http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/901707/HP-Pavilion-p6720f-Desktop-Computer-With/

I was thinking of going with something similar to this to do basic desktop work, a bit of gaming and of course crunching.

I've a total budget of $1000, what are your thoughts on the above? How would you upgrade it and if I'm missing out please let me know. I currently only have a laptop so I need to start from.a bare bones status.

For your time and help I will Paypal $25 to whomever suggests whichever direction I end up going to be used for a seti at home donation.

Thanks sincerely in advance.

If you definitely are going with a prebuilt machine, go the p6710f route (~$100 less) and add a cheap GT240 card (if it has the PCIe slots for it). The card (in CUDA) will do about twice the WUs per day as the quadcore CPU for SETI. 4GB is more than adequate for SETI.

Or build a machine from scratch, using a MB with as many PCIe slots as you can find cheap and populate it with GT240s for crunching. That's what I did and I'm happy with the results.

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I tried the link that you gave to see what the system had, but the site came back with the product unavailable. You might want to try this site--

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Lprice=200&Hprice=499.99&CatId=31

I get most of my upgrade parts from Tiger Direct, from single pieces to complete systems that I have specified / built, and have been quite satisfied with their prices and support. If you are not inclined to build you own system, they have any number of barebones kits, some with video cards, available within the price cap that you specified. You might even find some good i3/i5 systems there.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

I'm with Clifton, except I prefer newegg. Mainly due to shipping. Parts and service from either company are excellent and prices are great. If you aren't sure on what to spec together but do feel comfortable building a machine(best bang for the buck) then I would suggest a DiY system as well. Newegg has an i5 2500 machine with everything but a video card for $506. For the price difference to stay within that $579 range you could go with a GT 240 or GT 430 video card. If you like ATi they have the 6570 in that same price range. Or simply go with a lower end processor and motherboard and move up a tier or two in the video card. There is a ton of options out there.

Check out all their DiY combos they have them from $100 and up, then just pair them with a nice video card.

Another thing to check as well is Dell has their Vostro 580 systems for $399 that come with a i3- 3.2Ghz then you would have ~$200 left in your budget for a video card. Or they have the XPS 7100's starting at $549 with an AMD Phenom II X4 945 (3Ghz).

Personally I prefer a custom built machine, but that's just me. There are a ton of options out there. With a $1000 budget you can build a really nice system.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

While that machine will work just fine I wouldn't go that route.

I'm also the DIY type, and even if I wasn't I would order a custom pre-built machine anyway, and work out what my priorities were.

For S@H, spend extra on a Nvidia CUDA capable graphics card. That will also improve the gaming performance, no matter what the CPU you couple it with. Cutting $100 off the CPU cost, and spending it on the graphics card will both crunch better, and give better results for gaming.

CPU? For what you plan to do a fast dual core machine with plenty of RAM will do any normal desktop work, and coupled with the better graphics card, it will game and crunch better than the more expensive CPU with more basic integrated graphics.

Ram, 4g seems standard and is sensible. Less wont save you much money, and may slow things down. More is a matter of diminishing returns, if the system is only using 2gb, having 8gb in there doesn't help much unless you have memory hungry applications.

Any new machine is going to have a nice big hard disk and a DVD R/W, you can split hairs about which ones work best, but you wont notice much difference.

Then spend the rest on a nice monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. They don't affect the machines actual performance make they improve the look and feel of the machine. It looks better, it sounds better, it feels better, and that makes a big difference when you are gaming, listening to your music, watching a DVD or even actually doing some real work.

What I'm really saying is that you don't need to have top of the line everything to get a good machine. Spend the $$ on the bits that matter to you and will give the most bang for the buck. If you splash out big and spend $2,000 on a top line rig, it's still going to be "slow" and obsolete in 3 years, exactly like the $1,000 rig ;-)

Ian

Thank every very sincerely for your input. After reading many of the replies I called a friend of mine who's former IT and he sat down with me and showed me how easy it will be to build my own box. I'm going to trade him dinner to build the box I want.

The components thus far are below. I'd very very much appreciate any input good/bad/ugly you guys may have on the below.

…potentially outlines as follows:

Processor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103913

Motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131655

RAM:

(8 gig, [4x2DIMM])

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231311

Case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112322

Power Supply:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371026

Video Card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125333

Hard Drive:
[at least 2 for RAID-1]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

DVD drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106334

I think I can get this rig built to completion for around $1200-1300 which is a bit over my estimates however I'm fine with that as I figure it's advantageous to trade a bit of upfront cost for modularity in the future.

Looks like a really nice rig to me! You may even possibly want to move down to a 1090T and go with a GTX 470, or 570! Power supply and everything else looks ship shape to me!

Sit down with your friend while he is building the machine and see what's involved. After you see how simple it is you will be kicking yourself in the butt for all the years you have been buying machines.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Looks OK, choise of AMD over INTEL is a choice,(of price/cost?),
mobo looks OK, I've had a good experience with ASUS boards, memory too, but I'd choose the 470, not 460,
the 470 has twice the CUDA-Cores as the 460.(6or7 vs 14, don't know)

In the Netherlands, price of AMD v.s. INTEL, is often in favor of
an INTEL (Core I7-2600 cost me €175,00), don't know the exchange
rate, but it's worth the difference, here, for the AMD you mentioned,
I would pay maybe €20,00 less.

