Just bought a new PC

[Nigel Goodwin]

Well, I finally decided to upgrade my old PIII - I couldn't be bothered to build one, so I've been out and bought a new baseunit, an AMD Phenom 8550 triple core, 3Gb of RAM - running Vista

The two laptops I bought at Christmas run fine under Vista, so I'll give it a go and see how I get on.

 

[gabeNC]

running Vista

I'm so disappointed, and i thought I knew you.

Just kidding, my last fling with vista lasted about a month, that was over a year ago so i'm hoping that it has improved.

 

[Sceadwian]

Triple core, yeah you'll need that for Vista =) gabe he doesn't have a choice, you can't buy a machine with specs like that without Vista now, unless you "know a guy" =). MS is only letting people put XP on lower end machines. The multi core chips are nice, most can't take advantage of more than 2 chips and even then most stuff only uses 1 but it's absolutly fantastic for multitasking. Task switching is instantaneous.

 

[HiTech]

From PIII to a tri-core CPU? You must be thinking you're in heaven now! I went from a 2gig Pent.4 to a 3gig dual core with double the RAM and twice the bus speed... what a difference just that made. Then there's the SATA drives and a beast of a VGA card.

Long live Win XP Pro. Here's hoping Windows 7 turns out to be worthwhile. RIH (rest in hell) VISTA.

 

[gabeNC]

MS is only letting people put XP on lower end machines.

Yup, it was VERY painful finding the drivers for XP. Had to go to the manufacturers website for alot of it. Was not on the vendor's website, only had Fistya drivers. They made it difficult on purpose.

Nigel, sounds like a nice machine. I'd be curious to know your reaction or thoughts on it.

 

[killivolt]

Yep sounds about right either it's cars or computers one of the two.

I drive crappie cars so I can have good computers course that was 6 months ago.

Have fun with the new computer. Nigel


kv

 

[picbits]

I bought my first new PC for the past 14 years earlier this month.

I got a quad core HP Server brand new for £156 delivered.

At that price I couldn't turn it down.

I might even take it out the box again some time this year. I booted it up and stuck Ubuntu on it to make sure it was OK then stuck it back in the box .....

 

[Sceadwian]

Damn that was a good price picbits. I paid 600 US for a quad core Dell XPS420 about 6 months ago.

 

[picbits]

Indeed - its only an AMD Opteron but it came with 1Gb ram and a 160Gb HDD with plenty of room for expansion.

For a little test machine it will do - I really couldn't not buy one at that price

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

From PIII to a tri-core CPU? You must be thinking you're in heaven now! I went from a 2gig Pent.4 to a 3gig dual core with double the RAM and twice the bus speed... what a difference just that made.

I've got six times the RAM

Only had 512Mb on my PIII.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Nigel, sounds like a nice machine. I'd be curious to know your reaction or thoughts on it.

So far it's looking fine, I've got everything to install back on it - I've just installed my email program, and transferred everything across (at the second try - I copied the wrong directory first).

It's a question of getting used to Vista now, I've had a little play on the two laptops I bought my wife and daughter for Christmas, so I'm not totally new.

 

[Sceadwian]

512? How did you survive? I haven't been able to get by on less than 2 gig for years =)
Vista is annoying but it's not as evil as people make it out to be. There will be the occasional app that has terminal problems with it though. One of my favorite apps (Spectrum Laboratory) which is an advanced FFT audio processing app thats free doesn't work on Vista because it used actual hardware timers for operation that would have had to have been re-programmed for Vista.

 

[Gayan Soyza]

Whats the cooling system that "AMD Phenom 8550 triple core" uses?

Can you sleep while the computer switched on?

 

[Sceadwian]

Modern CPU coolers are typical generic aluminum heatsinks with copper 'heat pipe' rods going down the center of them in a few places to distribute heat, and with a blower fan on top. The heat sinks are absolutely massive though.

**broken link removed**
That's my machine (well not my exact machine but my model) that big honking black thing in the middle of the case is the blower/ heat sink shroud for the CPU.

It's dead quiet while running, in games in makes a slightly noticeable whir, less than a cdrom spinning up.

 

[Gayan Soyza]

Modern CPU coolers are typical generic aluminum heatsinks with copper 'heat pipe' rods going down the center of them in a few places to distribute heat, and with a blower fan on top. The heat sinks are absolutely massive though.

**broken link removed**
That's my machine (well not my exact machine but my model) that big honking black thing in the middle of the case is the blower/ heat sink shroud for the CPU.

It's dead quiet while running, in games in makes a slightly noticeable whir, less than a cdrom spinning up.

Sceadwian I like that CPU specially the casing structure + Cooling system.

It's dead quiet while running, in games in makes a slightly noticeable whir, less than a cdrom spinning up.

This sound is decent to me Most of the brushless fans keeps silent on the first few days but after few months they generate more noise

 

[blueroomelectronics]

An article worth reading for the tricore AMD
Phenom II: Unlocking Cores, Cache, And A Free Lunch : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware

 

[Sceadwian]

I'm very happy with my machine =)

 

[jorgeluis87]

hello, i bought my new pc three weeks ago.... i´m from ecuador.. mi mail is henry_prod@hotmail.es for walk around electronic and digitals... well... my new pc is very fast ... it has got 160gb and 4 gb of memory ram...i paid $700 us for a quad core 3 ghz...

jorge luis

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Whats the cooling system that "AMD Phenom 8550 triple core" uses?

Can you sleep while the computer switched on?

As it's in the attic it's not a problem

But more seriously, it's whisper quiet, I'm at work at the moment so can't check, but it says something on the front about been especially silent.

 

[mvs sarma]

Congratulations Nigel, for upgrading to a new system and a new OS.