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AMD Damo
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Building a budget PC

Sat May 07, 2011 10:39 pm

Hey guys, I'm back to pick everyones brains again.

I've been tasked by a friend to build him a PC, which he uses just for "every day" investment banking, managing bank accounts, reading emails, listening to music and copying DVDs, thats all he does, he doesn't play games, he might use it to watch movies on. He has a requirement of it being fairly compact, so I'm looking towards a MicroATX build, I could go Mini-ITX I suppose but I guess that has tiny fans which make a lot of noise?

Anyways, I'm looking for budget stuff, would AMD or Intel be best off for this type of system? I'm looking at AMD at the moment, a AMD Athlon II 240e for the processor, its cheap, its only dual core but all he does is read emails so it should be fine yes? It seems cheaper than Intel's entry level stuff? A lot of the motherboards I'm looking at have Radeon 4250's as their onboard graphics, would that be fine for Windows 7 and its flashy GUI and for assisting with HD Video? Or should I go something like a Radeon 5450?

He wants a complete package, so I suppose the less I spend on the PC (within reason) the better the monitor, speakers, printer, keyboard and mouse etc can be which he can carry over to another build in the future?

Thanks much.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Building a budget PC

Sat May 07, 2011 11:45 pm

At the Dell Outlet, a refurbished desktop (e.g.: Inspiron 570 or 580 from the Home outlet or an Optiplex 580 from the Business outlet) might be a cost-effective solution.

Integrated Radeon HD4250 graphics on a motherboard with the 880G+SB850 chipset should perform just fine for non-gaming use. The $65 Foxconn A88GM Deluxe is the cheapest 880G+SB850 board in Newegg's catalog. The $95 Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 would be my choice because it also includes USB 3.0. The $70 Athlon II X3 450 provides good processor performance for the price.

Did any of the options here appeal to you?


P.S.: It's too late for me to go hunt up links to an Australian e-tailer.
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AMD Damo
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Re: Building a budget PC

Sun May 08, 2011 12:40 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
At the Dell Outlet, a refurbished desktop (e.g.: Inspiron 570 or 580 from the Home outlet or an Optiplex 580 from the Business outlet) might be a cost-effective solution.

Integrated Radeon HD4250 graphics on a motherboard with the 880G+SB850 chipset should perform just fine for non-gaming use. The $65 Foxconn A88GM Deluxe is the cheapest 880G+SB850 board in Newegg's catalog. The $95 Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 would be my choice because it also includes USB 3.0. The $70 Athlon II X3 450 provides good processor performance for the price.

Did any of the options here appeal to you?


P.S.: It's too late for me to go hunt up links to an Australian e-tailer.


Thanks for the help!

I'm looking at that Gigabyte motherboard you linked to, looks to be the goods.

I use www.pccasegear.com which is an Australian retailer here in Victoria :)
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Building a budget PC

Sun May 08, 2011 7:57 am

Here are some specific suggestions available at your preferred e-tailer:

Socket-AM3+:
A$75 AMD Athlon II X2 260 dual-core 3.2 GHz
or A$109 AMD Phenom II X4 840 quad-core 3.2 GHz
A$119 Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3
or A$125 Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3
or A$124 ASRock 890GM Pro3 r2

LGA1155:
A$125 Intel Core i3-2100 dual-core 3.1 GHz
A$129 MSI H67MA-E45
or A$155 Asus P8H67-M Pro
or A$139 Gigabyte GA-H67MA-USB3
or A$115 ASRock H67M-GE

Common:
A$89 2x4 GiB PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333, 1.5V)
$0 Integrated graphics
A$75 1 TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3
A$89 BD-ROM/DVD-RW
or A$45 DVD-RW
A$115 Antec NSK3480 w/ 380W PSU
and A$9 3½" internal flash card reader
or A$125 Antec NSK1380 w/ 350W PSU
A$35 Keyboard and mouse

Monitor?
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AMD Damo
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Re: Building a budget PC

Mon May 09, 2011 2:42 am

Thanks for that JAE, we're looking at 24 to 27" at the moment.

