do i need a new pc?

[Miuku.]

Is this thread still going on?

Bottom line; unless you're gaming like a lunatic and want 60fps on 7680x1600, you don't need a new machine and you're better off saving your money for something else or just in general saving it.

[togerland]

If I could of changed the video card out of my imac duel core 2 intel 2.4ghz i would of never bought my current computer ivy bridge i5... Your CPU is prob fine

[Hum]

why is everyone repeating the same thing? new technology is exciting. is it a problem?

Speak for yourself.

New technology is not always 'exciting' -- especially when it makes little difference. :laugh:

[Tilt090]

Speak for yourself.

New technology is not always 'exciting' -- especially when it makes little difference. :laugh:

yea been there done that. but i'm not favouring windows 8 (what blasphemy!) i'm just looking at extracting more juice out of the 4+ yr old machine. small pleasures.

Because it's a valid question. I agree, I like new technology but that doesn't mean you *always* need it, if the equipment that you already have fits your needs. Seriously, apart from the SSD (Which would improve system responsiveness significantly) the benefit you're likely to see in real world usage won't always match expenditure. And if you have specific needs in mind, it helps members tailor recommendations to your requirements. Having ultra powerful hardware is always nice, but it's not always necessary for some people.

there is an objection to my novelty seeking behaviour, but there are worse novelty seeking behaviours! reform society where it matters and leave me alone :p

!

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Thanks for the lecture aunt intrinsica.

You know what they say: don't ask the question if you don't want to hear the answer. Oh, and unless you're referring to me as an aunt in the agony aunt sense, last time I checked I was a guy. (Y)

[FiB3R]

o.0 and where did i say i have no money limits ? i'm constantly talking about lower $$$$, economy cards, speed/$ ratios etc,!!!

I must have read it wrong. Was worth a shot :p

[TEX4S]

Tilt - What "aunt" Intrinsica was saying was dead on. Nobody can tell you if you need something. Everything is relative - ever hear that before ? You throw up a question on a forum, dont be a wiseass when someone says - you should have worded your question differently because @ face value - we cant help

If someone says "Photoshop wont run & my P4 keeps BSOD-ing on me, do I need to upgrade ?" that is a yes/no question.

If I ask, "should I upgrade ?" nobody can really say for sure because

1.) Nobody knows my budget situation

2.) Nobody knows what my current hardware limitations are

3.) Nobody knows if I am wanting to start doing something that old hardware cant handle very well.

I know you know this already, I am simply re-wording what Intrinsica said - I just thought it was kinda rude what you said to him (Im sure you'll do the same to my post)

[Hum]

Nobody can tell you if you need something.

^ But, but , but people will start to think for themselves --- humans will advance -- dear god what will happen then ????

We're doomed ...

[Tilt090]

in the first few replies i figured there wasnt a need for a new pc, confirming what i felt, so just focusing on upgrades. ssd is a good upgrade as suggested here. i'm grateful for that! thanks.

[Sam Borged]

You should be happy with the route your taking with the SSD. I assume your going to do a clean install with the SSD though, I think it's the only way to do it though.

On your next PC build, I'd suggest getting an aftermarket HSF (Heat Sink Fan), assuming you don't have one. I bought one and am glad I did for my Q6600, if anything you can just do higher OCing in the colder months if you don't want to make your PC room hotter in the summer. I think I built mine 3 years ago. I don't OC all the time though, but it's nice to be able to easily do it with a good HSF, that way you might get another 6-12 months out of your system towards the end of it's life to hold you over to the CPU/MB Generation that you really want to save for.

I just was pondering this question myself the last 3 weeks. I kept running into RAM issues with 4GB, so this past Friday I picked up 4GB more of ram for a total of 8GB now. I did the CraigsList (CL) route for $35 though as didn't want to spend too much. Of course my Win 7 has been behaving badly for the last few months and I think I need to do a clean install, which I'm sure will fix a few things and I know will really speed it up.

Went to Micro Center 3 weeks ago and they had some 4GB DDR2 for $48-60 or so. I did look in the bin pile and found some for $42 IIRC, but knew I could do better online, was still on the fence about it at the time though. My thought was, should I just spend the money on a new system and get 12-16GB of ram for only $50 more than the 4GB I would of bought at Micro Center. With new CPU and MB, then I'll also have Sata3 for the newer SSD's with a new system? Decided to save the cash and spend the money on a new progressive reloader and new gun parts.

Still on the fence on the SSD's though, as I'd rather not buy a Sata3 SDD and waste 200mb of speed on a Sata2 system. That's a dumb way to go about it though, I think Tilt090 that you are making a good choice though. For your new build in 2-3 years; since it sounds like your going to get a laptop next year then you could turn your SSD into a Cache one like you can with Z68 motherboards (Cache can use 64gb max , don't know if Win8 will change that though) and then get a newer faster SSD as your OS drive.

I'm glad I went with the 8GB total ram amount. Now I can have 3 instances of Firefox going at the same time, along with Thunderbird and Word docs.... and sometimes VM's.

Main thing for me to get a new system is for Dragon NatSpeak, but this will do for now though. That program uses A LOT of memory, to make it work well they say you should get 12GB, it's not really needed but it helps if you want to run just about any program along with it and not worry about RAM issues. Well not withstanding high end games and Maya3D type programs.

Also Win8 is supposed to use less RAM than Win7, well it has too really since it's geared towards touchpads with low system specs. I just dont' know about that damn Metro UI though. As of tonight I was thinking of getting the Win8 RTM and putting it in a VM, how I ran across this topic.