And if your one a place where temps can get hot, spring, summer and
autunm, water/fluid-cooling, might be a good solution.
Very less dependency, on ambient/room temps, where I live, at can can
get very hot(Old, >150years, renewed twice, still a mess, ;-))
And have, very often to use the AC, too often, 3 QUADs, also
with GPU's, a GTX480+X9650CPU;XP64) a GTX470+Q6600 and
a C2Q 2.4GHz+GTS250, also an i7-2600+2x HD5870.
Which pull out, quite a lot of heat!

Gettin off topic........................

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In the Netherlands, price of AMD v.s. INTEL, is often in favor of
an INTEL (Core I7-2600 cost me €175,00), don't know the exchange
rate, but it's worth the difference, here, for the AMD you mentioned,
I would pay maybe €20,00 less.

And if your one a place where temps can get hot, spring, summer and
autunm, water/fluid-cooling, might be a good solution.
Very less dependency, on ambient/room temps, where I live, at can can
get very hot(Old, >150years, renewed twice, still a mess, ;-))
And have, very often to use the AC, too often, 3 QUADs, also
with GPU's, a GTX480+X9650CPU;XP64) a GTX470+Q6600 and
a C2Q 2.4GHz+GTS250, also an i7-2600+2x HD5870.
Which pull out, quite a lot of heat!



Gettin off topic........................

Fred I believe his $1000 budget for a decent machine will knock him off the water cooling. The AMD will be fine, not as fast as some of the i7's however for a budget build it will perform just fine, especially if he pairs it with a 470. As far as price concerns on AMD vs. Intel, state side 1100T versus i7 2600K is about a $100 difference and the 2600 about $30 less. That is of course if you are comparing those two. The other consideration with the AMD vs Intel is the price for a good Intel board here will be a bit more than an AMD board.

If I had $1000 to speed right now though, I would do whatever possible to put myself into an i7 machine. Even if that includes using parts from an older build, because after all you already have a case, rom drive etc.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Fred I believe his $1000 budget for a decent machine will knock him off the water cooling.

Slavac, you could go with a self-contained liquid cooling system. They are very effective in keeping the CPU cool for a very reasonable price. I believe that most will fit an AMD CPU. I personnally prefer Corsair's product, which I use on all three of my systems. http://www.corsair.com/cooling/hydro-series.html

I realized after pricing out parts and such that $1000 is a bit south of what I will need to do what I want. I can eat ramen for a month and swing $1400ish on the build.

My main concern is modularity. Given that I can't afford X badass component at this venture, I'd like the capability to just trade up down the road for a better GPU, processor and so forth.

It was suggested to me that I might should upgrade the GPU to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121425
Which is a bit more money but apparently higher performance. Any thoughts?

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Snip

If I had $1000 to speed right now though, I would do whatever possible to put myself into an i7 machine. Even if that includes using parts from an older build, because after all you already have a case, rom drive etc.

Do you have a link you could toss me to what you're talking about in regards to the processor? Also could you expand on "a 470" that you mentioned pairing my current suggestion of processor with?

Sorry for the noobish questions. I could help you incorporate your own business and probate a will in the same day, but computer internals make my head spin.

---

Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Slavac, you could go with a self-contained liquid cooling system. They are very effective in keeping the CPU cool for a very reasonable price. I believe that most will fit an AMD CPU. I personnally prefer Corsair's product, which I use on all three of my systems. http://www.corsair.com/cooling/hydro-series.html

Each to his own, but you can get that same level of cooling with better air cooling, each to his own but the noise factor would be the only reason I would pick an H50 or H70 for a rig. They do cool relatively well, but the cost does not justify what you get in return. It will do the job but not what I would suggest.

If noise isn't a factor, not that you can really hear them to begin with, I would suggest something like a Tuniq tower at $37 or bit better a Prolimatech Megahalem at $70 well before an H50 or H70 at $90+. At the price you pay for an H70 setup you aren't far off from parting together a nice water cooling loop.

All of this is matter of personal opinion, like I said the H50/70 will get the job done but self enclosed loop system start falling short when you really start to push a machine since they are heat saturated almost instantly with not enough FPI to dissipated much more heat than a top of the line air cooler at half the cost.

Do you have a link you could toss me to what you're talking about in regards to the processor? Also could you expand on "a 470" that you mentioned pairing my current suggestion of processor with?

Sorry for the noobish questions. I could help you incorporate your own business and probate a will in the same day, but computer internals make my head spin.

As far as the processor goes, a $1400 budget will build you a really nice system. I would go with something more along the lines of:

CPU: Intel 2600K - $315
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe - $230
RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Silverline (I prefer the blankline) 4GB - $44
Video Card: eVGA GTX 470 (Newegg doesn't have them in stock) - $209 / or eVGA GTX 560Ti - $248
Power Supply: Corsair 850TX v2 - $125

Total: $962 + shipping (most of those parts are free shipping!)

