Sticky for "current choice of components for a PC"

[dkmech]

With the amount of expertise among hexites it shouldn't be too difficult to keep a sticky with some components suggestions.

PC Gamer have some component recommendations and a £1k pc that they post the component list for every month, but being a magazine makes it hard for them to keep up with the times and limits the number of things they can cover.

How about a sticky with some suggestions for "best of" components in price brackets, kept reasonably up to date. Maybe even stickies with £1000 PC, £800 PC, £600 PC and £400 PC. I think it would be a selling point for the forums and the site in general.

I've been quite busy with work and stuff so stopped following the hardware situation, but am due a new PC soon so gonna look into it now. While I am happy enough to do a bit of digging myself a starting list with some pros and cons for each would be a good place to start at.

[staffsMike]

Well we already have the sticky for building a gaming computer (the living document one) which is very rarely updated and very recently we had the £500 PC thread but to be perfectly honest it's so hard to cater specifically to different people's budgets and requirements that it proves best just to do it thread by thread

It is a good idea but one thats tried and failed a few times already.

[FifthFreedom]

I think I agree with staffsMike

In the month I've been here i've seen so many posts asking for advice but I don't think any two have come to the same conclusions.

I think by the time you've taken into account every possible price range/pc type you's have a sticky so large that it would be impossible to update.

[dkmech]

Well, I'd have thought something like 3 choices of mobo (high end, mid range and budget) for recent intel cpus wouldn't be that hard to do, but I do see your point.

[Saracen]

Part of the problem is that different people have different expectations and experiences. If you asked for good clocking boards, you'll probably get some people that swear by ABit, some by Asus, some by Gigabyte, some by DFI and so on. And you'll probably get other groups that swear at each of those.

And as for graphics cards ...... ATI or nVidia?

Oh, and not everybody wants the same thing. Some people will be looking at Matrox boards, because they're after colour fidelity and aren't gamers so don't care about 3D hardware acceleration.

I might want a high end motherboard that's well-featured and rock-solid, but I'm not in the slightest bit interest in clocking it. Stability might be my driving criteria. Someone else might want a high-end board that's got extensive clocking options. Oh, and they want software RAID onboard, and I wouldn't use that if you paid me.

As for processors, well, what are you after? Do your apps support 64-bit? Are your main uses processor-bound? Will higher clock speed, FSB and lower thermal output suit you, or are four cores much better than two? It'll probably depend on exactly what you'll use it for.

In most categories, there'll be a number of very good products, but getting the mix right is largely a case of mix-and-match determined by each buyer's specific needs.

My feeling is that a "best of" list is actually quite dangerous, because it tempts people into doing things the easy way and just buying one of each of the "best of", because, after all, they must be "best". But by what criteria? Sometimes spending more money on one component than another is getting best value, but for another user, which component to spend the budget on might well be different. Some users will have slightly different budgets to others, and some will have a hard, fixed budget but others will up the funds available if given good reason.

An "A-List" of highly rated components to choose from isn't a bad idea, but I don't think that a "best of" actually exists in most categories, because your "best of" and mine might well be very different.

[Agent]

Funny you should say this dkmech, as "Something is in the works". I can't go into much detail, but its along the lines you are thinking

Although Saracen is echoing the issues it comes with

[Blitzen]

I cant see how a 'best of list' would work.

Firstly, the list would change almost dailyso would be impossible to keep up with.

Secondly, if there was a list, it would be too geared arond whoever wrote so it would be just an opinion with no depth. Thats why its better having mixed opinions, so people can have a choice.

Lastly, do you not think it would totally spoil the General Hardware section anyway. The section is popular for giving advice for new builds. To have some kind of 'one size fits all' sticky would make the General Section very flat.

[Jay]

If you read CustomPC they have a selection that they update.

eg

Cheap PC

Gaming PC

Stupidly expensive PC

HTPC

The page has best prices for all the components from well know retails such as scan etc. They review new hardware every month and keep it up to date.