[Wakers]

If you need 8GB of RAM when you're not running VMs and just have firefox and word open - you are doing something wrong, or there is something wrong with your system.

4GB is still perfectly capable for gaming machines, the only time it becomes necessary is when you're running VMs or audio / video / graphics editing.

[Sam Borged]

You should be happy with the route your taking with the SSD. I assume your going to do a clean install with the SSD though, I think it's the only way to do it though.

On your next PC build, I'd suggest getting an aftermarket HSF (Heat Sink Fan), assuming you don't have one. I bought one and am glad I did for my Q6600, if anything you can just do higher OCing in the colder months if you don't want to tax your AC in the summer. I think I built mine 3 years ago. I don't OC all the time though, but it's nice to be able to easily do it with a good HSF, that way you might get another 6-12 months out of your system towards the end of it's life to hold you over to the CPU/MB Generation that you really want to save for.

I just was pondering this question myself the last 3 weeks. I kept running into RAM issues with 4GB, so this past Friday I picked up 4GB more of ram for a total of 8GB now. I did the CraigsList (CL) route for $35 though as didn't want to spend too much. Of course my Win 7 has been behaving badly for the last few months and I think I need to do a clean install, which I'm sure will fix a few things and I know will really speed it up.

Went to Micro Center 3 weeks ago and they had some 4GB DDR2 for $48-60 or so. I did look in the bin pile and found some for $42 IIRC, but knew I could do better online, was still on the fence about it at the time though. My thought was, should I just spend the money on a new system and get 12-16GB of ram for only $50 more than the 4GB I would of bought at Micro Center. With new CPU and MB, then I'll also have Sata3 for the newer SSD's with a new system? Decided to save the cash and spend the money on a new progressive reloader and new gun parts.

Still on the fence on the SSD's though, as I'd rather not buy a Sata3 SDD and waste 200mb of speed on a Sata2 system. That's a dumb way to go about it though, I think Tilt090 that you are making a good choice though. For your new build in 2-3 years; since it sounds like your going to get a laptop next year then you could turn your SSD into a Cache one like you can with Z68 motherboards (Cache can use 64gb max , don't know if Win8 will change that though) and then get a newer faster SSD as your OS drive.

I'm glad I went with the 8GB total ram amount. Now I can have 3 instances of Firefox going at the same time, along with Thunderbird and Word docs.... and sometimes VM's.

Main thing for me to get a new system is for Dragon NatSpeak, but this will do for now though. That program uses A LOT of memory, to make it work well they say you should get 12GB, it's not really needed but it helps if you want to run just about any program along with it and not worry about RAM issues. Well not withstanding high end games and Maya3D type programs.

Also Win8 is supposed to use less RAM than Win7, well it has too really since it's geared towards touchpads with low system specs. I just dont' know about that damn Metro UI though. As of tonight I was thinking of getting the Win8 RTM and putting it in a VM, how I ran across this topic.

Saying all that I built a new PC last Sept/Oct 2011 for my aunt and uncle. It was an Intel 2500k with Z68 MB ($80 off combo from Micro Center helped). Got a 3tb hard drive, 8GB of DDR3 and a Crucial M4 128gb SSD, which wasn't the fastest SSD, but it had good reviews. It's a PITA to do a clean install, especially if it's not your PC and they don't back up enough. If you do weekly images then it's not a big deal if it's your PC, if you do a lot of important stuff on your PC then that should be every 2-4 days. I also got the Micro Center 2 or 3 yr extended exchange warranty (just walk in and get a new one), SSDs do fail more than other components, especially OCZ. It was a fast PC for sure, the boot up times and overall experience was great. However I think a fair amount of it was just the SSD on the Sata3 interface, hard drives are by far the slowest thing in a PC, even the fastest SSD's don't compare to the internal speed of what happens within the MB (not counting USB or DVD drives). If they want it to be faster in 2-3 years they can just get a 64GB for the cache like I was talking about earlier. Also I can get them an aftermarket HSF and OC it a little bit.

[Sam Borged]

If you need 8GB of RAM when you're not running VMs and just have firefox and word open - you are doing something wrong, or there is something wrong with your system.

4GB is still perfectly capable for gaming machines, the only time it becomes necessary is when you're running VMs or audio / video / graphics editing.

I figured something was wrong with my system. One forum I went into 4-5 months ago got hacked, however I was running Firefox in Sandboxie so wasn't worried. A week later I went to the site within regular FF without thinking, Avast stopped it but something was off a little bit.

I usually run 3 different (seperate) installs of Firefox with 1 maybe running 50-75+ windows/tabs and another doing the same. The 3rd usually is just doing like 12-30 or so. I sometimes run more though, I have 3 regular FF's, have 6+ set up in Sandboxie to do and save sessions for different things (research...), just have to have keep notes on what I use each for. Of course using

Right now I have 3.0GB available and 4 mb free according to task manager. Only 1 Word Doc right now, sometimes have 5-10 and maybe an Excel or two. Almost always have VLC running (dnld YouTube Vids among others) with something along with some Java progs; JDownloader for instance. I have no VM's running right now though.

I still want to do a clean install sometime within the next month or two. Think should do one every 9-12 months anyways. Well with my aunt and uncle how they use they're PC, only need every 2 to 3 years really.

Man this is annoying, it won't let me post it. Sometimes when I think it does I get an error msg. Of course first time signing onto a forum through Facebook, the last time too.