Hi new member very out of touch

Spectric

New member
Hi all

Well recently had a shock, always built my own Pc's right back to 286, 386, 486 Dx2 etc and before SATA came along always used Adaptec cards and SCSI drives. My current setup is an AMD A8-5600K with 8 gig of DDR2 memory and is now eight years old so started to look at upgrading. It seems there has been a big step change in most areas with a stronger gaming aspect than I remember and a lot of new terminlogy. I use the Pc for general desktop use like Excel and Word, 2D cad using Qcad these days and some programing in C and VBA with no gaming requirement. I have always used AMD processors with Gigabyte motherboards and WD hard drives but even them choices seem to be harder because I do not want to spend money on processing power and storage I don't need. As for the OS, now stuck with W10 like most but loved NT4 server and XP once I accepted it.

Like most have noticed some extreme prices for stuff lately and assume this is just due to shortages and demand, if so then I will sit back and wait till things stabilise and become more sensible, in the meantime will be looking for advice on what to consider and what to avoid.

thanks Roy
 

JUNI0R

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Welcome Roy! And that must have been quite a while ago as there's terminology in there I don't even understand!

With regards to prices, they're sky high due to high demand and low supply (both pandemic related) so if you're able to wait, I would. You'll get a lot more for your money in 6 months time, hopefully! As an AMD fan you'll be happy to hear AMD is currently blowing Intel out the water and every build I suggest has an AMD CPU in it. Also, PCS has a range of Gigabyte boards available, which you'll also be happy to hear. PCS uses Seagate hard drives but these days they're very slow and out of date compared to new flashy SSD's (solid state drives) especially M.2's. (a form factor of the SSD)

It'll be hard to recommend you a build as of now if you don't plan to buy for a while but if there's any technical terminology you need help with or any other question about building PC's, we'll be happy to help.

If you would like help with a build now, or at any point in time we'll need some info. At the very least this, but extra info is useful

Monitor - Model or Resolution AND refresh rate. If you don't have one, what is the budget you have for one?
Uses - What is the system for. Is it just gaming? What about VR? Streaming? Video processing?
Budget - We need to know where to spend and where to cut back. Some items are more important than others so knowing the margins we have to work within we can will always try to accommodate your budget.

Also just a note, PCS is a system intergrator so you choose the parts and they build the PC for you and give you a lovely warranty for peace of mind. The only part you can do yourself really is the graphics card and that's only really suggested if you want a particular graphics card or supply is short like now (thought I'd mention as you said you've always previously built your own PC's)

Again, welcome to the forum, hope you have a great time here
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Hello Roy and welcome! :)

You'll get lots of good sound advice on here from people who really do know what they're talking about. Those with VALUED CONTRIBUTOR and MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR have proven that they know what they're talking about and their advice can be trusted. As can the advice of all moderators except me - my field is Windows internals and debugging, not hardware. :)
 

Martinr36

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Hi all

Well recently had a shock, always built my own Pc's right back to 286, 386, 486 Dx2 etc and before SATA came along always used Adaptec cards and SCSI drives. My current setup is an AMD A8-5600K with 8 gig of DDR2 memory and is now eight years old so started to look at upgrading. It seems there has been a big step change in most areas with a stronger gaming aspect than I remember and a lot of new terminlogy. I use the Pc for general desktop use like Excel and Word, 2D cad using Qcad these days and some programing in C and VBA with no gaming requirement. I have always used AMD processors with Gigabyte motherboards and WD hard drives but even them choices seem to be harder because I do not want to spend money on processing power and storage I don't need. As for the OS, now stuck with W10 like most but loved NT4 server and XP once I accepted it.

Like most have noticed some extreme prices for stuff lately and assume this is just due to shortages and demand, if so then I will sit back and wait till things stabilise and become more sensible, in the meantime will be looking for advice on what to consider and what to avoid.

thanks Roy
Hi Roy, oh the joy of SCSI drives & making sure they were set up properly, I had several both hard & tape drives connected to a sun sparc xl workstation that ran on Solaris, back in the day
 

Spectric

New member
Hi all thanks for the replies, good to hear the prices could come down in the months to come. Well in comparison to years ago they are very very cheap, remember when you would be pleased to buy 4 Meg of RAM for £40! and a 1Gig IBM CF card (microdrive) would cost £200.
 
Welcome roy !!! Fond memories of xp really liked the ui of it took me a while to adjust to windows10 I still have waking nightmares of vista
 

Stephen M

Author Level
Welcome Roy. As you have noted not a good time to buy but planning builds is fun and that gives us all something to do.

I always liked XP, still think it among the best OS, certainly if you judge it on the time it came out. Vista cannot be described on a family friendly forum.

I used W7 briefly but have been a Linux user for a long time now and cannot see any reason to change.
 
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