Is this a good PC system?

I don't know much at all about computers and my neighbor's brother is interested in selling his PC to me that he built. He is an electrical engineer so I figure he knows what he is doing. So, is the following any good and what should I expect to pay roughly for something like this?

Your input is appreciated.

THIS IS A CUSTOM BUILT DESK TOP MID TOWER INTEL MACHINE 7OO WATT POWER SUPPLY INTEL DUAL CORE 3 GIGHTZ PROCESSOR MOTHER BOARD IS AN XFX nForce 780i

IEEE 1394 (Firewire):
(2) 1394a @ 400 Mb/s (1 Rear + 1 Onboard)
LAN:
Dual Onboard LAN Supports 10/100/1000 Mb/s
SATA/PATA Drives:
6/2
Socket:
Intel Socket 775
Front Side Bus:
1333 MHz with supporting CPU
SLI Techonology:
3 x16 (3-Way SLI)
RAID:
0,1,0+1,5
Supported CPUs:
Intel Penryn, Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Pentium
SATA Speed:
3.0 Gb/s
System Memory:
Dual Channel DDR2 533/667/800
USB:
(10) USB 2.0 ports (6 Rear + 2x2 Onboard)
Native Gigabit Ethernet Connections:
Dual
PCI-E:
(2) PCI Express 2.0 , (1) PCI Express 1.0
Chipset:
NVIDIA nForce 780i MCP
JEDEC DDR2 Memory:
800 MHz (up to 1200MHz with EPP 1.0)
Audio:
8-Channel High Definition Audio
PCI Slot:
PCI-E 2.0 x16 (2), PCI-E 1.0 (1), PCI-E x1 (1), PCI (2)
Highlighted Features:
Windows Vista Ready , NVIDIA MediaShield Storage Technology , TCP/IP Acceleration , SLI-Ready Memory with EPP , NVIDIA FirstPacket Technology
HAS A NET GEAR WIRELESS CARD
SATA 350 GIG HARD DRIVE 2GIG DDR2 8OOM MHZ RAM
SECOND 80 GIG ATA HARD DRIVE
PROCESSOR FAN HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED ALL COPPER HEAT RISERS AND COOLING FINS FAN IS HUGE
CASE HAS TONS OF ROOM TO EXPAND
ALSO 8 INCH CASE COOLING FAN
FLOPPY DRIVE
16 X SONY DVD CD BURNER
PCI XNFORCE 250 MEZ VIDEO CARD
HAS WINDOWS XP PRO ON 350 GIG DRIVE
HAS LINUX FEDORA ON 80 GIG
DUAL BOOT
HAS WINDOWS OFFICE PRO 2003
NORTON CORPORATE ANTI VIRUS UNLIMITED DEFINITION UPDATES
NERO DVD CD BURNING SOFTWARE FULL EDITION

What are you going to use this computer for? Are you a die-hard gamer, or CAD user? Or, do you just need something to get you on the Internet, and play around with? First, ask him what he thinks it is worth, and get back to us.

Sounds like way overkill unless you really need heavy processing power.

This will be for an all around computer. Financial programs and lots of Excel. Heavy photoshop use along with the kids games. He tells me it can be built for $900 or slighlty less.

Thanks

Most of that stuff listed is available on virtually every motherboard out there.
It looks like this is a cut and paste of specs from a retail website... or else you need to use your caps lock.

First question is about the power supply. This is one of the most critical components on any high end system. A brand name is a must. Generic power supplies are terrible.

Second,

PCI XNFORCE 250 MEZ VIDEO CARD

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I have no idea what the heck that is.
But if it is a PCI video card, as opposed to PCI Express, then it is not going to do well with heavy photoshop use.

Third,

kids games

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If you don't mind my asking, what age range kids and what games? An FPS playing teenager is going to want a lot more performance than a Big Bird clicking kindergartener.

Fourth, I don't actually see any listing of how much ram the system has. You're going to want a minimum of 1 Gig for running XP and photoshop.

Fifth, an oddity

ALSO 8 INCH CASE COOLING FAN

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8 inches??? :huh: All fans on computers are measured in mm. The largest fan I've ever seen is around 150mm on a power supply.