How would you compare the Sandy Bridge onboard graphics to the Radeon 4250s on the AMD motherboards?
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mikeymike
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Re: Building a budget PC

Mon May 09, 2011 7:39 am

I tend to avoid the AMD 'e' processors, They're clocked at a lower speed, so they perform less and the system will start to "show its age" quicker IMO (when the user starts complaining that their computer is running slow, just because of advances in software).

How often has he upgraded in the past and why? When I say 'upgrade', was it a partial or complete upgrade?
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 1:35 am

mikeymike wrote:
I tend to avoid the AMD 'e' processors, They're clocked at a lower speed, so they perform less and the system will start to "show its age" quicker IMO (when the user starts complaining that their computer is running slow, just because of advances in software).

How often has he upgraded in the past and why? When I say 'upgrade', was it a partial or complete upgrade?


Oh ok, fair enough.

Last time he upgraded was over 6 years ago when he bought his last PC from a retailer as a package.
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Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 1:39 am

AMD Damo wrote:
Thanks for that JAE, we're looking at 24 to 27" at the moment.

How would you compare the Sandy Bridge onboard graphics to the Radeon 4250s on the AMD motherboards?


I'd say that they're effectively about the same- I've been using my mobile SB quad for games fairly effectively at it's native 1366x768. Have to be careful about settings and whatnot, especially avoiding AA, but overall it's more than adequate for the majority of uses. And yeah, get the 'K' series for the extra GPU oomph; that'll help avoid future slowdowns as OS UIs and applications become more dependent on GPU shaders.
 
mikeymike
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 2:25 am

AMD Damo wrote:
mikeymike wrote:
I tend to avoid the AMD 'e' processors, They're clocked at a lower speed, so they perform less and the system will start to "show its age" quicker IMO (when the user starts complaining that their computer is running slow, just because of advances in software).

How often has he upgraded in the past and why? When I say 'upgrade', was it a partial or complete upgrade?


Oh ok, fair enough.

Last time he upgraded was over 6 years ago when he bought his last PC from a retailer as a package.


If that habit is unlikely to change (complete upgrades every ~6 years rather than little upgrades over the years), then don't cheap out on the board, get a decent brand. Everyone has their preferences and will probably criticise others for theirs, but I'm satisfied with the Asus boards I've bought (for myself and customers) over the years. A cheapo board will probably die sooner and have more quirks/annoyances than a decent quality one. I think if you're on a budget you should go for AMD, even though Intel's wares are possibly a better investment for a 6-year-type upgrade cycle. The advantage of AMD most of the time is being able to upgrade the processor over a longer period of time, though AMD is reaching the end of the AM3 generation at the moment.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 2:38 am

Then just wait for the desktop AM3+ schwagg. I'm interested in this stuff myself too, as AMD seems to be striking a more GPU oriented processing balance for the package within similar power envelopes as SB 32nm. Given that we've been in CPU performance excess for the last decade, as compared to what's needed to get the job done for 99% of users, I'm actually very interested in what they have to offer this time.

But if you want it today, get a decent H67 board, just check reviews and heed Newegg ratings, with a SB dual-core CPU with Turbo-boost (i5's only I think?) and the larger GPU, which is HD3000.
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 4:32 am

So far, here is what I came up with: (this is a complete package though, monitor, software, keyboard/mouse, speakers, printer etc)

Have I missed out on any essentials?

Mobo: ASROCK 880GM-LE motherboard $75
Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 640 $105.00
RAM: GSkil 2x4GB DDR3 $89
HDD: Samsung Ecogreen F4 2TB $109
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon 5450 1GB $65 (Willing to remove this if the 4250 is fine, I've got a 2400XT lying around here I can just chuck in for free too).
DVD Drive: Pioneer BDR-206 Bluray writer $139
Power Supply: Vantec ION2 460W Ultra Quiet PSU $49
Keyboard/Mouse: Gigabyte KM7600 $45
Case: Coolermaster Elite 341 MATX $49
Printer: Canon MG6150 $219
Monitor: Acer V243HLBD 24in $219
Speakers: Creative Gigaworks T40 Series II $115
Operating System: Windows Home 7 Premium 64bit $105
Anti Virus: Bit Defender 2011 Total Security 2011 $15

Shipping: $57

Total: $1455

If he doesn't want the bluray writer I can knock that down with a normal DVD burner or just a Bluray reader, graphics card is probably not required so I could remove that or just chuck in the 2400XT I have lying around :)

Opinions?
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mikeymike
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 4:52 am

IMO, half the memory and you still have loads for the average user.

