Associate
- Joined
- 25 Oct 2009
- Posts
- 1
Hello there. A friend I work with regularly browses this site at lunchtimes, and after some long discussions, he said I should ask you guys of the oC Forums for advice on a matter of mine.
And ultimately, the question comes down to, should I upgrade my current computer, or should I build from scratch or buy a pre-built machine with or without customisation options? And I hope you guys can shed some light on the situation.
During my last years of university, I had to purchase a new machine due to my older machine (bought as a present for me, which was a Philips Slimline M1000 series) had finally begun to buckle under the sheer amount of things I was asking from it at the time. It's poor design simply couldn't cope with heavy use, gaming, music composition and rendering atop of standard word processing, etc. So at that time, with limited resources and a quite-urgent necessity to replace the machine, I (foolishly) decided to purchase a Packard Bell iXtreme 2613 from the dreaded men in purple shirts. To briefly summarise its stats;
Intel Q6600 Quad Core @ 2.4Ghz
3GB RAM
nVidia 8400GS 256mb PCI-E Graphics
250W PSU
& Standard pretty-much-everything-else
At the time, it was a vast improvement over the previous machine, and it has served me well until recent times where I've been back at home, and the machine no longer can cope with recent purchases. For example, 8 months ago I bought a Samsung 22'' monitor which now causes the graphics card to cry under the strain of doing anything graphical, as well as games such as Crysis and even (to my horror) Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 causing massive lag, and graphical horrors .
A couple of months back, fed up with the issues at hand, I decided I may try to upgrade my machine. Problem is, any new card I place in the machine requires more wattage, thus a new PSU will also be needed. And those two will also cause a large dramatic increase in heat, which means that the case will need better cooling. Then, considering its a horrid pre-moulded not-designed-for-enhancements case, I would need to rig up some sort of additional fan mounting, etc, etc...
So what should I do?
Upgrading the current machine will cost a fair bit, but simply ditching the machine for a new one seems a waste (although could always be pushed into service as a Media Centre I suppose). But spending that much to get it up-to-scratch would cost nearly as much as a new rig.
In case you are wondering, I have a budget up to a maximum of £900, but the machine needs to be able to support happily my hobbies (which are being an avid digital artist as well as music composition), and be quite future-proof/upgradable.
Any thoughtful responses would be greatly appreciated.
And ultimately, the question comes down to, should I upgrade my current computer, or should I build from scratch or buy a pre-built machine with or without customisation options? And I hope you guys can shed some light on the situation.
During my last years of university, I had to purchase a new machine due to my older machine (bought as a present for me, which was a Philips Slimline M1000 series) had finally begun to buckle under the sheer amount of things I was asking from it at the time. It's poor design simply couldn't cope with heavy use, gaming, music composition and rendering atop of standard word processing, etc. So at that time, with limited resources and a quite-urgent necessity to replace the machine, I (foolishly) decided to purchase a Packard Bell iXtreme 2613 from the dreaded men in purple shirts. To briefly summarise its stats;
Intel Q6600 Quad Core @ 2.4Ghz
3GB RAM
nVidia 8400GS 256mb PCI-E Graphics
250W PSU
& Standard pretty-much-everything-else
At the time, it was a vast improvement over the previous machine, and it has served me well until recent times where I've been back at home, and the machine no longer can cope with recent purchases. For example, 8 months ago I bought a Samsung 22'' monitor which now causes the graphics card to cry under the strain of doing anything graphical, as well as games such as Crysis and even (to my horror) Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 causing massive lag, and graphical horrors .
A couple of months back, fed up with the issues at hand, I decided I may try to upgrade my machine. Problem is, any new card I place in the machine requires more wattage, thus a new PSU will also be needed. And those two will also cause a large dramatic increase in heat, which means that the case will need better cooling. Then, considering its a horrid pre-moulded not-designed-for-enhancements case, I would need to rig up some sort of additional fan mounting, etc, etc...
So what should I do?
Upgrading the current machine will cost a fair bit, but simply ditching the machine for a new one seems a waste (although could always be pushed into service as a Media Centre I suppose). But spending that much to get it up-to-scratch would cost nearly as much as a new rig.
In case you are wondering, I have a budget up to a maximum of £900, but the machine needs to be able to support happily my hobbies (which are being an avid digital artist as well as music composition), and be quite future-proof/upgradable.
Any thoughtful responses would be greatly appreciated.
