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This article is outdated and is only left on here for historic reference
Not too long ago people would have laughed at you if you thought of buying that kind of monster for home use. My first PC was an XT (before the 286, which was before the 386, which was before the Pentium I - for those who wondered) with a 20MB hard drive and 64MB RAM, I think, oh yeah, and it had an amber monitor. I walked into a computer shop one day and I remember the most beautiful saleslady I had ever seen showing off what she called her little baby and "the monster". Her baby was a standard 286 and the monster was either a 386 or a 286 with some extras… Okay, so I've been in the industry for a while, but I walked out of the shop and decided not to buy a PC until I could afford the monster.
Today most people want a fairly powerful computer and rightly so, especially if you want to play games on it.
But what is powerful enough and what is just a waste of money?
Being in the IT industry, I often have friends, and just as often people whom I have just met, asking me what they should buy.
Well, if money is not an issue then simply pick up the latest PC magazine and find out what the specs are for the most powerful PC on the market and go buy it. However, if money is not an issue you wouldn't be reading this article and instead you'd already be playing with your monster PC.
In February one of my colleagues bought a Pentium IV, 2.66 GHz notebook with 512MB RAM. In August, 6 months later, we bought 2 Pentium IV 2.8 GHz notebooks with 1GB RAM from the same supplier and even with a slightly faster CPU and double the RAM, these notebooks, individually, were considerably cheaper than the one bought in February. The fact is that as soon as a faster or better piece of hardware is released, the one that you just bought 6 months ago will become considerably cheaper.
More importantly, until we got the new notebooks last month, I was doing exactly the same work as my colleague on my "old" AMD Athlon 1.8Ghz PC.
That same colleague told me that once I get used to the speed of the notebook, I'll want to throw away my PC. That has not happened yet. I use the notebook at the office, but every evening and weekends I work, and play games, at home and I still use the AMD PC. In fact, with the exception of some really complicated work in excel, I have not noticed a difference in performance between the two systems.
The excel work is limited to two unusual examples. The first is copying a report of a couple of thousand lines with graphics from my browser into excel. Even on the 2.8GHz notebook this takes a couple of minutes. The second example is a macro that compares and manipulates two sets of over 39,000 rows of data each, and again, even on the notebook this takes more than 5 minutes to complete. But these are not the everyday tasks you use your home PC for.
On this AMD 1.8GHz PC I run Windows XP Professional, Microsoft SQL Server and Internet Information Server, which I use for Web development. I also use Visual Studio .Net and Powerbuilder to develop Windows applications. Most people will not use their home PCs for such resource intensive applications and mostly want it for MS Office, browsing the Internet and games. Today's modern games are by far the most resource hungry applications that most of us use, assuming you love playing games, as I do. Now, I may be a bit outdated because it takes me months to finish a single game, but thus far I have not had any performance problems with games. Currently I have Age of Mythology, Warcraft III Frozen Throne and Splinter Cell on my PC and they're all running happily.
Now, before I shoot myself in the foot, let me say this. This whole article is my personal view based on my own experiences as mentioned here. The decision you make as to what PC you buy is your decision alone, and possibly that of your bank manager.
I believe though, that unless you have a specific requirement for some serious processing power, you do not have to buy the most powerful hardware on the market. Two reasons come to mind for buying an above average PC:
1. If you develop software in a language such as C++ that could take a considerable time compiling your application.
2. Complex Graphic design or DTP. Again, most PCs today will handle your average graphic design requirements without a problem, but if you do professional graphic design or you create complex graphics as a hobby, you'll need a powerful PC.
There are surely other situations you'll need that extra processing power, but this article is intended for the average home user.
So what should I buy?
Honestly, I can't answer that. Like I said, at the end of the day you have to be satisfied with your own purchase, so you have to decide for yourself.
Here is an example of how I would decide what to buy for myself. This example is in South African rands, but you'll get the idea based on the percentages.
I'll start with a PC configured as follows:
Intel Pentium IV 3GHz CPU
VGA, sound and network card on board (included in the motherboard)
40GB 5400RPM hard drive
128MB RAM
52x CD-Rom
And all the other goodies like monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers
The price for the above setup is R6,858
Downgrade the CPU
In my opinion, the latest and greatest CPU is always overpriced. So, unless you have a specific need for that extra processing power, take a slightly slower CPU. For example, on the pricelist I have here with me, a 3GHz CPU costs R3930, a 2.8GHz CPU costs R2639 (32.85% cheaper) and a 2.66GHz CPU R2099 (46.6% cheaper than the 3GHz)
So, if I replace the 3GHz CPU with a 2.66GHz CPU, the price drops down to R5027
More memory
The standard PC configuration you find on the shelf has 128MB of RAM. In my opinion you should not consider buying a PC with less than 256MB RAM and preferably go for 512MB or more, depending on your needs. I would far prefer a 2.66GHz CPU with 512 MB RAM than a 3GHz with 128MB RAM.
To change the 128MB RAM to 512MB costs R528 so the total price is now R5,555
Graphics Card
If you are going to use your PC purely for business applications, then you probably won't need more than the standard graphics card included on the motherboard or something like a Geforce2. However, if you intend to play games or do graphics design, get a good motherboard from the outset!
I'll put a GeForce FX 5600 card with 128MB memory on this machine for R1,319 giving a total price of R6,874
Now our machine is R15 more expensive than the original setup and I would far prefer a 2.66GHz with 512MB RAM and good graphics card than a 3GHz with 128MB and a standard graphics card.
Hard drive speed
One other item to consider is the speed of your hard drive. The hard drive is the slowest piece of equipment in your PC (apart from CD-ROMs, which you generally only use to install software with.
So, make sure you get a 7200RPM HDD and not a 5400RPM. Today 7200RPM is fairly much the standard though, so you should be safe with that. I haven't seen them on a pricelist yet, but I think I heard something about a 10,000RPM HDD. If I can afford one the next time I buy a PC, I'll grab a 10,000RPM if it's available.
Well, I hope the above gives you some idea what to spend your money on. My point is very simple, don't let the IT sales pitch convince you that CPU speed is all that's important. Spend the amount of money you can afford on the right stuff.
Happy shopping!