Stennick
Beta member
- Messages
- 4
- Location
- United States
I'm a new guy here (as evidenced by this being my second post). First let me tell you the computer I have been using for the last four years is an Acer Aspire 5517 laptop. For those of you that aren't familiar with it (and who would be unless they were forced to) it rocks a SINGLE core 1.6 ghz processor with two gigs of ram with a 15 inch screen. The sad thing is in 2009 I think I paid nearly 400 dollars for this atleast 300.
Before that I've had a run of shitty desktops that I can't even remember the specs on them because they were from 2005 and before. Hell I think in 2004 I had a 350 MHZ processor.
Anyway you get the picture I've always had shitty shitty computers and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of getting computers that are outdated years before I even buy them. So I want to get a new cpu and I finally have the cash to make the purchase. Before I do that I have several questions and any help with these questions would be great.
The first question is is it cheaper to have a computer built than buying one off of the shelf? I don't know jack about building a computer I know you need a mother board, a power supply, a processor, a case, a hard drive and RAM. I don't know if you need more than that and I don't know how to put any of that together. So I would have to go to a computer shop to do so which seems like paying them to build my computer will be taking whatever I save by buying the parts myself and just handing those savings over to them to build it for me. Not too mention I doubt I would get the same kind of fool proof long term warranty that I could get if I bought one but if I'm missing something please let me know.
2. I don't do much gaming now but I think I would like to in the future. I play pretty intensive games such as Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc the ability to play these games on the computer opens up aspects of the game I can't get from an XBOX. On top of looking to the future to be able to play the top of the line CPU game releases I do a TON of video converting. I record a lot of video in my personal life having two kids a wife, a large family every month there is baseball games, holidays, birthdays, vacations and I'm something of an amateur video guy. I have to convert all of those videos over to a different type of file after I place them on my computer and as I said there are a lot of videos. Sometimes I might be converting twenty videos that are a half hour or more sometimes. On my computer now if I do that it nearly shuts my computer down. Its such a slow crawl that its almost pitiful. I also do a lot of video and photo editing on my computer and I have looked into getting into 3D rendering as well. So if I want a computer that is going to play the newest video games out there, if I want a computer that is going to be able to blaze through my video converting, if I want a computer that will be able to let me do video and photo editing as quickly as possible and let me dabble at a fairly good speed in 3D rendering what end of the spectrum am I looking at? Can I get this done for 800 dollars and future proof my computer for the next four years?
3. The AMD versus Intel debate, well from what I have read there is no debate. Intel kicks AMD's ass all over the place. However Intel is also quite a bit more than AMD. I don't know if there is a question here as much as are AMD's as bad as I'm reading all over the internet. Are they reliable? Are they long lasting? And are they atleast close to the speeds of intel?
The computer I'm looking at right now is the HP Envy, six cores 3.5 ghz processor, with 10 gigs of ram and a 1TB HD. Model number HP Envy h8-1414 its in my price range and it seems to me like its very future proofed. Any insight would be helpful.
Thank you
Before that I've had a run of shitty desktops that I can't even remember the specs on them because they were from 2005 and before. Hell I think in 2004 I had a 350 MHZ processor.
Anyway you get the picture I've always had shitty shitty computers and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of getting computers that are outdated years before I even buy them. So I want to get a new cpu and I finally have the cash to make the purchase. Before I do that I have several questions and any help with these questions would be great.
The first question is is it cheaper to have a computer built than buying one off of the shelf? I don't know jack about building a computer I know you need a mother board, a power supply, a processor, a case, a hard drive and RAM. I don't know if you need more than that and I don't know how to put any of that together. So I would have to go to a computer shop to do so which seems like paying them to build my computer will be taking whatever I save by buying the parts myself and just handing those savings over to them to build it for me. Not too mention I doubt I would get the same kind of fool proof long term warranty that I could get if I bought one but if I'm missing something please let me know.
2. I don't do much gaming now but I think I would like to in the future. I play pretty intensive games such as Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc the ability to play these games on the computer opens up aspects of the game I can't get from an XBOX. On top of looking to the future to be able to play the top of the line CPU game releases I do a TON of video converting. I record a lot of video in my personal life having two kids a wife, a large family every month there is baseball games, holidays, birthdays, vacations and I'm something of an amateur video guy. I have to convert all of those videos over to a different type of file after I place them on my computer and as I said there are a lot of videos. Sometimes I might be converting twenty videos that are a half hour or more sometimes. On my computer now if I do that it nearly shuts my computer down. Its such a slow crawl that its almost pitiful. I also do a lot of video and photo editing on my computer and I have looked into getting into 3D rendering as well. So if I want a computer that is going to play the newest video games out there, if I want a computer that is going to be able to blaze through my video converting, if I want a computer that will be able to let me do video and photo editing as quickly as possible and let me dabble at a fairly good speed in 3D rendering what end of the spectrum am I looking at? Can I get this done for 800 dollars and future proof my computer for the next four years?
3. The AMD versus Intel debate, well from what I have read there is no debate. Intel kicks AMD's ass all over the place. However Intel is also quite a bit more than AMD. I don't know if there is a question here as much as are AMD's as bad as I'm reading all over the internet. Are they reliable? Are they long lasting? And are they atleast close to the speeds of intel?
The computer I'm looking at right now is the HP Envy, six cores 3.5 ghz processor, with 10 gigs of ram and a 1TB HD. Model number HP Envy h8-1414 its in my price range and it seems to me like its very future proofed. Any insight would be helpful.
Thank you