I have decided that I really do not have the budget to build a PC to OC. So I have redone my builds with a cheaper CPU to stay within my original budget of $850 or lower. Windows 9 is expected to be out in the next year so I went with windows 7 as it was a little cheaper. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8-windows-9-upgrade-dell-windows-xp,25843.html
I have decided that I really do not have the budget to build a PC to OC. So I have redone my builds with a cheaper CPU to stay within my original budget of $850 or lower. Windows 9 is expected to be out in the next year so I went with windows 7 as it was a little cheaper. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8-windows-9-upgrade-dell-windows-xp,25843.html
What do you all think of these builds and is the power supply sufficient to run the builds?
Thanks to you all for helping me with this build.
You think you don't care about the difference an SSD is going to make, but everyone I've talked to who has installed one has said it made the single biggest difference in performance out of any upgrade.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
What do you all think about the builds? Any changes I should look to make on them?
On the windows should I get windows 7 instead of 8.1?
Windows 8.1 isn't really that different from Windows 7. Some people don't like 8 because Microsoft stupidly took away the start button, but there are third-party programs that you can get to add it back.
Windows 8.1 will boot faster than 7, and it will be supported 3+ years longer before Microsoft decides to pull the plug. Windows 7 has about 5 1/2 years of support left, which is still quite a bit, but a computer you build today could easily have a useful lifetime longer than that.
I chose Win 8.1 because MS is going to support it longer, and it's going to have newer "technology" because MS wants people to stop using Win 7. The interface though. Ugh. It is horrible. They were justifiably raked over coals for that interface. It was just stupid. People shouldn't have to get third party programs, or jump through hoops to make their desktop system something useful. Bleh. But yeah, it does perform slightly better than Win 7, and in games it has a slight, but noticable performance boost on like hardware.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
As Windows 8 hasn't actually caught on either commercially or privately, its more likely that Windows 7 will outlive it anyway which if you look at what has happened with XP, which still has a significant part of the OS market worldwide, then its not impossible that Win 7 could be supported still long after Win 8 has 'passed on'. It would not surprise me at all if Microsoft is not already working on a 'Windows 9' just because Windows 8 didn't gain acceptance on a meaningful level, sales of Win 7 are after all still higher than 8, which pretty much says it all.
It's unlikely that Microsoft will extend Windows 7 support at all, and extremely unlikely that they'll extend it longer than they do Windows 8 support. Microsoft's decision to extend Windows XP support was a combination of factors that aren't relevant to Windows 7.
First, the launch gap between XP and Vista was abnormally large--the largest between consecutive versions of an OS in Microsoft's history. XP launched in 2001, and Vista in 2007. Someone who bought a new computer with Microsoft's latest OS on it shortly before Vista launched would have had less than five years of support left if Microsoft hadn't extended it, and that's simply not enough. Someone who bought a Windows 7 computer the day before 8 launched had about 7 years of support remaining.
Second, a lot of brand new computers couldn't run Vista properly at the time Vista launched. Windows 8 isn't very different from 7, but Vista was very different from XP--and that meant new drivers for everything. A lot of drivers simply didn't exist when Vista launched. And some hardware--such as any Intel graphics--wasn't powerful enough to run Vista properly. So for a while after Vista launched, many computers still needed Windows XP in order to run properly. So a lot of brand new computers that got the latest Microsoft OS that would actually work with the hardware even after Vista launched still got XP--and without extended support, would have had substantially less than that already short (<5 years) support period.
Third, Vista was far more broken than 8, and Microsoft knows it. Some of the complaints about Windows 8 are completely off-the-wall, and Microsoft ignores them. Complaints about the missing start button are real, but that that's so often the focus demonstrates how mild the problems with 8 are. For comparison, Vista badly mishandled multi-core processors, drawing complaints from both Intel and AMD, not just random people with Internet access. Vista was far too aggressive with prefetching, leading to some unreasonably long boot times. Either of those are far worse than anything wrong with Windows 8. So Microsoft justifiably had more sympathy for people avoiding Vista after it launched than Windows 8.
But even with the extended support for Windows XP, Microsoft will still support Vista long after they pull the plug on XP. Vista has a little shy of 3 years of support left. XP support is ending next month.
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Yes, Microsoft is working on a successor to Windows 8. Of course they are. They're always working on a new operating system. It's what Microsoft does. And Microsoft would still be working on a successor to 8 even if Windows 8 were widely regarded as Microsoft's best OS ever.
I have decided that I really do not have the budget to build a PC to OC. So I have redone my builds with a cheaper CPU to stay within my original budget of $850 or lower. Windows 9 is expected to be out in the next year so I went with windows 7 as it was a little cheaper. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8-windows-9-upgrade-dell-windows-xp,25843.html
What do you all think of these builds and is the power supply sufficient to run the builds?
