What Components?

[josey]

I am having a new computer built. My old one wasn't good enough for high end graphics.
I'd really appreciate any advice from scrappers on what to get. As it may be my last computer,
I want to get the best components that I can afford.

For optimal scrapping, I need to know

What type of monitor & what size.
What chip would you recommend
Amount of RAM
How big a hard drive to get
Video card
Would an air cooled tower be a good bet?
Anything else you can think of

Thanks for any & all advice

josey

[Leigh Ann]

[quote name='josey' date='Nov 13 2006, 09:28 PM' post='72698']
I'm going to answer but I don't want to close this, I want others to put in your thoughts as well. I'm a bit techie, so I have some thoughts here.

As for monitor, the bigger the better. Flat screens are pretty much the norm now, I have a 17 inch, which is nice, but like I said, more is good. If money is no object, you might even like to have two monitors, one for editing and one for your tools palettes. In which case you will need a special video card or two video cards. That's the dream situation though.

I have no opinion on a chip except to avoid a celeron. Not sure if they even make them now. I have an AMD 3500 and I'm very happy with it. My last PC was a pentium 3 or 4 (can't remember) and I was happy with it also.

RAM - again, the more the better. I have a gig.

Same for the hard drive, more the better. Seriously consider a backup drive as well, like a USB external drive. Mine is a 250 gig. And/Or a DVD burner for backups.

My video card is nothing special, but I have no issues with it. I think this is more of an issue if you plan to do video editing or play games with fancy graphics.

Air cooled tower? Not sure what this means as the vast majority are cooled with fans. Maybe it means extra cooling? Cooling is good, but I've not had a problem with mine over heating and it's standard. Don't close it up in a tight cabinet, allow airflow around it.

Extras - my PC has a memory card reader built into the front, which is really handy. Make sure you have plenty of USB slots, cause hubs are a pain in the butt. At least 4.

I bought my PC almost a year ago and it was quite reasonable, so I expect you'll be able to build a really nice one for not a lot of money. Good luck!

[Guest flowergirl_29]

I am in the process of upgrading my system - my son likes me to have the latest thing ... I have a 21" View Sonic LCD Monitor and a 19" View Sonic flat screen monitor, sometimes its nice to have two monitors you can look at same time. Your hard drive needs to be at least 350 Gigs if you are doing scrapbooking and again two are better than one. I'll get the info on the video card and motherboard. Both my tower and video card are air cooled. One can never have too much RAM, again I will check on what my new one has. I will also get the chip info.

[Guest flowergirl_29]

josey, I checked with my son last night and I am getting a ASUS Motherboard Core 2 Dual/Core 2 Wxtreme with Intel 975 X Chipset. My graphics board is a ATI RadeonX 1950 XTX with a Silver Stone TJ06 tower Dual 120mm Cooling Fans with "wind tunnel" technology and 4 Gigs RAM.

You can't have enough USB ports and the built in card readers are fantastic - hubs are a pain, external hard drives (especially if you go to crop or scrap parties are great) and BACK UP, BACK UP either with an extra hard drive or DVD...graphics take up a lot of room so dual denstiry DVD drives are nice.

You can get along fine with a lot less as I have been doing, except for a hard drive upgrade, for a while without any problems.

Leigh Ann's recommendations will definetly do the job for you if your budget is more limited or you just can't justify the cost to dh. fortunately for me my son is a "techie" as are his friends.

Iris

[Wxchic]

Yeah, and don't bother with a super duper video card. You don't need it.

The biggest thing is LOTS of ram...and an off source hard drive for backup...that is a MUST!!