Is 2TB disk space really needed? How much is he using at the moment?

Lose the graphics card, for the average user it's unnecessary IMO. I used to think that on-board graphics wasn't as good for the average user for a long time, but since AMD boards typically have 128MB video RAM, it works perfectly well IMO.

Printer looks a bit OTT, what's he doing with it?

I would research the board, compare it to some better alternatives and make sure you're not losing any potentially useful features. USB3, eSATA are two off the top of my head. Chassis fan speed management is another. PS - I haven't looked at that board's specs, it might have exactly what you want/need, but the board is definitely something to research properly.
Last edited by mikeymike on Tue May 10, 2011 4:57 am, edited 4 times in total.
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 4:54 am

Are you sure you want a $220 inktjet multifunctional? Have you considered a simple laserprinter instead?
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:11 am

AMD Damo wrote:
Mobo: ASROCK 880GM-LE motherboard $75
That motherboard has only 2 DIMM slots. It has the older SB710 south bridge instead of the current SB850, and it lacks USB 3.0.

AMD Damo wrote:
RAM: GSkill 2x4GB DDR3 $89
mikeymike wrote:
IMO, half the memory and you still have loads for the average user.
Go with 2x4 GiB. With memory as cheap as it is, there's no reason to skimp here. Windows 7 will make good use of the additional memory.

AMD Damo wrote:
HDD: Samsung Ecogreen F4 2TB $109
I'll advise against using a sluggish 5400 rpm drive for the operating system if you can avoid it. If you've got the budget for an SSD for the operating system, then the slow drive would be fine for data storage. If you're not going to get an SSD yet, then get a faster hard-drive like the 1 TB Samsung HD103SJ.

AMD Damo wrote:
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon 5450 1GB $65 (Willing to remove this if the 4250 is fine, I've got a 2400XT lying around here I can just chuck in for free too).
For non-gaming uses, the integrated graphics should be sufficient. It'll be very easy to add a graphics card later if your friend decides that he wants to play 3D games.
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Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:21 am

You aussies need to make sure you notate AU$ in any post referring to currency (I refer to this site's lack of a .au domain). :)

But I did some Newegg-based US$ digging anyway, just to see how I'd answer this question completely. My results come to US$1240 shipped to North Texas, and I made a few notable changes.

I went with an ASRock H61 and Intel i3-2100. No reason to sacrifice perfomance AND efficiency if there isn't a demostrable need for four crippled cores. I picked the same memory. I swapped the HD for an F3 1TB, as I wouldn't wish having to use a 'Green' drive as a system drive on anyone (which I'm doing right now on my workstation while I wrangle with an OCZ Vertex II). Space is cheap and 1TB is a lot, but speed isn't. I picked an HD6450 which should be twice as fast, should a discrete card be needed- it was <US$ more. Swapped for a less expensive Lite-On Blu-ray reader/DVD burner. I have a Lite-On Blu-ray burner in a USB3 enclosure currently and am satisfied with the drive; and I cannot recommend not including at least the ability to read Blu-rays in a new system. I swapped the PSU for a 400w Seasonic unit that is cheaper and still includes 2 6-pin PCIe leads should a real GPU be needed in the future. It should be silent and has more power than will be needed. I switched the input combo to a wireless Microsoft bundle, but I'd recommened just getting the least expensive wired bundle that has a mouse with 5 or more buttons for forward/back capability. Cheap wireless sucks. I switched the case for a sharp APEX Vortex case. Never heard of them, but it's cheap and you should only have to deal with it's insides once, and it's not like the parts won't fit. I dropped down to a Canon MG6120 as the MG6150 isn't available on this side of the lake, and it looks comperable except that it's cheaper. I changed to an Asus LED backlit LCD, probably has the same panel as the Acer as they both hail from Taiwan, but I'd also like to point out that there's no functional difference between cheap LED backlit monitors and the CCFL backlit units that they are replacing. Cheap LED backlit LCD screens are actually lower quality than low quality CCFL screens :). I put the same speakers in the cart, but they are apparently more expensive; there are plenty of alternatives here, while that Creative set is highly rated, you could get something with a dedicated sub that will still blow them away (Klipsch Promedia 2.1 anyone?). Same OS, and I dropped the AV for MS Security Essentials.

