[DjFonti]

Howdy all, I need some advice.

My brother in law wants to get a new computer, and has set a budget of a thousand pounds (rouhgly $2000) to get one.

Now with computers nowadays, I doubt he'll need to spend that, in fact I'm pretty sure he won't, as they're pretty cheap, but I know he'll want some serious kit anyway for the sake of it. So the money is there.

So, could some of you kind souls please recommend some hardware for building a top PC?

The main intensive use of it will be camcorder footage capture and dvd authoring.

The specifics I want to know about are...

-the quickest, most well-regarded processor. (could you also please state the speed of the CPU as well in addition to it's name?)

-a good graphics card, in the 256mb-512mb range. Also, the most recommended interface.

-a good soundcard.

-Whether terabyte harddrives are available anywhere to buy.

-a site that has a wide selection of cases.

And the most recomended operating system. I've heard WIndows Media centre would be the best for video making, but again I'm not sure which is why I ask.

If I have any further questions I can remember I'll ask....in the meantime thank you very much for any help...

EDIT: Oh, and he doesn't need a monitor.

Edited by DjFonti, 14 March 2007 - 07:55 AM.

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Howdy all, I need some advice.

My brother in law wants to get a new computer, and has set a budget of a thousand pounds (rouhgly $2000) to get one.

Now with computers nowadays, I doubt he'll need to spend that, in fact I'm pretty sure he won't, as they're pretty cheap, but I know he'll want some serious kit anyway for the sake of it. So the money is there.

So, could some of you kind souls please recommend some hardware for building a top PC?

The main intensive use of it will be camcorder footage capture and dvd authoring.

The specifics I want to know about are...

-the quickest, most well-regarded processor. (could you also please state the speed of the CPU as well in addition to it's name?)

-a good graphics card, in the 256mb-512mb range. Also, the most recommended interface.

-a good soundcard.

-Whether terabyte harddrives are available anywhere to buy.

-a site that has a wide selection of cases.

And the most recomended operating system. I've heard WIndows Media centre would be the best for video making, but again I'm not sure which is why I ask.

If I have any further questions I can remember I'll ask....in the meantime thank you very much for any help...

EDIT: Oh, and he doesn't need a monitor.

I live in the usa so I can help you as much as I can but I dont know much about any UK computer sites. I herd http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ is good but wait till warriorscott comes on and he can tell you more since he lives in the UK.

Since he has abit of cash to spend I would go for the Intel core 2 duo. I would get a E6600 Intel conroe. Its a dual core processor of course and it has 2.40Ghz on each cores. They are totally redesigned from their old line which was the pentium series. The new Core 2 duo does more clocks per second than the Pentium D Dual core processors did about 2-2.5X more clocks per second which is really good and fast. That is why they rate the core 2 duos lower on the ghz speed now so dont think that a 2.40 ghz intel core 2 duo Conroe is slow because It is NOT. The E6600 conroe chip can easily out perform amd's fx 62 Chip aswell. They do have higher end Conroe chips but the price starts to jump abit right after the e6600. They also have lower end chips below the E6600 but I would personally stick with the E6600 because of the larger 4mb cache on the chip..

Since it will mainly be a video editing pc you will need atleast 2gb of ram and that should be plenty but if you end up getting the new windows vista you might say what the heck and get 3gb of ram but you really dont need over 2gb of ram on windows XP or Media center.. 2gb will run whatever you want just fine but if you end up way below your budget why not throw in another 1gb of ram If you decided to go with Windows Vista that is.

On a video card all the new motherboards have pci express so that what you will be getting.. For video editing you need to get atleast a nvidia 7600gt or an Ati equivalent which are cheap nowadays and that should be plenty for video editing...

All mobos nowadays has build in integrated sound but if you want better look at the x-fi xtreme music or x-fi Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1.


For harddrives just get two 500Gb sata-II 16mb cache drives.

On the operating system you are on your own, there is so many to choose from and the new windows vista is out now and everything will be going that way soon with directx10 and the new directx10 games coming out. You might as well get Vista now since you are getting a brand new machine but if you want to play the new directx10 video games its a must to go ahead and get a directx10 compatible video card to take advantage of that technology when games start to be released. You said nothing about gaming so you could get by without a directx10 video card.

[jrm20]

Howdy all, I need some advice.

My brother in law wants to get a new computer, and has set a budget of a thousand pounds (rouhgly $2000) to get one.

Now with computers nowadays, I doubt he'll need to spend that, in fact I'm pretty sure he won't, as they're pretty cheap, but I know he'll want some serious kit anyway for the sake of it. So the money is there.

