Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: The DEL hilarity continues

Posted by Parks, Raymond on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-DEL-hilarity-continues-tp7586924p7586962.html

I'm not sure if anyone knows yet, but Win10 (MS Spyware) should upgrade for free.  Give Microsoft's past and current emphasis on licensing, particularly in Enterprise systems, I suspect that the free upgrades will cease in the future and a new version of Windows will come out, requiring one buy it (and the hardware it drives).

At work, I have an MSDN subscription ($2K per year but there are cheaper) that gives me access to every MS product from legacy to absolutely current.

At home, I make do with whatever came with my laptop.

When I built my own systems, they ran Slackware, Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva), and Debian.  If I were to choose a Linux distro for a new system, I would probably use Slackware or I might get out of the Linux world and use a BSD.

If you're going to go with Win10 - the Pro version ($139 vs $99 for home on NewEgg) will give you more control over updates.  I'd consider Win8.1 or Win7 (still available) rather than mess with the spyware.  Amazon prices seem slightly lower for Pro and higher for Win7 Home and lower for Win8 Home.

  Upgrading hardware can be a problem but you can usually limit the problem.  The biggest difficult is with motherboards/CPUs.  Each family of CPUs has a different socket and the motherboards have different chipsets to support each family of CPUs.  That said, you can pick a socket and chipset that is the most current and it will probably be supported for some time to come.  The socket and chipset for the Intel Haswell chips is the same as at least a couple of generations of CPU previous.  AMD's sockets have been the same for several years although the chipsets have changed.  If you get an LGA1151 socket motherboard (Skylake), right now, it will probably last for several of Intel's Tick-Tock cycles.

  The chipset and motherboard also are limited to supporting features that were current at the time of purchase or can be upgraded by firmware.  For example, USB 2.0 was the standard a few years ago and the changes to USB3.0 and USB3.1 have been hardware changes that firmware updates can't achieve.  If you bought an LGA1150 (good up through I7-5775) motherboard before USB3.0 came out, you would be stuck with only that - unless you added a third-party board (usually fits in a PCI slot).  Disk drives and even SSDs have used SATA for a long time, but there have been improvements (we're currently up to SATA 3, I think).  However, the newest motherboards support M.2 and PCIe SSDs.  In most cases, the difference is one of performance and ordinary users won't care.

  To answer your specific questions -

faster CPU upgrade is usually doable with a firmware upgrade (buy an LGA1151 socket board if you want future-proofing)

RAM upgrades in size of ram cards (i.e. switching from 4GB to 8GB) are mostly limited by the motherboard firmware and vendors usually make it possible

new GPU is usually doable - these have been PCI for some time - but you may not get the full benefit of the performance improvement (i.e. a PCI-16 GPU can use a PCI-8 slot but not as fast)

Ray Parks
Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer
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On Dec 21, 2015, at 5:51 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Just looked at the systems built for between $400-$800.

    http://pcpartpicker.com/guide/#X=39404,82077&sort=d3&page=1

I sorted it by date because I found that several parts were no longer available when sorting by popularity.

Also, the OS was $90 generally for Windows 8.x, and often left off the overall price. Linux and OSX have free OS's nowadays, so was a bit surprised at that added cost. Also the shipping sometimes said Free but now is $4.00.

The Tech Report http://techreport.com/review/29012/system-guide-current was superb, great way to learn how to build a system with good explanations on each part of the builds.

I think if I were building a system, I'd start with their budget system and upgrade a few parts.

So I'm left with a few questions:

- Once you buy Windows, do you get upgrades for free?

- How interoperable are the pieces within a given form factor? I.e. if in 3 years I can afford to amp it up a bit, should it be easy to upgrade to a faster CPU? More RAM?, A new graphics card (assuming I don't have an integrated one)? 

My guess that's asking for a lot but possibly keeping within a given family of devices might let me be more future-proof.

   -- Owen

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

Answers in-line below

Ray Parks
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On Dec 21, 2015, at 12:42 PM, Gillian Densmore wrote:

What (if any) realistic benifits are there to building a computer yourself these days?

1.  You may be able to get a better overall price at the cost of your labour.  With the kind of system which you're considering, price differential between commodity components and the complete system is subsumed by the OEM discounts compared to your prices.  Enthusiast systems tend to have greater price differentials, especially since many spec computers simply don't have high-end components.

2.  You can customize the system to meet your requirements rather than some generic set of requirements the manufacturer thinks will fit some subset of the marketplace.  Some examples - using integrated graphics instead of a discrete GPU, using RAID 1 or 6 - are usually not possible without modifying a spec computer.  Once you add in the customization, the cost of building it yourself is frequently lower.

 And does anyone have opinions or experience with Cybertron(PC)? I found them on a random google search.

One in particular here people seem fairly content with:

http://www.amazon.com/CybertronPC-Hellion-TGM1213B-FX-6300-GeForce/dp/B00D1KWS3

  You may want to do some research into complaints - I can't remember if it was Cybertron, iBuyPower, or Cyberpower , but I remember seeing complaints about one (or more) of them.  Something to do with components failing and poor customer support which is just as true of Dells and HPs.

One thing that stands out is they seem to use regular parts. Some of those seem to get  somewhat ok  reviews. A few people have said it'd be a good idea to update the power supply.

  Just like Dell or HP, when you read the fine print they reserve the right to substitute "equivalent" parts.  I have had hardware problems and the manufacturer can't determine which component my computer has, even with full serial numbers.

when compared to  following guides on http://pcpartpicker.com/  making sure I stick to systems that are around 700-800 dollars.

I more or less come up with simillar parts, and I end up spending as much of or even way  more.

 I suspect in part because Winderz 10 is around 130-200 dollars, and intel chips are pretty expensive.

Anecdotally years ago I couldn't tell the difference from a intel vs AMD chip in real world day to day and gaming.

  I used to use AMD exclusively, but they have not succeeded in keeping up with Intel in compute performance or power saving.  

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