I have to get moving off to work, I'll revisit this thread tonight and take a closer look at everything (the caps hurt my eyes). I can build decent systems for under 1K, so that isn't a fantasy price, but there are certainly places where you don't want to cut corners. Intel CPUs and Nforce mobos are definitely a good start.

$900 sounds a bit pricey for a machine like that, especially with only 2GB RAM. I just built a system for my brother which cost $550 and had the following:

Motherboard

Processor

4GB DDR2 RAM

Case (Lian-Li PC-60-I've already bought two of them and I just love them)

Power Supply (seems as good as Seasonic for half the price)

HDD (500 GB Samsung)

Card Reader (very handy to have-I put internal ones on all my new builds)

SATA DVD Burner

This system probably could go practically head to head with the one you're describing, and it has a much nicer case to boot, for $350 less. For upgrading down the road, the motherboard supports up to 16GB of RAM and faster processors. I could also add a PCI-E x16 graphic card if/when the onboard video isn't up to par.

Kind of lost track of what's a good deal these days. The chipsets, processors, and memory seem to be spinning their wheels waiting for the holy grail of multi threaded applications that will take advantage of multi core processors. I recall reading that Bill Gates wasn't all that thrilled when Intel told him it was going to be multi core processors or nothing in the future and that he'd better start programming correctly. I notice he's retiring next summer

Of course, once you actually do get a hard drive full of applications that run well only on multi core processors, then you'll need 4, 8, and 16 core machines to do multi-tasking again.

NORTON CORPORATE ANTI VIRUS UNLIMITED DEFINITION UPDATES

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This is going to slow down Machine as the software is a resource hog ... there are a couple of threads discussing good AV Solution ...Avast and AVG are good alternatives

Custom-built computers tend to be like highly customized cars.... The more customization, the less reliability.

I have a friend who built his own computer. Very knowledgeable. But he's always having issues with it. Meanwhile my stock comp is about 3 years old, and works just fine. It's not even a high-end model.

Monocrom said:

Custom-built computers tend to be like highly customized cars.... The more customization, the less reliability.

I have a friend who built his own computer. Very knowledgeable. But he's always having issues with it. Meanwhile my stock comp is about 3 years old, and works just fine. It's not even a high-end model.

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That's misleading.

Like custom car builders techies like to tweak getting all the HP out of it fixing every little flaw. While users like yourself are the ones who let the flaws go and if there's an oil leak you just fill up with a quart when it's low enough as long as it gets you from A to B you're happy. That's my analogy.

I'm in to building comps. I've built servers that are solid as rocks and are configured to be 90% effective against most viral threats even without antivirus. Once it's done I never touch it again.

But my own computers I'm always overclocking, undervolting, overvolting, installing uninstalling trying to get it 110% perfect. It's a hobby like flashlights.

Monocrom said:

Custom-built computers tend to be like highly customized cars.... The more customization, the less reliability.

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A lot depends upon what you put into it. For those who are seeking to get the last ounce of speed then of course reliability is less. They're using mostly bleeding edge components, essentially acting as beta testers. In my case I avoid stock computers because they usually have cheap steel cases and power supplies. And if they don't, they charge a hefty premium. Generally, I stick to components which are at least one generation old as chances are the bugs are worked out, and they are way less expensive. I avoid anything likely to make lots of heat. Video cards must be passively cooled or I won't touch them. For hard drives I just stick to 2-platter drives. The price point is most favorable here. I avoid the fastest RAM or processors. In general the speed increases for most of the things I avoid are something 99% of users won't notice. I don't care about having the fastest machine on the block. As I'm fond of saying, a slower working machine is faster than a dead "faster" one. I'm also finding that building a machine is a lot easier than it used to be. I remember the days where you had to have add-on cards for modems, hard drives, floppies, sound, LAN, etc. Nowadays practically every motherboard has all that stuff built in. All you have to do is put in the RAM and processor, plug in the drives, and away you go. I can't think of any good reason to avoid onboard video, either. For most non-gaming uses it's fast enough. Should you need to add better video there's always the PCI-E x16 slot.

tebore said:

Like custom car builders techies like to tweak getting all the HP out of it fixing every little flaw. While users like yourself are the ones who let the flaws go and if there's an oil leak you just fill up with a quart when it's low enough as long as it gets you from A to B you're happy. That's my analogy.

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Not entirely accurate. You see, I'm the type who'll drive around in a lesser car, until he can save up enough money for a used high-performance model. Get it checked out before buying, and then enjoy it.