Then all you are left to pick out is your case and rom drive. Rom drives can be had, really nice one with exception to Blu-ray, for about $22 and cases ranger from $30 and up. That leaves about $400-500 in your budget to either put a nicer video card, better case, more memory etc.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

CPU: Intel 2600K - $315

Slavac,
In your profile, it says you're in St. Louis, if you're still there, are you near enough to Brentwood? If so, you can get the processor above at the Microcenter there for $280 + whatever your local tax is. Also, they almost always have $18 - $20 DVD R/W drives. too, if you need one. In case you're thinking of going the Intel route...

-Dave

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the 470 has twice the CUDA-Cores as the 460.(6or7 vs 14, don't know)

The 460 has 7 MPs a 48 cores -> 336 cores (Compute capability 2.1).
The 470 has 14 MPs a 32 cores -> 448 cores (Compute capability 2.0).

The problem is that many CUDA apps lack the required instruction level parallelism (a.k.a. they are not optimized for CC 2.1 cards) to make efficient use of the 48 core MPs of the 460/560 cards.

Slavac,
In your profile, it says you're in St. Louis, if you're still there, are you near enough to Brentwood? If so, you can get the processor above at the Microcenter there for $280 + whatever your local tax is. Also, they almost always have $18 - $20 DVD R/W drives. too, if you need one. In case you're thinking of going the Intel route...

-Dave

I would also highly recommend MicroCenter. Got my last build there cheaper than what Newegg had everything for.
Dan

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Slavac,
In your profile, it says you're in St. Louis, if you're still there, are you near enough to Brentwood? If so, you can get the processor above at the Microcenter there for $280 + whatever your local tax is. Also, they almost always have $18 - $20 DVD R/W drives. too, if you need one. In case you're thinking of going the Intel route...

-Dave

I would also highly recommend MicroCenter. Got my last build there cheaper than what Newegg had everything for.
Dan

Yeah they normally have nice deals. Unfortunately there isn't many people who have access to them. The nearest one to me is about a 3 hour drive!! Sucks....

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

CPU: Intel 2600K - $315

Slavac,
In your profile, it says you're in St. Louis, if you're still there, are you near enough to Brentwood? If so, you can get the processor above at the Microcenter there for $280 + whatever your local tax is. Also, they almost always have $18 - $20 DVD R/W drives. too, if you need one. In case you're thinking of going the Intel route...

-Dave

I'm in stl so that won't be an issue to get over there. Im probably going in a different direction with the case for sure. Gonna try to go this wknd. Cheers!

---

Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Slavac, you could go with a self-contained liquid cooling system. They are very effective in keeping the CPU cool for a very reasonable price. I believe that most will fit an AMD CPU. I personnally prefer Corsair's product, which I use on all three of my systems. http://www.corsair.com/cooling/hydro-series.html

Each to his own, but you can get that same level of cooling with better air cooling, each to his own but the noise factor would be the only reason I would pick an H50 or H70 for a rig. They do cool relatively well, but the cost does not justify what you get in return. It will do the job but not what I would suggest.

If noise isn't a factor, not that you can really hear them to begin with, I would suggest something like a Tuniq tower at $37 or bit better a Prolimatech Megahalem at $70 well before an H50 or H70 at $90+. At the price you pay for an H70 setup you aren't far off from parting together a nice water cooling loop.

All of this is matter of personal opinion, like I said the H50/70 will get the job done but self enclosed loop system start falling short when you really start to push a machine since they are heat saturated almost instantly with not enough FPI to dissipated much more heat than a top of the line air cooler at half the cost.

Do you have a link you could toss me to what you're talking about in regards to the processor? Also could you expand on "a 470" that you mentioned pairing my current suggestion of processor with?

Sorry for the noobish questions. I could help you incorporate your own business and probate a will in the same day, but computer internals make my head spin.

As far as the processor goes, a $1400 budget will build you a really nice system. I would go with something more along the lines of:

CPU: Intel 2600K - $315
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe - $230
RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Silverline (I prefer the blankline) 4GB - $44
Video Card: eVGA GTX 470 (Newegg doesn't have them in stock) - $209 / or eVGA GTX 560Ti - $248
Power Supply: Corsair 850TX v2 - $125

Total: $962 + shipping (most of those parts are free shipping!)

Then all you are left to pick out is your case and rom drive. Rom drives can be had, really nice one with exception to Blu-ray, for about $22 and cases ranger from $30 and up. That leaves about $400-500 in your budget to either put a nicer video card, better case, more memory etc.

Missing the hard drive but other than that I like the intels speed. My rationale for the six core was more cpu processing for crunching however it seems the Intel chip can do the same processing with more attributes.

Thanks again for the info.

---

Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Missing the hard drive but other than that I like the intels speed. My rationale for the six core was more cpu processing for crunching however it seems the Intel chip can do the same processing with more attributes.

Thanks again for the info.

I7 will have 8 cores, 4 physical and 4 hyperthreading.

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