Thanks to you all for helping me with this build.
Even if you're not going to overclock, you're giving up about 20% of your CPU speed by getting a Core i5-3350P. That's too much for savings that aren't that large. If you're not going to overclock and want to use that to save some on the CPU, then try this:
I think I may have a winner with this build. I went a little over my budget but it looks like to me it is good value for what I am getting. I went with a Kingston 120gb SSD and for memory I went with G.Skill Ripjaws X series with a timing of 8-8-8-24 and a CL of 8.
I think I may have a winner with this build. I went a little over my budget but it looks like to me it is good value for what I am getting. I went with a Kingston 120gb SSD and for memory I went with G.Skill Ripjaws X series with a timing of 8-8-8-24 and a CL of 8.
Originally posted by grndzro If you like revisiting older titles W8 is terrible.
If you need IE7 compatibility W8 dosent work.
If you care about hard drive longevity W8 is terrible. The cache thrashing is unnerving.
IMO it is terrible. MS added a ton of crap to the OS that is uninstallable. The networking stack is worse than W7. Customizability is worse. No OS boot options.
I cant recommend it ATM. I did have high hopes for W8 but after extended use it was too frustrating.
Do you have verifiable sources for all of this?
"Cache Thrashing" wouldn't affect HDD life - read/writes don't affect the life of a platter HDD, only run-hours. That, and caching occurs in RAM...
Why dont you google"Windows 8" "disk activity". And yes excessiveactivity wears out magnetic bits and ssd's. They can only be written to so many times before they fail. The platter isn't the only piece that can fail. Defragmenting is used to reduce the wear and tear of the actuator and slider that is abused from reading and writing fragmented data.
Caching also occurs in the page file. there are windows services that bypass the system ram and write directly to physical cache. Thrashing is a term to describe the destructive impact of excessive overwriting. For processors it means overwriting potentially useful data by another thread. For Ram it hurts performance by requiring the data again from the HDD. For hard drives it is caused by excessive ram bypasses or low memory.
The network stack is realtively unchanged from WIndows 7. In fact, all of the old control panels from Windows 7 are still there if you prefer to use them. THere have been some updates to some protocols (SMB, DHCP, etc), but the drivers and underlaying network "stack" are the same.
If your OS craps out that method is not accessible.
And customization - the same as Windows 7. Perhaps even more so, because you have the option to use Metro on Win8, plus everything you could do on Win7 in the first place. http://www.classicshell.net/
You can not like Windows 8, that's fine, just don't make crap up trying to justify it to everyone else and "convince" them to follow you, when you don't really know what your talking about.
Sorry I didn't make up anything.
Phry's rundown just above yours - I can't argue against that, those are semi-valid points, except to say you can bypass Metro and the App Store entirely if that's the crux of your concerns.
If I were forced to buy a new OS today... I would take whichever I could get for less money - Win7 or Win8. If they are both priced equally, I would get Win8 for the extended lifecycle and support. MetroUI/Optional AppStore/made up boogiemen wouldn't really influence that purchasing decision.
I think I may have a winner with this build. I went a little over my budget but it looks like to me it is good value for what I am getting. I went with a Kingston 120gb SSD and for memory I went with G.Skill Ripjaws X series with a timing of 8-8-8-24 and a CL of 8.
One last thing: if you're getting an SSD, then there's no need to pay extra for a faster hard drive, as you won't be running performance-sensitive things off of the hard drive, anyway.
Depending on how much storage space you need, you may be better off getting a larger SSD and no hard drive:
That's cheaper than the combination that you have listed there. Obviously, it isn't an option if you're going to put 300 GB of stuff on it the day you get it, though.
I need the space as I have over 200gb of modding assets for Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim and some other games plus a bunch of screen shots and movies from EverQuest 1 & 2 and from EVE.
Originally posted by grndzro Did I run over your cat or something?
I don't know, did you?
Your link to an Intel Centrino WiFi driver not working properly with Windows 8.1 hardly substantiates your claim that the entire Windows 8 networking stack is bunk.
You are correct that writes can hinder the lifespan of an SSD, but for consumer use it's still an impractically high number, even if you "thrash" it by reading from it in order to prefetch commonly used files (which is what Windows Vista, 7, and 8 all do, if you have extra RAM to store it in- and note that those are file reads, not writes). Reads/writes don't affect the lifespan of a traditional HDD - Myth #11, Myth #29, and Myth #30. "Thrashing" isn't what you think it is, defragmenting isn't what you think it's for, and I don't think your quite right about what you think caching is either. I'll let you do more research (or not, your call) on that.
