Computer Builds

Only just stumbled on your blog.

I do very much like your system builds, however at times they may be a segragated.

I'd recommend as a new topic/category a jack-of-all-trades computer. Most of us would obviously use our computers for web, managing media, some transcoding (on a non-professional level), doing some work from home (Word, Excel, email etc), some gaming (this is where the options would allow people to tailor their PC to suit the level - low, medium and high level card) etc.

I'm currently building just such a PC and looking for maximum "value" for money. Not necessarily the cheapest, but the sweet spot in terms of $$ and performance. My personal thoughts are I'm better to build one of these every two years than a maxed out system every 4.

I guess it is largely a method of mixing the gaming and workstation builds, but I would think it would be a useful seperate section to cater for a large portion of the people.

Cheers. Keep up the great work.

ColonelBalls,

For your needs and what you describe, the Gaming PCs would suit you best. They already offer the possibility of choosing different level of video cards and starting with the $600 Gaming PC, they are all equipped with a quad-core processor, which will take care of your transcoding needs.

Workstation are really designed for better looking for a computer to work on and who needs as much CPU performance as possible.

Out of all the things that you want to do, gaming (Mostly handled by the video card) is the most demanding, along with transcoding (Mostly handled by the CPU). The rest of the tasks that you wish to do are easy for the computer to handle if it can handle gaming/transcoding to start with. Hence why the Gaming PCs already fit what you are looking for.

I agree with you, building/upgrading every two years a decent system comes out way less expensive than building a top of the line every four years. With higher-end parts come diminishing returns, that is you have to invest more and more to get less and less additional performance, so you're doing the right thing by looking for the sweet spot.

Technically, workstation and gaming builds are similar, the main difference is:
- Workstations builds focus heavily on CPU power.
- Gaming Builds focus on getting the right balance between the CPU and the Video Card, so one doesn't bottleneck the other.

I recommend that you go with a Gaming PC Build, something between $600 and $1000 would probably fit you best, then again, it depends on what games you intend to play as well as the resolution of your monitor (the higher it is, the better the video card will have to be to keep up.)

Hope that helps you and thanks for the kind words/support, much appreciated.
Cheers.

How about one that is completely silent.

Richard,

Sure, but what would you want the PC to be for?
Gaming? Only web browsing and such? Audio/Video/3D work?