Blogs PC Hardware Buyer's Guide, June 2010

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/06/15/pc-hardware-buyer-s-guide-june-2010/

 

"That might sound flippant, but we haven't seen any new products in the last six weeks or so that have changed our minds on what the best hardware to buy is."

True.

 

how about expanding the guide with a media pc or something?

 

A media rig isn't a bad idea to be honest...

 

Media PC would be a nice addition.

 

Would love to see some Media PC rigs. Like you do for gaming PCs - a budget, enthusiast and SUPER-MEGA-TURBO-DESTROYER-OF-WORLDS one that will set your wallet alight.

 

with all of the all in one media centers hitting the market it doesnt seem like a worthy investment to do a media pc these days. can see why they dont do one on the hardware guide.

 

What exactly constitutes a media PC anyway? Its a SFF PC with a decent graphics & sound card, and lots of HDD space for all the movies & music you'll be storing on it = pretty much a normal PC then, nothing amazingly different that requires a whole seperate catagory. Unless Im missing something :-/

 

did you update the prices on the may one then, to reflect their current trend or not?

 

I echo the other users' sentiments of expanding the guide to include a HTPC.

What would be ideal would be a computer that has a sufficient CPU, PSU, ram and motherboard, ideally mini-ITX, an adequate sized HDD, possibly a Blu-ray drive, a good enough GPU that offers full handle hardware acceleration of all HD codecs as well as Vector Adaptive deinterlacing and all in a svelte and appealing case.

While building such a computer may appear to be easy, the real genius of such a build is in finding components that work well together, use power efficiently, are good value for money and are near silent as possible, all while keeping temperatures low.

 

You're watching the World Cup aren't you? Just because every monitor in the office is watching the lunch time and afternoon games, you can still do a little work in the morning!

 

I'd argue that a media PC has more specific requirements for hardware than a generic PC. Low power, low noise but providing just enough grunt to cope with HD content or a good price? A concise feature on the best hardware around for home theatre duties?

That I would like to see on B-T.

 

I've noticed that the sites that did not review the first fermis the way NVIDIA wanted them to (were completely honest) did not receive a GTX 465 for review.

Speaks volumes about them. They refuse to admit they have a broken GPU, and arrogantly think they can control everyone's perspective of it.

Just amazing.

 

Was reading an old issue of CPC the other day - they had a Media PC spec'd in at at the front along with the others...

 

So we're asking for something like the Home Theater PC Buyer's Guide, like this: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2009/02/04/q1-2009-htpc-buyers-guide/1 ?

I thought it was supposed to be updated every quarter or something, but that's the most recent one I could find.

 

Talk about the good old days, the first page has 4GiB of RAM for £32.....

 

+1 for a HTPC build.

But I reckon they can get away with 6 monthly updates, low performance hardware in a HTPC doesn't change much unless new tech is released.

 

I know! I really wish I would have jumped on upgrading all my PCs to 8GB

 

This.

We tried it before and everyone complained it wasn't what they wanted - they either wanted small and low power (underclocking, no underclocking?), or lot of hard drives for storage, or TV recording, TV streaming or internet stream TV?, transcoding capacity or not - if so, CPU or GPU?, HDMI or older connections?, blu-ray/no blu-ray, mini-ITX/micro ATX - some people think mini is too small, others not, etcetc

If you want something to play video and audio on your TV, just buy an AC Ryan PlayON

It's not that we're not listening, it's just the boundaries for a "HTPC" are just too big, so it's just not going to happen.

 

I'd love to see a HTPC buyers guide but it does really make sense that there are so many different options that different people may or may not want that it will be impossible to please even the majority.

One thing I would like to see back again though is the monitors section. Again, I know it's an area that different people want different things but like when it used to be included, just 3 monitors for 3 different price brackets would be brilliant. When looking for a new, or another, monitor I can never tell where to go or who to go to so any help from you guys at bit-tech would be awesome

Ross