PC Tech Thread

Few games stress the CPU much these days, so I wouldn't consider that a reason to upgrade. All that heat and noise will be coming from the graphics card.

I don't think the CPU in the newer laptop is in itself a good enough reason to upgrade. It looks like you'll get 10-15% more out of it but benchmark figures like that are barely noticeable.

There's no reason why two year old hardware should be slow in general use. Have you considered replacing the HDD with an SSD if possible and installing the OS from scratch?

Ta, both.

@Brun
Already an SSD. Formatting is an option for survivability but really the fact that it weighs about a metric fuck-ton (as does the power brick) as @spotter can testify I don't feel as comfortable carrying it on shoots or showing work on it to clients when it sounds like the NASA shuttle taking off. A good clean of the fans would probably help but I'm not sure I'm confident enough to do this myself (when I use canned air it just sprays water everywhere - maybe that's normal but I suspect my technique is shit).

@noiser
"you've probably got to much ram, for your processor. possibly in both builds." That's interesting to know, thank you. I hadn't seen the list of CPUs which is interesting so thanks again.

Can confirm, feels like a tower in weight

It looks like the new processor will be a little faster, but with integrated graphics which are significantly better (this is the intel graphics chip). In fact the iris 5200 graphics chip that the processor has integrated on it is almost as powerful as the gt750m discrete graphics chip that it also has. I'm not sure what the interplay will be like between the two chips, or if the integrated graphics will be used at all.
If the software you use is gpu compute heavy you'll notice the difference between the 680m and the 750m graphics, that's a drop from a high end chip to a low-mid end one. HOWEVER the power draw from the 750m will be significantly less and so you'll have a laptop which will give you most of the benefits you're looking for; lighter, cooler, quieter.

If that made no sense ask away!

So the iMac isn't quite cutting it for video games (no surprise there), thought it did handle Windows great with no error.

Considering the huge expense of the modern iMac, I figure that a gaming PC might be a much better ideas on a budget.

Do anyone have any good idea on which OTP gaming computer to go for? especially one that you can easily upgrade in the future.

I've be given give a Dell 6400 laptop (the orange one) and I'm thinking of upgrading it. If I stick in 16gb of RAM a decent 256gb SSD for programs and 500 gb hd for storage. Planning to install windows 7 64 bit. Do you think it will handle photo editing with lightroom 5 comfortably?

http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/cheap-overclocked-intel-gaming-pc-next-day-delivery-uk-g35i

I'd go for something along these specs. That CPU will overclock well, as does the GTX 970. The graphics card is about the most important bit in a gaming PC and for performance per £££ the GTX 970 is currently the best you can get. They go for about £260 on their own.

Look like a great spec! Nearly a grand however is a little more than what I regarded as a budget thought.

Good call on graphic cards fairly obvious really.

This reminds me that I have an ATI Radeon 7850 gathering dust...

I've got a GTX 580 and 780 not doing owt at the moment. 580 obviously a bit long in the tooth but probably still compares favourably against current mid-range cards. Will have a look on eBay at prices but if anyone wants to make an offer (for either) in the meantime...

Well, my computer is creaking along with an old geforce 7600gs so would be keen on either of those. Don't game much but do have lots of screens and it's starting to creak.
AMD processor, but I assume either the nvidia or ati would be fine.
What are the heads on those cards?

what games do you play on what size monitor and how much do you want to spend?

Squat all gaming really, not something I'm willing to spend extra for.
Really just need a new card on the cheaper side that will last many more years. 2 FHD monitors at the moment but it might go up to 3.

Well what do you mean creaking? What do you do that is graphics intensive?

Sorry if I have missed it, but what iMac are you using Ed? There is a good gaming PC build spec in the DayZ thread if you can dig it out... £500 overall cost (ish).

A 2009 model with a max 8gb ram solt, GeForce GT120 256mb graphic card, was fine for most games until about a couple years ago.

Very much like to play GTA5 on the PC to take advantage of graphic awesomeness.

Will check out that topic, £500 is much more reasonable.

Ahh.. yeah prob not the best for games (not that any iMac is).

Here is a copy and paste from the thread..

"CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£149.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard (£106.13 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£53.80 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£52.93 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card (£103.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case (£83.74 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£43.00 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £550.58

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-05 15:02: uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/Y4JHrH

That's my modest gaming rig; runs Day Z with quite nice graphics at 35-45 FPS.

I've since stuck another 128GB SSD in there for dual-booting into a real OS for non-gaming activities, and I've also added a couple mechanical drives for storage. I love how infinitely expandable it is."

edscoble wants OTP though?
go to pissy world and see what the best spec for £500 is. sorted.

or get a used PC off ebay?

Oh good point... missed that...

Struggling with simple graphics response. The CPU is at least reasonably up to date (4x3.2GHz) but with only 4GB RAM. Will happily admit that it could do with more RAM, but it hasn't struggled before.
The GPU predates the whole lot by many years and has been on my hit list for a long time, just wondering if any of your guys have something reasonable second hand that I can slot in.

4gb ram is plenty for usual stuff. you can see how much RAM you're using in task manager, if you dont go over 4gb then you dont really need more.

I'm trying to assess whether your graphics card is actually the problem, because If you're not playing games or video editing then it should be fine. Its a graphics card made to play games, regardless of 2 big monitors, office docs, facebook and youtube come nowhere close. Do you want to explain what you mean by graphics response?

I'm thinking about getting my mother a new laptop for Christmas - it'll be used for web-surfing and running Family Historian 6.

I can't find any system requirements on the website for that, so I'm guessing that they are not huge.

What's the best laptop out there at the moment that has as its key attributes affordability, lightness and longevity?

So I have an interesting/annoying situation with my NAS...
I can reach it in windows explorer from my desktop using both the IP (\192.168.0.250) and the hostname (\rackhamnas).
On my laptop, I can only reach it in explorer using the IP, but not the hostname. However, I can get to the admin interface in a browser and over FTP. This is independent of whether it's connected over WiFi or LAN.

Any suggestions for what it is that's getting in the way?

What is in your hosts file?

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

or

/etc/hosts

Just add it manually at the end if you need to

[code]192.168.0.250 rackhamnas[/code]

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/2571922.htm?CMPID=GS001&_$ja=cgid:12488287130|tsid:59158|cid:200223050|lid:94811651690|nw:g|crid:49535661170|rnd:12017027936720267131|dvc:c|adp:1o1|bku:1

Toshiba, so should be alright logevity wise , quite thin and light. Only thing is that the keyboard is not a laptop one but has a keypad and the mouse pad is apple style no buttons but clicky pad. At £280 not a bad cheapy.

EDIT - Wish I hadn't posted that but can't delete the post.