Hardware What Hardware Should I Buy? - August 2009

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2009/08/11/what-hardware-should-i-buy-august-2009/1

Packed with four PCs and a new Folding rig, this month's PC hardware buyer's guide is leaner, meaner and gets straight to the point! Check out our recommendations and be sure to tell us what you think are currently the best buys in our forums.

 

nice Folding section.

are the future of PC cases going to going to be cases filled with holes? why are all recommendations have a meshy front? is 2009 the year of tacky front panels?

otherwise, great hardware selection!

 

Well, the point of mesh in the front is to have an air intake. Surely that's not a bad thing. I can tell you that the HAF 932's front looks and feels quite high quality.

Nice guide this month. Good to see you dropped the links to whatever-shop-it-was.

 

nice guide, a monitor buyers guide would also be handy i reckon

 

I know I know but we just don't review enough right now to make a 100% recommendation we'd be happy you all relying on

 

No more CCL online / Q9650, hence impartiality and my love (purely platonic!) for Bit-Tech fully restored)

 

The Hiper Anubis case is available for under £60 at the moment, I just got one, it weighs a lot but it's great. Since your review of this case was so amazing I'm surprised you're not recommending it.

 

I am tempted to go with a water cooling setup so glad you have recommended some products.

My main concern is how easy is it to build a water-cooled pc? I have built my last 4 or 5 PCs along with upgrades etc so I am quite competent at that part.

I am assuming as long as I am careful and follow all the instructions etc properly I should be ok?

 

watercooling is not THAT hard, sometimes it takes a bit of patience and ingenuity, but if you are careful there's not much you can do wrong really.

One question about the Premium box: why do you reccommend the 120GB Vertex over the 160GB Postville X25-M?

Oh, and you might want to look at the last page, the text and the prices are getting mixed up a bit, it's rather confusing to see what goes with what

 

Still no LCD screens in here. How about you put a budget, gamer and high end lcd screen in too please?

ie, hanspree budget, samsung gamer 22" and hp 24" high end?

 

can we get a workstation build as well plz?

 

I personally preferred the old format of outlining the recommened parts, i found it more informative and prefered the layout.
A slight tie in to what Dolphin said, i myself would prefer to go air cooling than water (due to not knowing what im doing with water) so it would be nice to see a premium version based on air colling if the primary is water cooled in future too!

That affordable machine looks exceptional for the price!

 

I wonder if - particularly for the budget build - having everything come from one e-tailer wouldn't be a better idea... the UK Affordable All Rounder comes from five different stores - that must add a good 10% to the asking price for the system due to shipping... it's a balancing act to be sure, but saving a couple of quid on something by buying it from another shop doesn't save money if you're having to pay a few pounds of shipping on it.

Other than that, all of those builds looked solid.

 

The general guideline would be the "gaming workstation". A more specific "workstation" entirely depends on what you need to do with it and is better optimised around software: ie video/3drendering etc

Paradigm Shifter - We did that for the last two months and everyone complained it was cheaper "elsewhere". The prices and PCs are merely a guideline (ie buyers guide! ), depending on what your budget falls into - they are not a definitive "you must buy this" list as over the course of the month prices and stock levels will change.

In fact, in the course of 4 days since I originally wrote it, the prices changed on many items last night so I had to readjust it all.

madbilly - There are a lot of good cases out there, the Anubis is just one of them.

Our opinion on a premium PC is that watercooling is a must for noiseerformance, when cost is less of an objective. Obviously there is nothing stopping you substituting in your own air cooling options if you don't want to watercool, as I said, it's not a "must buy" list, just a guide.

Vertex is still currently better supported than Intel's SSDs. Personally I don't much like Intel SSDs right now since they just simply stopped supporting their last gen X25-Ms. If you've spent lots of money and are waiting for TRIM support - you won't get any. Way to support your customers, Intel. On the other hand, OCZ is very fast with its firmware updates and aftersales support, which is why we'd recommend them.

Abhorsen - the old format had too much unnecessary text and took far too long to contruct. This new format could use some optimising still but it's punchier and to the point. Instead of writing the prices twice, the graph is a simple reference.

 

Yeah, fair one. You guys have to try to please everyone - which is never an easy task at the best of times.

It seems it's mostly a psychological thing - I know people who will order five different things from five different places because each place does one thing "cheaper" - usually by no more than a few quid... and then they pay shipping costs five times which usually makes it more than if they'd bought it all from the most expensive place! Still, they seem to be happy (it's like shipping costs don't even occur to them...)

 

Nice article. Consice precise too. Keep it up

 

I don't think so. The situation in the UK is that people have preferred places to buy kit and shop around within a budget of their choosing. A heavy weight in this factor is getting cheap/free delivery for an online purchase - that's not mentioning free delivery with certain conditions for forum contribution or vouchers etcetc

The UK hardware market is not like the US where Newegg takes about 70% of the entire online hardware business (but it's still second to Amazon in total online electronics sales). It's far more balanced and competitive in the UK which is both a good and bad thing.

 

Personally, i like it better when you dont have any one shop singled out as place of purchase. It makes the whole thing more impartial, and it also means that you can adjust to changes better.

It does mean that a reader still hhas some work to do from this list before hitting the order-button, but my view is that if you are not willing to do that you are probably better off ordering from Dell.

 

Hm. Last time I tried using a voucher code for money off a purchase, it was direct from HP (got it in the mail) and yet HP refused to let me use it when I wanted to order an item. Gave me the runaround for days before they finally cancelled the order without explanation. Wasn't very happy with them over that. As for free delivery... not everyone is signed up to forums that do that sort of thing. Or, indeed, signed up to forums.

Play and Amazon do free delivery, sure... I'm not aware of too many e-tailers for hardware that do it, though - Scan, through the old bit-tech scheme, sure... anywhere else? (I'm sure there are, I just don't pay that much attention to forums I'm not a member of...)

I like the fact that we can shop around in the UK (our prices here are bad enough without only having one source for components) and I wasn't referring to people in general with that second paragraph - just that I know several people personally who seem blind to delivery costs. Like some Amazon Marketplace sellers - one will charge 50p less than another on an item so it's the 'cheapest item listed' but then charge twice the shipping...

...

Actually, I was interested in a SuperTalent SSD a few weeks ago because I saw it for $195 on NewEgg... couldn't find it for sale here in the UK. Contacted SuperTalent (who, props to them, were quick and helpful with their response) but the UK price was £195 + VAT... a grand total of £225... If it wasn't for the fact that import charges would probably make it the same price, I'd order it from NewEgg...

 

Well, that's not my problem

As for SuperTalent SSDs and consumer choice in general: the UK market is smaller than the US so prices are cheaper over there because they sell more bulk. UK etailers are smaller and take more risk so they only stock stuff people really want to buy.