If your OS craps out, you can always use a startup boot disc (or CD, or Thumb Drive), just like you can with Windows 7, or XP, or DOS 3.1. If your hard drive craps out, none of those work on Windows 7 either, so I don't know what your getting at.
ClassicShell definitely works on Windows 8. It even works on Windows 8.1. I can attest to it working very well, for free, personally, with screen shots and documentation (including just hitting the original link I put up). Your link includes 20 that may or may not work, I didn't check them all out. But I can find a ton of crap links that don't work on Windows 7 either - so you didn't really prove anything, except that your favorite mod may not happen to work anymore.
I don't know if you are the one that ran over my cat or not, but I have a bad habit of trying to correct people when they are flat out incorrect.
Originally posted by grndzro Did I run over your cat or something?
I don't know, did you?
Your link to an Intel Centrino WiFi driver not working properly with Windows 8.1 hardly substantiates your claim that the entire Windows 8 networking stack is bunk.
That was only 1 such instance. there are many more.
I dont want to go into link overload but there are countless such links available.
You are correct that writes can hinder the lifespan of an SSD, but for consumer use it's still an impractically high number, even if you "thrash" it by reading from it in order to prefetch commonly used files (which is what Windows Vista, 7, and 8 all do, if you have extra RAM to store it in- and note that those are file reads, not writes). Reads/writes don't affect the lifespan of a traditional HDD - Myth #11, Myth #29, and Myth #30. "Thrashing" isn't what you think it is, defragmenting isn't what you think it's for, and I don't think your quite right about what you think caching is either. I'll let you do more research (or not, your call) on that.
Oh? I had no idea conventional hard drives changed that much. my bad.
U right, Thrashing looks to be the wrong term. How about excessive disk access. Windows 8 when idle performs mysterious idle system maintenance. It cannot be permanently disabled, nor can the individual processes be identified. The whole maintenance ball of wax is obfuscated.
IIRC Defrag from Windows 3.1 was implemented to reduce wear and tear on the hard drive. Performance benefits were secondary....mabye primary I don't know.
I have disabled firewall and AV program after booting to a bare bones minimal defragmented system and watched this idle activity for 45 minutes or so, it reminds me of defragmenting but the system was defragmented.. It is obnoxious IMO. I tried to disable/delete/reschedule it but windows reenables it.
Search link, as you can see there are various problems with how W8 handles maintenance. I have not experienced such problems with W7.
If your OS craps out, you can always use a startup boot disc (or CD, or Thumb Drive), just like you can with Windows 7, or XP, or DOS 3.1. If your hard drive craps out, none of those work on Windows 7 either, so I don't know what your getting at.
Everyone misses F8 boot options. Read how convoluted it is to reenable it. Why MS made it this way is probably lost in some black hole of bad ideas.
ClassicShell definitely works on Windows 8. It even works on Windows 8.1. I can attest to it working very well, for free, personally, with screen shots and documentation (including just hitting the original link I put up). Your link includes 20 that may or may not work, I didn't check them all out. But I can find a ton of crap links that don't work on Windows 7 either - so you didn't really prove anything, except that your favorite mod may not happen to work anymore.
True. it definitely is bias. but I still think more UI addons will work with W7 than W8.
I don't know if you are the one that ran over my cat or not, but I have a bad habit of trying to correct people when they are flat out incorrect.
Ditto I do like being proven wrong and learning though. I try not to post opinions without some basis in fact or reason.
Comments
I have decided that I really do not have the budget to build a PC to OC. So I have redone my builds with a cheaper CPU to stay within my original budget of $850 or lower. Windows 9 is expected to be out in the next year so I went with windows 7 as it was a little cheaper. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8-windows-9-upgrade-dell-windows-xp,25843.html
Version with GTX 760, it comes in 15 cents under budget. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3bqoL
Version 2 with R9 270x and a better SSD, it comes in $11.14 under budget. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3bqrN
What do you all think of these builds and is the power supply sufficient to run the builds?
Thanks to you all for helping me with this build.
FUncom putting the FU in fun since 1993.
You think you don't care about the difference an SSD is going to make, but everyone I've talked to who has installed one has said it made the single biggest difference in performance out of any upgrade.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I chose Win 8.1 because MS is going to support it longer, and it's going to have newer "technology" because MS wants people to stop using Win 7. The interface though. Ugh. It is horrible. They were justifiably raked over coals for that interface. It was just stupid. People shouldn't have to get third party programs, or jump through hoops to make their desktop system something useful. Bleh. But yeah, it does perform slightly better than Win 7, and in games it has a slight, but noticable performance boost on like hardware.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It's unlikely that Microsoft will extend Windows 7 support at all, and extremely unlikely that they'll extend it longer than they do Windows 8 support. Microsoft's decision to extend Windows XP support was a combination of factors that aren't relevant to Windows 7.
