 500-1000 range. Any Suggestions Welcomed.
 
Let me get this straight: PS = Photoshop? What do you mean by "document storage"?
 
Danny Bui said:
Let me get this straight: PS = Photoshop? What do you mean by "document storage"?
Click to expand...

PS is photoshop.

My friend is going to law school at harvard and hes particular about all of his papers and such. Mostly document storage for all of his previous work and grad papers. What i mean is eather a raid array to keep documents safe or a nice storage drive that has a very low failure rate.
 
He should get a standalone home server for documents storage as Raid is never a backup.
 
I concur with lt_shiro: Definitely get a separate storage server for his data. Something like this will do:
$400 - Acer Aspire Easystore H340 Windows Home Server

That'll leave you with about $2600 for the netbook, laptop, and PC. Speaking of which. what's the use for the netbook? Notetaking during class?

At MC online, this is the best RAM I could find:
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0318703

However, like Fry's, MC doesn't offer a list of their entire inventory online. As such, there will be more than likely better or cheaper parts in store that most of us will not know about.

However, I believe you can get the i5 750 for $160 there. At that price, it's more worthwhile to get that than the i7 860 unless there's a better deal for the i7 860 ($200)
 
Prefer not to get another box for storage. Thought Raid 0 was a viable solution?

And the i5 750 over the 860, that i can understand.

Netbook is for notes and browsing while out. Nothing more demanding then word for sure.

LAptop and netbook suggestions ?
 
Raid is never "Viable solution" for backing up data. Backups should be a standalone media away from the point of failure.
 
RAID 0 is never a viable backup solution. In fact, as lt shiro pointed out, RAID by itself is not a viable backup solution.

As for laptop and netbook suggestions, we can't recommend anything until we know exactly how much money will be left over from the PC and server purchases. Once we know that we can begin the process of determining what laptop and netbook would best fits the needs.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
I agree, setup something else for backups; an external drive, NAS, Win Home Server, etc. The MediaSmart LX is like $200... should be able to hold docs just fine. :p Then again, so would an $80 external drive. ;) Oh, and one major advantage of having something like this is the ability to grab something small in the case of an emergency (though an external drive would be much smaller than most NAS/WHS boxes, lol).

BTW, the Samsung F3 is faster than the 'cuda.11 1TB (I'm guessing thats an 11th gen in your link because it says 5yr warranty -- Seagate 'cudas are now 3yr warranty -- probably because of that fiasco with drives bricking on them, lol). I'd suggest the Samsung F3 or Caviar Black from WD.

If you're getting the OCZ Vertex 30GB, consider getting two for RAID0, simply to speed up the small random write speeds to compensate for the low small random write speed of a single vertex. http://ssd.alphaq.org If you go with a single SSD, and don't need the sequential large write speed of the Vertex, go for the Intel or Kingston 40GB SSD instead.
 
sdotcarter said:
Prefer not to get another box for storage. Thought Raid 0 was a viable solution?

And the i5 750 over the 860, that i can understand.

Netbook is for notes and browsing while out. Nothing more demanding then word for sure.

LAptop and netbook suggestions ?
Click to expand...

"Browsing while out"

Does this include Youtube?

While Javascript is very occasionally a problem, assuming you're willing to limit yourself to 1 tab, the main performance limitation on netbooks (and one of the reasons people keep shifting up the size) is Flash, and in particular h.264 flash video. Adobe's implementation is kind of horrible on the CPU (and 10x worse for the Linux version, which is unusable).
 
Need more details on the amount of data storage needed.

With RAID 1, 3, or 5, all you protect against is failure of 1 drive. You are just as likely to have a motherboard/PSU blow up and destroy all the drives at once, the user accidentally format the wrong drive or delete the wrong folder, a virus trash your machine, a burglar steal it, a fire burn it,, or some other unforeseen problem. RAID 0, on the other hand, has *negative* backup properties - you are pairing drives for speed, and if either drive fails, all data is lost.

For important small documents storage (text & images, that is), at this stage of the game you should be using both something outside of the main computer (an offline backup drive, or another computer) *AND* cloud storage.

For big unimportant data storage, you should have a parity-protected backup machine connected via gigabit ethernet with the capability to do incremental backups.

For big important data storage, you should have the previous with a copy-on-write historical backup system, that periodically snapshots everything to an offline and/or offsite copy.
 
Assuming tablet (I'm sorry CES, "Slate") capability doesn't mean anything to him, there are a number of decent 11.6-13.3" long-battery life laptops (I'm sorry, "Thin And Lights") based on Intel CULV processors which have better-than-Atom performance, for $400-$800. If you're looking for "small and cheap" out of a netbook rather than "Small, durable, and disposable", then one of these could serve double duty.

Acer Timeline is respected here, and specs out to minimum 8 hours battery life through their whole line, but there are other good ones too.
 
If you are looking for durable/disposable, there are still first-gen 9" netbooks with tiny 8GB SSDs available that could serve for ~$200 - but then you have to deal with the ergonomics of the keyboard & tiny screen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top