Minor adjustments aside for availability of lower cost options (or at all), the biggest thing is the CPU/mainboard. The AMD stuff works, but remember that the Athlon X4s are crippled with no L3 cache and lower clockspeeds along with lower per-clock performance, which is why Intel's i3's still compare so well even with two of their four threads being virtualized. Only production applications and games will notice the difference if at all, neither of which are the point of this build. The cost is roughly the same when the price of the entire system is considered, so the increase in performance per cost is a hard case to avoid :).
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:23 am

And uh yeah, what he said. Didn't know JAE got up this early in the morning... and yeah, the specific ASRock H61 board I have in mind (ASRock H61ICAFE LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard) has all that and four memory slots too.
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:37 am

Airmantharp wrote:
And uh yeah, what he said. Didn't know JAE got up this early in the morning... and yeah, the specific ASRock H61 board I have in mind (ASRock H61ICAFE LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard) has all that and four memory slots too.

That ATX board won't fit in a MicroATX case. Also, if you want SATA III (for an SSD upgrade in 2 years or so), isn't a board based on the H67 chip a better choice?
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:38 am

Airmantharp wrote:
I put the same speakers in the cart, but they are apparently more expensive; there are plenty of alternatives here, while that Creative set is highly rated, you could get something with a dedicated sub that will still blow them away (Klipsch Promedia 2.1 anyone?).
Definitely shop for a 2.1 channel speaker system. This is the easiest/cheapest way to get decent bass response for your PC speakers.
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Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:41 am

Firestarter wrote:
Airmantharp wrote:
And uh yeah, what he said. Didn't know JAE got up this early in the morning... and yeah, the specific ASRock H61 board I have in mind (ASRock H61ICAFE LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard) has all that and four memory slots too.

That ATX board won't fit in a MicroATX case. Also, if you want SATA III (for an SSD upgrade in 2 years or so), isn't a board based on the H67 chip a better choice?


Will have to slap Newegg for that one- I specified mATX in my search! In any case, the idea is gotten. Yes, the H67 chipset with Intel 6Gbps is faster when placed with an SSD; no, it won't make any difference, and if necessitates a real increase in price, then it may be skipped. You're not going to use it today, and most of these boards have the still very effective Marvell controller anyway. Remember that that's all we had with P55!
 
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:48 am

OK guys done some changes

Monitor is now a BenQ G2420HD instead of the Acer one, its $195 compared to $219

Motherboard is now an ASRock 890GM Pro 3 for $119 compared to $75

HDD is now a 1TB Samsung HD103SJ for $65 instead of the 2TB EcoGreen for $89

Keyboard/mouse is now a Microsoft Wired Desktop Keyboard 600 for $29 over $45

Shipping is down from $57 to $55

Total price: $1348.
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Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:48 am

What would you think about this Biostar? Seems to answer every question for a few more $, except for the explanation of the red theme. Hopefully the case won't have a window!
 
AMD Damo
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 5:55 am

Airmantharp wrote:
What would you think about this Biostar? Seems to answer every question for a few more $, except for the explanation of the red theme. Hopefully the case won't have a window!


Does Newegg ship to Australia? could be an idea getting the majority of stuff from there considering our stupidly strong dollar at the moment, 1 AUD = 1.07 USD :D (We're all going mad over here buying from Amazon.com) Pair of Caterpillar boots for $90 including shipping? Hell yes.

Also, I thank you all for being up at an ungodly hour where ever it is you all live to check the forums and lend me a hand haha.

P.S - nothing great has happened in Tuesday 10th of May :lol:
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Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 6:20 am

<---currently works the vampire shift. I start at 0000 CST :). Though I do switch to a day schedule when I'm off-shift, and Mondays are the resulting bitch you imagine. So, you're welcome!