First, the launch gap between XP and Vista was abnormally large--the largest between consecutive versions of an OS in Microsoft's history. XP launched in 2001, and Vista in 2007. Someone who bought a new computer with Microsoft's latest OS on it shortly before Vista launched would have had less than five years of support left if Microsoft hadn't extended it, and that's simply not enough. Someone who bought a Windows 7 computer the day before 8 launched had about 7 years of support remaining.
Second, a lot of brand new computers couldn't run Vista properly at the time Vista launched. Windows 8 isn't very different from 7, but Vista was very different from XP--and that meant new drivers for everything. A lot of drivers simply didn't exist when Vista launched. And some hardware--such as any Intel graphics--wasn't powerful enough to run Vista properly. So for a while after Vista launched, many computers still needed Windows XP in order to run properly. So a lot of brand new computers that got the latest Microsoft OS that would actually work with the hardware even after Vista launched still got XP--and without extended support, would have had substantially less than that already short (<5 years) support period.
Third, Vista was far more broken than 8, and Microsoft knows it. Some of the complaints about Windows 8 are completely off-the-wall, and Microsoft ignores them. Complaints about the missing start button are real, but that that's so often the focus demonstrates how mild the problems with 8 are. For comparison, Vista badly mishandled multi-core processors, drawing complaints from both Intel and AMD, not just random people with Internet access. Vista was far too aggressive with prefetching, leading to some unreasonably long boot times. Either of those are far worse than anything wrong with Windows 8. So Microsoft justifiably had more sympathy for people avoiding Vista after it launched than Windows 8.
But even with the extended support for Windows XP, Microsoft will still support Vista long after they pull the plug on XP. Vista has a little shy of 3 years of support left. XP support is ending next month.
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Yes, Microsoft is working on a successor to Windows 8. Of course they are. They're always working on a new operating system. It's what Microsoft does. And Microsoft would still be working on a successor to 8 even if Windows 8 were widely regarded as Microsoft's best OS ever.
Even if you're not going to overclock, you're giving up about 20% of your CPU speed by getting a Core i5-3350P. That's too much for savings that aren't that large. If you're not going to overclock and want to use that to save some on the CPU, then try this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116898
Giving up overclocking also lets you get a cheaper H87 motherboard like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130697
Or, for a combo deal with memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1573784
I think I may have a winner with this build. I went a little over my budget but it looks like to me it is good value for what I am getting. I went with a Kingston 120gb SSD and for memory I went with G.Skill Ripjaws X series with a timing of 8-8-8-24 and a CL of 8.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3bsRK
FUncom putting the FU in fun since 1993.
Looks great. I wouldn't change a thing.
Did I run over your cat or something?
One last thing: if you're getting an SSD, then there's no need to pay extra for a faster hard drive, as you won't be running performance-sensitive things off of the hard drive, anyway.
Depending on how much storage space you need, you may be better off getting a larger SSD and no hard drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148694
That's cheaper than the combination that you have listed there. Obviously, it isn't an option if you're going to put 300 GB of stuff on it the day you get it, though.
FUncom putting the FU in fun since 1993.
I don't know, did you?
Your link to an Intel Centrino WiFi driver not working properly with Windows 8.1 hardly substantiates your claim that the entire Windows 8 networking stack is bunk.
You are correct that writes can hinder the lifespan of an SSD, but for consumer use it's still an impractically high number, even if you "thrash" it by reading from it in order to prefetch commonly used files (which is what Windows Vista, 7, and 8 all do, if you have extra RAM to store it in- and note that those are file reads, not writes). Reads/writes don't affect the lifespan of a traditional HDD - Myth #11, Myth #29, and Myth #30. "Thrashing" isn't what you think it is, defragmenting isn't what you think it's for, and I don't think your quite right about what you think caching is either. I'll let you do more research (or not, your call) on that.
If your OS craps out, you can always use a startup boot disc (or CD, or Thumb Drive), just like you can with Windows 7, or XP, or DOS 3.1. If your hard drive craps out, none of those work on Windows 7 either, so I don't know what your getting at.
ClassicShell definitely works on Windows 8. It even works on Windows 8.1. I can attest to it working very well, for free, personally, with screen shots and documentation (including just hitting the original link I put up). Your link includes 20 that may or may not work, I didn't check them all out. But I can find a ton of crap links that don't work on Windows 7 either - so you didn't really prove anything, except that your favorite mod may not happen to work anymore.
I don't know if you are the one that ran over my cat or not, but I have a bad habit of trying to correct people when they are flat out incorrect.