I've been a PCSpecialist customer since 2011 (first time forum user) so I thought this would be a good opportunity to make my first post show off my new PC, which I received early in December 2017.
I've been pretty anal about keeping records for my purchases. So, apropos of nothing, here's a table of all the PCs I've bought since 2003, and how they compare:
(Pre-2003 I had an HP Vectra VL Pentium II 266MHz with Windows '98, and previous to that a pair of frankenstein 486s (Windows 3.1, then Windows '95) and an Amiga 500)
I like how the memory is increasing exponentially with each purchase, and going from DDR1-DDR4 in stepped succession. Poetic, really.
...but anyway, yeah, I'm pretty happy with my new office PC.
I've been pretty anal about keeping records for my purchases. So, apropos of nothing, here's a table of all the PCs I've bought since 2003, and how they compare:
| _ | _______________________ | _______________________ | _______________________ | _______________________ | _______________________ |
| Date bought | June 2003 | December 2007 | August 2011 | December 2017 | October 2019 |
| Website | Pentathlete Pro | Ginger6 | PC Specialist | PC Specialist | PC Specialist |
| Processor | AMD Athlon XP2600+ | AMD Phenom 9500 | Intel® Core™ i7-2600K | Intel® Core™ i9-7900X (o/c) | Intel® Core™ i7-9750H |
| Motherboard | ASUS A7V8X | ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe | ASUS P8Z68-V | ASUS PRIME X299-A | Tongfang GK7CP0S |
| Memory | 1GB DDR | 4GB DDR2 | 8GB DDR3 | 16GB DDR4 | 16GB DDR4 |
| Graphics card | GeForce4 Ti4800 | GeForce 8600GT (x2 SLI) | GeForce GTX 560 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce RTX 2060 |
| Hard drive | 80Gb | 500GB | 2TB | 5TB + 500GB SSD | 500GB SSD |
| Operating system | Windows XP | Windows Vista | Windows 7 | Windows 10 | Windows 10 |
| Monitor | 18” CRT monitor | 22” Yüsmart monitor | 32” Murphy TV | 48” Samsung UE486200 | 17.3" laptop screen |
| Resolution | 1280 × 960 | 1680 × 1050 | 1920 × 1080 | 1920 × 1080 | 1920 × 1080 |
| Case | Maxxtro Capricorn II | Aspire X-Cruiser | In Win C583 | NZXT S340 | Recoil III |
 |  |  |  | ||
| Review | Excellent first custom-build. Could play C&C Generals at max, and Half Life 2 impressively. Mostly spent playing WoW. HDD crashed after 3 years, losing all my music. | Worst purchase I’ve ever made. Ugly case. Vista blue-screened constantly. Phenom CPU was disappointing. Upgrading GeForce didn’t help sluggish overall performance. Biggest disappointment ever. Could barely play LotRO >20fps. Even the 1TB HDD I added never worked. Hated everything about this computer. | Much better, but took a while to boot ‘til I upgraded to SSD card in 2017. Played everything 2011 had to offer maxed out. Worked like a dream for 5 years. Slowed significantly after upgrading to Win10. Added SSD drive, reinstalled everything June 2017, which killed GeForce 560, so had to revert to old GeForce 280. | Having had this for nearly 2 years, I can say I'm extremely happy with it. As of December 2019, I'm playing CoD:MW at full settings (with ray-tracing included) and it runs like a dream. I can perform all my company duties on it: it's a real workhorse. The 5TB HDD is making angry grinding noises, so I'm expecting that to bite the dust soon, but it's been several months now. May just be a noisy cog. Luckily, the OS and important stuff is kept on the SSD. | My new business laptop: it really packs a punch. Runs everything the 2017 desktop does and more. Only qualm is the battery can't cope with the demand of a specced-out laptop like this, which is to be expected, but you pretty much have to have this mf plugged in 24/7 to operate. Plus the powerpack is the size of a breadbin, and around the weight of a small anvil. Other than that, it's a solid piece of hardware. Can do 3D video editing and play half my Steam catalogue simultaneously. Nice. |
| Rating | 8/10 | 2/10 | 8.5/10 | 10/10 | 9/10 |
I like how the memory is increasing exponentially with each purchase, and going from DDR1-DDR4 in stepped succession. Poetic, really.
...but anyway, yeah, I'm pretty happy with my new office PC.
Last edited:
