24 replies to this topic

[yardley]

looking at buying a all in one pc but dont know much about them. went this morning around the shops and found some good deals. the hp models seem to be good with the touchscreen and 23inh screen. is there much difference between a intel i7 and i5? harvey norman have a good sale on at the moment with good prices on there AMD all in ones. someone said stick with intel.
i know some of the guys here are computer gurus and i would appreciate some help.

[GregWormald]

What do you want to do with it?

Greg

[yardley]

What do you want to do with it?

Greg

greg i would like to use it for music and movie downloads surfing the net of course

[pchan]

safer to stick to the intel chips, cant go wrong!

[Pasgod]

You don't need an i7 for music, movies and surfing the net. The i5 is already very competitive, it's an high-performance product.

AMD: I've used an AMD for more than 2 years. It's perfect for music, movies and surfing. I'm very happy with it, no problem.

Touchscreen : to me, it's a gadget, I am not sure it is very comfortable.

Save your money! If you have a good price on AMD or an i5, it's enough for you.

[Luc]

looking at buying a all in one pc but dont know much about them. went this morning around the shops and found some good deals. the hp models seem to be good with the touchscreen and 23inh screen. is there much difference between a intel i7 and i5? harvey norman have a good sale on at the moment with good prices on there AMD all in ones. someone said stick with intel.
i know some of the guys here are computer gurus and i would appreciate some help.

Is there a difference between an i5 and an i7 you ask. The short answer is yes, a big difference if you need sheer grunt and quadcore ommph.
You want to DL movies, well that is just a software program for a start and not a hardware problem and jsut how fast you will be able to DL stuff will of course depend on your contract with your ISP..how fast your internet connection is.

How much money do you wish to spend, are you going Apple or PC, will you be needing a really big monitor for watching anything on your PC. Are you going to use it as part of your digital sound system.
Lots and lots and lots of questions need to be asked before anyone can really give you any concrete advice.

If you buy through someone like Hardly Normal or one of the bigger online stores then don't expect any help in setting it up properly and don't expect too much in the way of after market service/advice. It's not hard for small one or two man shops to compete with the big stores because thay can access all the hardware online and quite often at a cheaper price than the big stores. But the biggest bonus is being able to go back to the store for advice or to ring them up when you get stuck.

My current rig is 2 years old and was put together by a three man operation in a regional country town and none of the stores could come close to what they managed to put together. I researched for sometime exactly the things I wanted to do with it and then I searched out prices for individual components and then I went to the local PC store and we set about putting it together.
But if your not prepared to do some research and learning about your PC and what it will come loaded with then perhaps HN or one of the big stores is for you. Nothing wrong with Dell either and they have the best warranty and their backup/help desk is pretty good but be prepared to have a lot of bloatware on your pc if you go down the generic pc build and sale through a store like Hardly Normal or online with Dell.

Software that they come loaded with is what I'm terming 'bloatware' and it can be a right royal pain in the arse and often almost impossible to get rid of for the average user like yourself.


Here for instance is a pretty good build:-

This PC will be used for gaming, CAD, downloading and bit of movie editing.
Following is a build I have came up with after doing a bit of research. Please advise if I should make any changes.
Budget is about $1500-$2000.
CPU i7-2600 $295
Mobo Asrock P67 Extreme4 B3 $177
Ram 8GB Gskill 1600 $115
HDD Kingstone SSD 64GB $113 This is your Hard Drive and a solid state drive at that (these are cheaper since this build was posted
HDD2 Seagate 2TB $95 Hard drive
Graphics 2GB AMD Radeon HD6950 $232 <<<pretty good card for that price
Drive 1 Sata Pioneer 219 DVD Burner $40
Drive 2 Sata Pioneer 206-BK Blu Ray Burner $135
Case Coolermaster CM690 II Advanced (rc692) $122<<< the PC case or tower
PSU Antec Truepower New 550W $105
Periphirals Samsung 2450 $300 <<< Monitor/screen
TOTAL: $1729


I could better these prices if I wanted to spend the time reseaching so really it's back to you to supply more info on your needs

[yardley]

the apples have a higher screen resolution but they seem overpriced against the hp, toshibas,asus and the acers. i noticed on the dick smith website that they have a hp reduced by nearly 800 bucks which has the i5.

[LogicprObe]

i5 will do everything an i7 will do..........just slightly slower.
You probably wouldn't notice the difference on most apps.
There are different gigahertzes for i7s and i5s too.

edit - I've played with a few of these and they go OK.
http://au.msi.com/product/aio/

Edited by LogicprObe, 14 April 2012 - 06:15 PM.

[datafone]

i5 has 4 real cores, while the i7 has 4 real and another 4 simulated through "Hyper-threading" tech' so unless heavy multitasking is involved, an i5 at a good clock speed (3000mhz) is fine for most people.

Edit: My preference on boards goes to Gigabyte.
Kingston is my preferred memory.
My preference for graphics is ATI/AMD for image quality.

These are a good case for something outside of gaming (Antec NSK6582B) http://www.antec.com...php?id=MjIzNw== if using a beefy graphics card, or a lot of PC powered peripherals a slightly larger PS might be in order, but the supplied Antec 430w will be OK otherwise.

A quick pick is as follows...
Case & PS "as above" $121
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3P-B3 L1155 P67 Chipset 4x DDR3 SATA3 SATA2 USB3.0 $160
CPU Intel Core i5 2500 Processor LGA1155 3.3GHz CPU $209
Memory: Kingston 8G(2x4G) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 HyperX $53
Graphics: Asus EAH5450 PCI-E 2.1 1G Silent DDR3 DVI HDMI DX11 $33
HDD: Seagate SATA3 1TB 7200RPM 64mb Cache $105
Optical: Pioneer BDR-207BK 12X Blu-Ray Writer Drive SATA Black OEM $115
Monitor: Samsung S24B350H 24inch $201
OS: Windows7 Home Premium 64bit $93
Total $1090
Taken from Umart.

