ConcreteBadger.net

It took me long enough but I finally bit the bullet and invested in a new desktop PC rig. My old laptop is on its last legs anyway, and I was getting increasingly frustrated with the little things it couldn’t do. It’s been keeping me connected to the outside world Internet for the best part of three years now and even accompanied me on holiday so it’s high time the poor old thing was given its well-earned retirement.

I’m not a gamer though, which meant my budget didn’t need to be too high. On the other hand I’m still a cheapskate who refuses to use a TV set so I wanted something that can play DVDs and, early on next year, Blu-Ray discs too so I settled on the best performance for around £500. I already splashed out on a 22″ LG monitor that can cope with full 1080p video so this figure only included the tower itself and the components inside. I almost kept to budget too…

After extensive conversations with friends and online contacts I decided that it would be better to opt for an AMD processor because Intel CPUs are slightly more expensive and my needs are middle of the road in terms of power. The one I went for (an Athlon II X4 620 for those curious) turned out to be a good choice since it’s a quad core but the RRP gives plenty of performance for the money. No problems with it so far – 2.6GHz ought to be enough to keep things running smoothly, especially since I work with a separate graphics and sound card anyway.

This all plugs into an Asus motherboard, with 4GB of RAM. I’m not running on 64bit (more on that in a minute) so couldn’t see the point of installing more than this; it’s currently listed as 3GB of that as usable so for the forseeable future that ought to be enough to work with. The motherboard was chosen for its compatability with DDR3 RAM and the AM3 processor, but again I couldn’t afford to go mad and spend too much. I wish I could say I understood all this tech terminology without having it explained to me too, but I don’t. All I know is that it works.

Because I wanted full HD playback I was concerned about my choice of  graphics card. I agonised over getting an Nvidia unit for the CoreAVC suport, so eventually settled on a 512MB Asus GTS 250. It copes with the full 1080p video but the only downside is that, for whatever reason, the cooling fan is a bit on the noisy side. As it turns out, the spec of the processor and the GPU itself made the case for Nvidia CUDA a moot point anyway; it works fine. My knowlesge of the technical details on that front is also VERY limited, unfortunately.

The sound card was another major factor: I’m currently running my audio into standard 2.0 hi-fi stereo but I wanted to leave the possibility of surround sound open for when I upgrade further down the line. I also wanted some extra features beyond the usual, mostly concerned with line-in channels and fine-tuning the audio. A second-hand Creative Labs SoundBlaster card was perfect: it has a front panel for connecting with other equipment and has all the Eq and other controls I could ever need. The only analogue output is the headphone jack, so that’s what runs into the AUX sockets of my hi-fi; there’s an optical out socket too though should I need it.

As for the OS, I could have gone for the 64bit route since I’m running on Windows 7 which, by the way, has performed flawlessly so far. Given that I’ve been a faithful XP user for a number of years, the change is quite a revelation! In the end though I decided to play it safe and stuck with what I know and installed the 32bit version; I was worried about compatability issues between a 64bit OS and the sound card. One or two certain pieces of software I’ll be installing in the near future date back a few years too, so I need to be mindful of them.

I also wanted plenty of storage space to archive photos, videos and mp3 backups of my music collection (currently standing at over 200 CD albums!). The C drive is a 320GB unit but the E drive (which is the main file storage drive) is in a RAID array to give one terabyte of space, mirrored across two identical 1TB drives. That might seem like an excessive amount (especially when I wimped out of backing the CDs up in .flac format, a decision that I’m not sure was the right one) but I’m thinking about forwards compatability here: the bill for all this was just over the £500 limit and I want it to last me a while before anything needs replacing or upgrading.

I absolutely love the keyboard, a Cherry ultra-flat model which only set me back around £15. I wanted something with a quiet laptop-style keystroke since it’s what I’m used to, but with the standard PC layout; it’s really flat and has music player-friendly hotkeys too. Although the technical jargon leaves me stumped most of the time, I was really keen to buy a keyboard that’s comfortable and easy to type on for long periods.

The only task left is the installation of a Blu-Ray drive, which ought to test my choices of hardware – if the GPU and processor can do that, I’ll consider this project a success. I’m still unsure whether MPC (which came a part of the CCCP package) is BR disc compatible – it works fine with standard DVDs through my Pioneer DVD R/W drive but I’m hoping I won’t need specialist software for the different type of discs. More reading around on that, then.

Finally, I’d like to thank Steve for providing the DVD drive (free of charge too), Andy for his expert advice on the minefield of graphics cards and Seb for showing me how to put the whole thing together. I’m just glad I’m not reliant on the clunky old laptop any more…