Let's get the thread back on track for dad3and3's benefit...

Simply put I think the computer is a bad match for your needs. Its also overpriced.

As some examples - Dual core 3 gigahert is not a value pricepoint for someone like you. 700 watt power supply is overkill unless you're an extreme gamer. Simarly "copper fins on heatsink for processor" unnecessary, unless you overclock your pc. All of this leads me to believe you have an enthusist who is looking to unload his most recent computer, while he upgrades to bleeding edge.

I would basically look for a mid level system, that has a dual core processor of some kind, with 2 gigs of RAM, and Windows XP as the OS. I would think that is in the 600-700 range.

Lastly, just as a note, the video card you listed in your description isn't a card, it is just an integrated chipset on the motherboard.

jtr1962 said:

I just built a system for my brother which cost $550 and had the following:

Processor

Click to expand...

That's a nice little system. I saw the price dropped recently on this processor, an unlocked multiplier version of the above rated at 2.6ghz but which can be overclocked to 3 Ghz+ (luck of the draw) without stressing your ram or chipset.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103194

Thanks for all your help with this everyone. The one comment may be right that he is looking to sell this system to go onto the next best thing as now he has dropped his price to $600.

I have always just ordered from Dell and been mostly happy with what I have but for some reason, this one interested me at least for the moment.

Thanks

jtr1962 said:

4GB DDR2 RAM
.

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If you are not going to use 64-bit OS, 4GiB RAM is a waste.
3GiB max for 32-bit OS, less if you are going to upgrade the machine with a video card with 512 MiB VRAM or more.

deathkenli said:

If you are not going to use 64-bit OS, 4GiB RAM is a waste.
3GiB max for 32-bit OS, less if you are going to upgrade the machine with a video card with 512 MiB VRAM or more.

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No plans for a 512 MiB video card but a 64-bit OS may be in the future. If not, at least with 2 2GiB sticks the machine can run in faster dual channel mode, something not possible with 3GiB (ie. a 1 GiB and 2 GiB stick). And besides that, 3 GiB would have cost about the same as 4 GiB.

Another thing to add is that the amount of RAM recognized by a 32-bit OS is heavily machine dependent. Some Intel machines allow up to 3.6 GiB. 3 to 3.2 GiB is the usual for most AMD platforms.

If RAM was expensive then I agree 4 GiB might be a waste here. For $99 or less, it's a no brainer. I paid that much years ago for 32 MiB in my 386-40. Better to buy it now while it's cheap than need it later when the price might be double or triple or worse. We all see how volatile the price of RAM is.

If MS didn't cripple PAE on XP then using >4 GiB RAM wouldn't even be an issue.

Most of the information you have posted is just the motherboard specs. If this is the information that the guy gave you, it seems to me like he's trying to pull the wool over your eyes by giving you a big load of unnecessary and impressive sounding information in an attempt to hide the important specs.

1) you need to know what kind of processor it uses (Not just 3GHz but the specific model). All I see is just possible processors that the motherboard can take.

2) If you don't know much about computers then you won't use Linux Fedora and the second hard drive.

3) I've never heard of that video card before.

4) Don't be taken in by "8 channel audio" This doesn't necessarily mean the sound quality is any good.

I would steer clear of this machine unless he's offering a price you can't refuse. You can buy a fast brand new computer for very cheap these days.

jtr1962 said:

No plans for a 512 MiB video card but a 64-bit OS may be in the future. If not, at least with 2 2GiB sticks the machine can run in faster dual channel mode, something not possible with 3GiB (ie. a 1 GiB and 2 GiB stick). And besides that, 3 GiB would have cost about the same as 4 GiB.

Another thing to add is that the amount of RAM recognized by a 32-bit OS is heavily machine dependent. Some Intel machines allow up to 3.6 GiB. 3 to 3.2 GiB is the usual for most AMD platforms.

If RAM was expensive then I agree 4 GiB might be a waste here. For $99 or less, it's a no brainer. I paid that much years ago for 32 MiB in my 386-40. Better to buy it now while it's cheap than need it later when the price might be double or triple or worse. We all see how volatile the price of RAM is.

If MS didn't cripple PAE on XP then using >4 GiB RAM wouldn't even be an issue.

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http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm
enjoy.