I opted in the list for a entry level graphics card, assuming that this is not for hard core gaming.
You might want to research monitors some, as they vary a lot on quality.
And if Blu-Ray is not required then a Pioneer SATA DVR219L 24X DVD optical dive for $24 instead of the Blu-Ray drive.

Edited by datafone, 14 April 2012 - 08:30 PM.

[yardley]

datafone that sounds like a good system build but its not a all in one pc . please correct me if i am wrong.

[Luc]

IS this what you mean>>>>http://www.dell.com/...screen-desktops and if it's not then perhaps you could post a link to what you want?

[LogicprObe]

IS this what you mean>>>>http://www.dell.com/...screen-desktops and if it's not then perhaps you could post a link to what you want?

I already linked to one lot of all in one PC's.................all you have to do is click on it!

http://au.msi.com/product/aio/

[yardley]

I already linked to one lot of all in one PC's.................all you have to do is click on it!

http://au.msi.com/product/aio/ yeah had alook at the msi all in ones.thanks for that.

[LogicprObe]

Yeah..............I figured that...................but a few people are not sure what you're on about.
A tablet is another alternative these days.

[surfpurple]

Have you thought about a 'lappy'?

Since I have moved from a 'desktop' to a 'lappy', I have not looked back for a second!

For what you want to do with your computer, (and your'e not heavily into gaming and video editing etc) then a lappy will do everything you need and also give you so much 'versatility' at the same time.

I do some downloading, video editing, pretty much multimedia stuff and I haven't been caught short with my lappy yet. And it streams very good quality audio to my stereo system.

AND if you have problems or need some help from someone then it's easy to pick up and cart your lappy around.

[datafone]

datafone that sounds like a good system build but its not a all in one pc . please correct me if i am wrong.

Ah, OK I missed that.

I have nothing for those

[Luc]

I already linked to one lot of all in one PC's.................all you have to do is click on it!

http://au.msi.com/product/aio/

...and I linked to a Dell model, meh and no exclamation mark.

[LogicprObe]

...and I linked to a Dell model, meh and no exclamation mark.

Ah..........you did too.
I was more replying to your first post...................but gladly offer my apologies................with an exclamation mark!

[yardley]

...and I linked to a Dell model, meh and no exclamation mark.

ill have alook at these dells too. im in no hurry to buy one just getting good information from you people here. you get better service here at stereonet than you do at jbhi-fi ,dick smith etc

[GregWormald]

greg i would like to use it for music and movie downloads surfing the net of course

Then in all likelihood the cheapest with the best screen will do fine.
None of the above are processor intensive unless you are doing something other than watching the movies.
My 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo from early 2008 will do everything up to 1080p without stutters--even if doing video post-processing to clean up a 'blocky' presentation.

Greg

[surfpurple]

ill have alook at these dells too. im in no hurry to buy one just getting good information from you people here. you get better service here at stereonet than you do at jbhi-fi ,dick smith etc

+1

Don't EVER rely on information from those big 'chain stores'!

I've caught them out countless times and I feel for the less educated people going into these stores looking for 'proper' advise'!

......I guess a lappy is out of the question then?

Edited by surfpurple, 15 April 2012 - 04:22 PM.

[Luc]

Ah..........you did too.
I was more replying to your first post...................but gladly offer my apologies................with an exclamation mark!

Lol LP, I was just doodling on a Sunday arvo.

At the OP. I reckon if you could be a little bit more specific about just want you want to get out of your new PC then that would make it easy for peeps here to be a bit more specific in their advise.

So far it sounds pretty simple and maybe that's all you need but did you want to be able to upgrade the unit as it ages and technology moves on.
I do this with my towers/cases and it's pretty simple to throw in some more Ram( of what ever type) , an extra hdd, rip the burner out when your sick of the slack firmware updates and replace it etc etc.
I don't know whether you can do this with an all in one PC.

[yardley]

+1

Don't EVER rely on information from those big 'chain stores'!

I've caught them out countless times and I feel for the less educated people going into these stores looking for 'proper' advise'!

......I guess a lappy is out of the question then?

yeah the chain stores are just box movers.
im looking for a pretty decent screen size at least 23inch so that is why i havnt gone down the lappy road.

[surfpurple]

yeah the chain stores are just box movers.
im looking for a pretty decent screen size at least 23inch so that is why i havnt gone down the lappy road.

I have a 15" screen on my lappy which is surprisingly good to watch movies on (if I have to). And the 17" would be better again.

What I do is use my lappy for 'most' tasks and when I want to watch something properly (or better than 15") then I HDMI to my 50" HD plasma (as a monitor).

Just my set-up!

[LogicprObe]

Lol LP, I was just doodling on a Sunday arvo.

At the OP. I reckon if you could be a little bit more specific about just want you want to get out of your new PC then that would make it easy for peeps here to be a bit more specific in their advise.

So far it sounds pretty simple and maybe that's all you need but did you want to be able to upgrade the unit as it ages and technology moves on.
I do this with my towers/cases and it's pretty simple to throw in some more Ram( of what ever type) , an extra hdd, rip the burner out when your sick of the slack firmware updates and replace it etc etc.
I don't know whether you can do this with an all in one PC.

Yes, it's all yadley's fault!

True...........the all in one may be limiting but when somrething becomes superceded, I buy a new one and palm the old off onto the kids as an upgrade!