[Lucio]

...some by Asus, ....

There are people who'd swear by Asus? No way!

Still, it could be interested to have a "Recomended by Hexus" build list.

[MSIC]

eg

Cheap PC

Gaming PC

Stupidly expensive PC

HTPC

I agree with the rationale for these ones chosen, but you could also split a HTPC into at least 'budget' and 'ideal' or something.
For what it's worth, i'd do my best to help keep a list fairly up to date, but i would always have a bias towards a) cheap b) quiet, and for a PC that just 'does the job' rather than squeeze an extra 10% performance for 50% more cash.

[kalniel]

It's fine if you have an editorial team that comes up with something like that, but to work on a forum you'd have to so closely specify the target user for each bracket that it wouldn't be helpful for a large proportion of people.

For instance the set up for playing doom engine games can vary from that for playing games with fine shader branching.. if you took account of every possible usage then you'll end up with so many different systems that it would be a pain to update whenever new components came out or prices changed. And how often do prices change?

[dkmech]

I agree that there is always room for discussion and the format this could take may be a large first post which gets edited and updated and a long thread after this with everyones opinions and discussions.

If we had several guide prices for say motherboards it could go like this:

"£50 - Asus something whatsit P8123221 Z - because its stable, runs cool and has the bare minimum of most commonly useful features. £47

£75 - Abit something whatsit Z8123221 P - because its stable, has SLI support and allows you to tweak most things you need. £83

£100 - Gigabyte something whatsit Z8123221 Z - because its stable, would look pretty in a window, has SLI, 70 extra usb ports and lets you change everything you need. £109"

There would be a similar list for Intel and AMD.

Graphics cards is not that difficult either, at least thats the bit I have least trouble with.

"£50 Radeon 9700pro (yes, I know, but it was good to me - no support for shader Z but fast enough for last years games

£100 Nvidia 8800gt - runs most current games adequately.

£150 Nvidia 9800GT/Radeon X23094783

£200 Nvidia 9900GTXSS-XR3-MX-5-Vtec"


Cpus is not that hard either - most places I looked people recommended Q6600. I know some may disagree but there is a point in cpu line ups where the price goes through the roof without much performance gain. One before that for me please, k thanks.

I saw on main site a memory pricing feature - thats a perfect example. The prices may change over a month, but it'll just be a nice surprise to whoever is buying:

"look at that I saved me a tenner"

And if there is a massive change it won't go unnoticed.

Coming back to another point - if people are advanced enough to know they want better higher fidelity they will either know to ask specially or will know what to buy already.

[dkmech]

Oh and I reckon for the majority of people the most demanding applications will be games.

Yes someone may be doing CFD on their home PC, or working with images and movies, but overall it all comes down to getting most out of your money. Hence the budget break down should work ok.


Oh, and Agent, this "something in the works" - is it likely to be here before 25th (payday)? If not I may have to do all the hard work myself

[Lucio]

Still, let's not forget there's also some good commercial implications here for Hexus. After all, once you have a "recomended spec" list, drop in a price comparison table from a few big name component e-tailers, or even get someone to make the finished unit and voila! Additional ad revenue

To take things a little further, you could also add a Hexus bang4buck calculator, that takes the current pricing information, compares it to the review data and then gives an overall rating for a particular spec.

[aidanjt]

Still, not something that's easy to put together, even fuzzy logic isn't really up to scratch when trying to come up with an algorithmic norm for all the different products on the market. This would need to be human maintained, which would make it an opinionated recommendation, punters will still make up their own minds at the end of the day about what's right for them.

This is why I think the forums are an excellent place for people to get help with making purchasing decisions, they're collecting multiple opinions and they can make a more informed decision by measuring the general consensus, and they might not even go with the general consensus.

[tigerboyce]

There are so many different options for each persons requirements and with new hardware coming out all the time, prices changing. I don't really see how it would work that well.