Quote:
Originally Posted by Cardnim
Fair points all of them. 
Couple of questions though - genuine ones, not me trying to be a prick!
I am still struggling to see how buying a whole new computer and then building it and setting it up is better for the original poster of this question.
From the problem he described which he wants a solution to, surely an upgraded video card is perfectly adequate? |
I'll answer this the same way I did for my other brother.
You buy the uprated graphics card, we'll say £100 quid for arguments sake, ideal card for HTPC that does some gaming.
That card generates more heat, so you have to put extra fans in, you want quiet, mainly because 120mm Deltas are noisy buggers, secondly because you want something thats not going to blow your elcheapo psu. Figure 3 fans, 120mm so a tenner each. £30 and thats ignoring the fact that you'd probably want to put a better cooler on the CPU as you're getting random reboots due to the extra heat in the system...
Your psu dies, not an occurance thats going out of the realms of possibility with a new gen card, so you put another cheap one in, £20.
You realise that the new game you've bought wont run with the amount of ram you have, or you realise that its chugging, buy new ram £60.
You then realise that you've got 4gb of very nice ram, but its just not running right or you arent seeing all of it, suddenly Windows 7 64bit looks nice, so you buy that £120 quid...
All of a sudden we're talking near as makes no difference £350 quid. Thats just to upgrade, and we're assuming that the cheapo PSU doesnt brown out, overheat or cause a ton of BSOD's due to the amps dropping below critical.
While the solution that you're giving is a viable solution if the graphics card being mentioned wasnt a power hungry SOB, eventually something will give and if its the psu and you end up with 240v going down the 12v rail (It happened to me, and its painful let me tell you) then kiss good bye to your CPU, Mobo, RAM, HDD's and graphics card. Not only at this point do you have to buy completely new internals, that nice shiny graphics card you put into the PC 1 month ago is an expensive ugly looking paperweight, and you have to buy another, no manufacturer is going to RMA something thats dead because of a cheap component.
Upgrading when the tech is new is the way to go, when the tech is old, is a complete false economy, the cascade of upgrades means you may as well have bought new at the start of this process.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cardnim
Secondly, I agree with you about budget parts for a hardcore, topend machine which is going to be pushing performance benchmarks; but again, I dont think this is what the original poster wanted.
You and Richard seem to be going down a tangent talking about hardcore gaming machines, the latest hardware to run BF3 with all the graphic options turned to max, and overclocking.
The original poster simply wants a bit of a better video performance from his machine.
ergo... I stick to my original recommendation:
Better graphics card and cheap PSU if he needs it.
|
Thats something for the original poster to think about, its his call what he spends his money on at the end of the day, all I'm trying to do is save him from doing what I've done in the past.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cardnim
However, (genuine question!) do you really believe its better to invest in the good PSU at this stage? (bearing in mind this guy may never build his own PC and therefore the fact that the PSU can go from machine to machine may be irrelevant).
If so, then I am maybe not being as good as I could be with my computer repair business and need to rethink.
Thanks for the advice and discussion.
|
Always, absolutley! The PSU is the only part of the PC which has a direct and potentially deadly effect on every single other component. Buying cheap is saving money where money should never be saved. If he was just wanting to replace his PSU, then go for it with elcheapo, its a like for like replacement. Given he wants more performance, then you have to ensure that the system is going to be able to give the power when its needed. The cheap PSU's may have 500watts rating, but if they were asked to provide 500watts for more than an hour, they would blow, thats the peak wattage quoted, my old Enermax 500w was a 700 peak psu, 500w was a sustained draw rating.
For the common home user who browses facehack and watches Youchoobe vids, cheapo is fine, as soon as performance heardware is put into the equation, it has to be a performance PSU or you are genuinely asking for trouble.
AC