Hey,

Back in winter 2011-2012 I made a 'buyin a PC thread' for a PC that I am just now getting around to buying.

Unfortunately that thread seems to have been Edward Cullened or something, and I'm totally oblivious to what's changed in the time being, so if I could get some more advice, that'd be great! I have little to no experience in this field, so I'm hoping those of you who are in the know and you enjoy the topic can lend a hand.

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First up, I'm looking for a laptop for a friend of mine. Her budget is 500-700. Her priorities are that this **** will be snappy and responsive for day to day use, web browsing, the once in a while Shopping of a Photo. Also, it's to be used for the playing of Guild Wars 2 and maybe other games with system requirements even lower than its (2.0 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7800 or better, etc.).

I'm guessing that an SSD might not fit within this budget, but I think a good 7200 rpm (hay am i doin this right) HDD and a good processor will be fast enough on the day-to-day to not irritate?

Screen size is not critical. She would prefer it to be fairly light.

That enough info? I've checked around on newegg and a couple manufacturer sites, but there's a lot to consider and view, so if there are some good front runners at the moment, of if you know a brand to avoid or stick with, please let me know!

edit: how does this thing look given the above requirements? overkill? underkill? on the fence? http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=457&Code=08626JU&category-id=F41BC8E1656C5F85171FBDB172571912

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Follow up post: The post with the most gets to boast: 500 boats per "_": _______________@%

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For my very own PC, I'm prolly working with a budget of 1000 dollars "or so", "or so" being up to a few hundred dollars more if it's worth it.

This'll be used for photo and video editing, RAM intensive stuff in Photoshop, other Creative Suite BS, 3d Modeling and Rendering in various Autodesk programs and **** like that, as well as some vidya games sometimes.

Back in the day you all recommended the Intel i7 line... because it included hyperthreading, which I've lead to believe is potentially marginally advantageous in certain rendering applications and things of that sort. Is this processor still a front runner? What's good.

What SSD manufacturers are good? I definitely want at least a 128 GB one, though if there are any good deals I'll shoot for a 256 GB.

I'm planning to go for 16 GB RAM. Is it cheap at the moment? Would this be a good time, for example, to double up because it's cheap?

I've gathered also that the PSU is a component on which not to skimp, so I'll follow your advice there.

How about video cards? What's good these days. I'm very out of the loop

My plan had originally been to build this myself, which I've also never done before. I've read a few guides, and it seems quite doable. However, I'm not dead-set on that, and if it seems like less of a headache and not a pointless extra expenditure, I'd take an assembled setup... what do you think? Obviously there are more components I'll have to consider if I go the building route.

Thanks fellas. I apologize is this is meandering and misinformed. Looking forward to having a conversation about it.

yeah we call this q&a with my new rig around these parts buddy

....**** me in half. I'm actually legitimately disappointed in myself for missing that opportunity.

An SSD is going to make the biggest difference of anything when it comes to snappy performance. Make one fit the budget.

Keep an eye on Slickdeals. SSD prices have fell into the basement over the last few months.

I think the laptop you picked might border on overkill for her needs, but since it fits in her budget I would stick with that choice.

i7-3770k is the current favorite for 1155 overclockers. If your not going to overclock you can get a cheaper non-K model.

For SSD Manufacturers, my favorites are Intel, Samsung, Crucial, Mushkin, Corsair. I would avoid OCZ. They have very high RMA rates for some of their drives. I would also avoid the smaller manufacturers (like SuperTalent, ADATA, Verbatim) since they are less likely to roll out firmware updates in a timely manner.

I went for 16gb ram, I've seen those kits as low as $70 recently. At worst you are simply wasting some of that money if you never use that much ram. Since I'm not sure what you meant by double up, be aware that certain versions of Win7 have built in limits. Win7 Home Basic x64 wont use more than 8gb, Win7 Home Premium x64 wont use more than 16gb.

Videocard depends on what your budget for the card is. Nvidia is still being slow to rollout their current generation mid-range cards (GTX660, GTX660 TI due out soon), so AMD pretty much has $100-$300 range locked down right now unless your willing to go with an older GTX560 - GTX570 card. If your shooting for a $300+ videocard then your options are GTX670, GTX680, 7950, 7970. I tend to prefer Nvidia.

http://slickdeals.net/f/5019810-G-SKILL-Ares-Series-16GB-2-x-8GB-240-Pin-DDR3-SDRAM-DDR3-1333-PC3-10666-Desktop-Memory-Model-F3-1333C9D-16GAO-70-FS

http://slickdeals.net/f/5022690-120GB-Kingston-HyperX-SATA-III-2-5-Solid-State-Drive-SSD-SH103S3-120G-80-Free-shipping

That the good ****? JLee, in your opinion, is 120 GB plenty for an SSD? Say I'm just putting the OS, Adobe Creative Suite, ~10GB of Modeling and Rendering Software on there, and then the occasional game (which I always uninstall after I'm through a period of playing)?

I'm still using a laptop with a 80 GB HD, so this will seem like a big step up regardless.

Most people still use a harddrive for storage. Typically only OS, commonly used apps, and favorite games are placed on SSD.

Honestly it sounds like plenty of space for you, depending on how much space your modelling/rendering projects take up.

If you're super concerned about wanting a lot of space but also want some benefits of an SSD without spending too much, just get a small (64 GB) SSD and use Intel SRT to cache a much bigger hard drive. I've got a dedicated 256 GB SSD for Windows and some other stuff, and then a big SRT-cached volume with a 64 GB SSD, and honestly as far as games go, for the most part I just run them off of there.

I'm a big fan of SRT as well.

DON'T just get any cheap SSD. Get something good. Samsung has probably the best reliability reputation on the market. Check out the Samsung 830 series. I would get a 256 GB drive and partition maybe 50-100 GB for Intel SRT and put big data on another drive.

When you say "you would," do you mean that you'd personally go that route, or do you recommend spending the extra for more space?

Found a 128GB Samsung model on Tiger... http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2318704&csid=_61

Re: The Laptop. Triscuit, if it seems like it might be overkill, where would you recommend cutting back? From what I've looked at so far, the way to go cheaper is to go with Integrated graphics, and I'm gathering that that's still not the best route to go if it's to be used for gaming at all (even on a not-so-demanding game).

Also, Triscuit: the i7-3770k is 319 on newegg. Looks like going with the 3770 shaves off 20 bucks, and the 3770S shaves off 30. I'm not terribly interested in overclocking... but how about the 3770 vs. the 3770S? The S seems to have a lower power requirement, but I'm not sure what else is different...

The S version has lower power consumption and lower clockspeed. Unless you are specifically looking for lower power consumption, I would stick with the standard i7-3770.