So, could some of you kind souls please recommend some hardware for building a top PC?

The main intensive use of it will be camcorder footage capture and dvd authoring.

The specifics I want to know about are...

-the quickest, most well-regarded processor. (could you also please state the speed of the CPU as well in addition to it's name?)

-a good graphics card, in the 256mb-512mb range. Also, the most recommended interface.

-a good soundcard.

-Whether terabyte harddrives are available anywhere to buy.

-a site that has a wide selection of cases.

And the most recomended operating system. I've heard WIndows Media centre would be the best for video making, but again I'm not sure which is why I ask.

If I have any further questions I can remember I'll ask....in the meantime thank you very much for any help...

EDIT: Oh, and he doesn't need a monitor.

I live in the usa so I can help you as much as I can but I dont know much about any UK computer sites. I herd http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ is good but wait till warriorscott comes on and he can tell you more since he lives in the UK.

Since he has abit of cash to spend I would go for the Intel core 2 duo. I would get a E6600 Intel conroe. Its a dual core processor of course and it has 2.40Ghz on each cores. They are totally redesigned from their old line which was the pentium series. The new Core 2 duo does more clocks per second than the Pentium D Dual core processors did about 2-2.5X more clocks per second which is really good and fast. That is why they rate the core 2 duos lower on the ghz speed now so dont think that a 2.40 ghz intel core 2 duo Conroe is slow because It is NOT. The E6600 conroe chip can easily out perform amd's fx 62 Chip aswell. They do have higher end Conroe chips but the price starts to jump abit right after the e6600. They also have lower end chips below the E6600 but I would personally stick with the E6600 because of the larger 4mb cache on the chip..

Since it will mainly be a video editing pc you will need atleast 2gb of ram and that should be plenty but if you end up getting the new windows vista you might say what the heck and get 3gb of ram but you really dont need over 2gb of ram on windows XP or Media center.. 2gb will run whatever you want just fine but if you end up way below your budget why not throw in another 1gb of ram If you decided to go with Windows Vista that is.

On a video card all the new motherboards have pci express so that what you will be getting.. For video editing you need to get atleast a nvidia 7600gt or an Ati equivalent which are cheap nowadays and that should be plenty for video editing...

All mobos nowadays has build in integrated sound but if you want better look at the x-fi xtreme music or x-fi Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1.


For harddrives just get two 500Gb sata-II 16mb cache drives.

On the operating system you are on your own, there is so many to choose from and the new windows vista is out now and everything will be going that way soon with directx10 and the new directx10 games coming out. You might as well get Vista now since you are getting a brand new machine but if you want to play the new directx10 video games its a must to go ahead and get a directx10 compatible video card to take advantage of that technology when games start to be released. You said nothing about gaming so you could get by without a directx10 video card.

[warriorscot]

For a £1000 it is a tight squeeze to get an E6600 and a dx10 card but doable, it doesnt buy as much as the exchange rate would let you get in the US, overclockers is my favourite, ebuyer and scan are the next best choices, microdirect and misco/dabs after that.

Whats the system for, if its gaming he will spend his whole budget easy and he will need the dx10 card he could get away with a older dx9 if he wont play allot of games, computers are cheap but good computers arent if he needs something nice but £1000 is a moderatley healthy budget he can get a good system for it although if he is spending for a nice vid card he might want a new monitor if he doesnt allready have a good one otherwise theres not much point in a really good gfx card.

Something like below just to give you a general guide line as to what £1000 will buy you its a pretty rounded gaming level system but swapping the 8800 for a x1950 or 1650 if he doesnt play any games at all:

Hiper HPU-4M670 Type R 670W ATX2.2 PSU
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 320MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express)
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 Soundcard - OEM
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2
Abit AW9D-MAX Intel 975X (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB
NEC AD7170S Serial ATA 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter
Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case

[DjFonti]

Excellent advice thus far lads, I'll look into it all and try to get my head around it all, and then I'll probably have more questions. Until then though, thank you....

EDIT: Warrior, the system will mainly to do his accounts, and to capture camcorder footage and make DVD's out of them, oh and Internet use of course. So, although he told me a thousand pounds, it doesn't necessarily have to be in that range given that it's functions won't be of a wide variety. But like I said, I think he is prepared to pay good money just for the sake of it, but if a powerful machine is available for lower then please advise.

Additionally, I need to know to know how to make the integrated speakers on his Sony LCD monitor work, as there doesn't appear to be an audio cable attached to the monitor, but anyway I'm rambling now.

Edited by DjFonti, 15 March 2007 - 10:21 AM.