I don't know if the Egg can pitch to the underworld- but hey, it's worth a try, they do serve our neihbors to the north pretty well. Heck, just for SNG, I pre-ordered Brink from Game.co.uk, and the shipped price using Royal Post was still competitive! So I'm sure the whole over-the-pond commerce thing can be done one way or the other.
 
mikeymike
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 8:06 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Go with 2x4 GiB. With memory as cheap as it is, there's no reason to skimp here. Windows 7 will make good use of the additional memory.


Perhaps the memory prices are very different in the UK, but looking on the Crucial website I'm seeing these prices (I'm using a currency converter to show USD):

1x 2GB DDR3-1333 unreg non-ECC: $27.48 (what I put into the average customer's PC on Win7 64)
2x 2GB DDR3-1333 unreg non-ECC: $56.94 (kit, what I offer to put into that PC because the prices are low at the moment)
2x 4GB DDR3-1333 unreg non-ECC: $107.97

I built a system recently with 8GB RAM on Win7 64, and I haven't noticed any performance difference in all the ways that I saw it perform compared to mine on 4GB RAM. Task Manager reports the memory usage on my machine at 904MB total with Firefox and Thunderbird open. Process Explorer shows a commit of 1.5GB. How will this extra RAM (you're talking about 8GB) be used? Even on 2GB RAM I haven't seen a scenario caused by a customer that will benefit from having extra RAM for the average, basic uses of a PC that I've built.

I would invest in a better board from a better manufacturer, get the extra features like SATA 6Gbps (AFAIK it's available on all AMD 8-series chipsets, but there may be exceptions), USB 3.0, eSATA, etc. If $50 - $80 USD isn't much of a concern I would strongly consider going Intel instead, but I thought this was meant to be a budget system.

While I think that in the foreseeable future it's possible that 4GB RAM will be used effectively (with enough to spare) for a basic user's Win7-64 PC that has been set up reasonably, I just don't see 8GB getting used effectively in that role at any point soon. If I'm wrong, I bet the price of 8GB RAM will be a lot lower then than it is now and can be upgraded later for a lot cheaper.
 
Firestarter
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 8:49 am

Windows 7 aggressively preloads programs (and data? not so sure) into RAM when the disk is idle and there's RAM to spare. In contrast to caching, this can speed up the first time you run a program after a reboot.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 11:10 am

Not sure why you would get information from a manufacturer's site- that's worse than retail, which is far worse than web retail. Try Scan?
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 11:12 am

 
mikeymike
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 11:30 am

Airmantharp wrote:
Not sure why you would get information from a manufacturer's site- that's worse than retail, which is far worse than web retail. Try Scan?


Err, the specs on the board? I can't remember ever finding board specs on the manufacturer's website to be wrong, but plenty of times on scan.co.uk/CCL/a.n.other supplier. I've even tried to correct the supplier and they say "well, you should always double-check with the manufacturer's site anyway". With laptopsdirect.co.uk, they've even listed a laptop as having an "AMD Celeron processor" :)

Even basics like the picture of the product usually say "for illustration purposes only" underneath (which I find amusing, what else is a picture supposed to do?) - they mean "we're too lazy to check that this is the right picture".

Usually I download the manual for the board and check vital details in there. I don't do that for other components.
 
mikeymike
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 11:33 am

Firestarter wrote:
Windows 7 aggressively preloads programs (and data? not so sure) into RAM when the disk is idle and there's RAM to spare. In contrast to caching, this can speed up the first time you run a program after a reboot.


Yes, that's very nice, but if it's using RAM then it can be tracked. My point is, I see very similar memory usage on my 4GB system to the 2GB Win7-64 systems I've built. Little or no difference, 100MB at most. Unless you have another way of checking how much is being used by SuperFetch, or some test to show the difference in performance for basic uses of a PC with varying amounts of RAM...
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Building a budget PC

Tue May 10, 2011 1:21 pm

Windows 7 memory usage does scale with installed RAM. With 4GB installed, I'd be at 2GB on the desktop; with 8GB installed, I'd be at 3GB, and now with 16GB installed, I'm at 4.5GB.

It's not using all of it really, but since I'm dealing with issues with an OCZ SSD (it decided to disappear), I'm using an old bloated image from my 2TB WD Green and it's incredibly slow. The extra caching isn't helping boot times, but it sure does make the desktop a little more livable.

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