Reply to: I may need my head read, but...

[NickFitz]

The first time I built a PC was using my Dad's old 80286 motherboard.

Much cooler than building a PC was the fact that my Dad, who had started out by buying a BBC Micro and relying on my guidance in the early Eighties, had replaced his 80286 with a 486DX2 and was saying, when I went home for Christmas, "Is this old motherboard any use to you?"

Having helped him through understanding Epson FX-80 control sequences in the early Eighties, to find him building himself a new PC was better than building one myself

[Board Game Geek]

RH Posted : If you're right (and I hope you are), then how would you recommend starting?

Check out CustomPC magazine

Every month they do a round up of builds, from the thrifty, to the average, to the uber-spec.

They list all the components you need to get the build working, and various issues of the magazine have hands-on guides to help you.

Mrs BGG built her own PC, and she was well pleased with herself. Zero input from me, apart from revising some of the uber-spec components. (Basically, the uber-spec build recommended that for a 9% increase in frame rate, a graphic card costing £270 more was gratuitious.

I disagreed, since the whole point of the build was to max performance, with money no object at the time. I hit the top 1% in Futuremark which was important at that time, as it was a goal to strive for. Been there and done it now.

[Fred Bloggs]

How easy is it to put extra RAM into a laptop Nick? I'd like to put another gig into my Asus...

Piece of cake. This ACER, I upgraded from 512mb to 4gb (Crucial RAM) and I guess I'll get another year or so of use from it for the ~£50 upgrade.

[cojak]

Smashing - I may take a look..

[NickFitz]

How easy is it to put extra RAM into a laptop Nick? I'd like to put another gig into my Asus...

The MacBook is designed to make it pretty easy, and IIRC my old Toshiba was also as simple as removing a panel on the base and swapping it. I would imagine it's pretty straightforward on your Asus too, but you'd have to check the manual

Crucial's web site takes you through the process of specifying make, model and so on and then tells you exactly what you need to buy

[cojak]

How easy is it to put extra RAM into a laptop Nick? I'd like to put another gig into my Asus...

[NickFitz]

Another vote for Crucial. I ordered a RAM upgrade for my MacBook on their website at around half four or five in the afternoon; it arrived in the post the next morning

[Fred Bloggs]

I can recommend buying your RAM from Crucial, Corsair or Kingston. I use any of those depending which happens to be cheapest for the best spec when I order. They all have on line configurators where you enter the MoBo details and up pops compatible RAM. It is so easy to fit RAM to a PC it is almost laughable.

I share the sentiments about the cost effectiveness of self build, but a DIY PC can be configured exactly as you need and you generally know exactly how to fix it if it breaks!

As I said above, recently, I've done both self built and bought ready built.

[realityhack]

And cheers for the RAM tip-off.

I can't bring myself to pay £800+ for 8GB of RAM, which I know I can fit myself, easily.

[realityhack]

Cheers Fred, will take a look at those. This may result in a 'pet project' for my next Linux box.

Talked this over with Mrs RH, and she compared this to buying cars:
Either you buy a kit car, a cheap car or an expensive car.

• The kit car requires some level of expertise and a lot of spare time to build properly, and may outperform all others if you put the right bits in - but may not be as reliable, or last as long. (And may require continuous tinkering)
• The cheap car will be pre-built, to a low build quality, and may be perfect in the short term, but quickly succumb to general wear and tear.
• The expensive car will also be pre-built, and contain some generic components, but where possible these will have been bespoked for that system, other parts created exclusively for that model. All parts will be optimised to work together perfectly, and over-engineered to do so.

This seems to tally with some opinions here.

[b0redom]

Oh, as an aside. Seriously look at upgrading the RAM yourself rather than buy from Apple. It's eyewateringly expensive, and compatible RAM can be bought from www.crucial.com.

I've not bothered upgrading my MBP, but for my imac it was literally a case of unscrewing 2 screws on a slot at the bottom and pulling a piece of plastic - didn't even need to take the case off. Cost IIRC was around £40 rather than £200 or so from Apple.

[voodooflux]

As for building your own PC, even the proper geek forums I hang out on are rarely recommending self-build these days. Sites that let you specify all your components are cool, but why build yourself? You save little at best, in fact if you consider bundled software it can work out more expensive, and really I value my time at much more than any potential savings Vs time spent building my PC.

I'm not sure that self-build has been for the budget conscious for some time now - not given the buying power that companies like Dell have these days. The only reasons I can see to self build are if you want specific components, or a high end system with *enthusiast* components, and want to eek every last bit of performance out of your kit by matching components for maximum overclocking potential.

[Fred Bloggs]

There's a lot more to designing and building quality hardware than sourcing the chips.

Ever seen Top Gear when they have some car that uses the same engine, gearbox etc. as some commodity car, but costs five times as much and goes like stink with superb handling?

Yes ofcourse I have. But really in your case I think you are proposing it's the software (the OS) rather than the hardware that discriminates in favour of Apple. I don't think your argument about hardware stacks up, as you say, same engine etc. In the case that I wanted to use OSX I'd use a hackintosh myself. But I don't want/need to. So I don't. I do agree that I think there used to be an argument in favour of a Mac as a platform for media use. But I really don't see anything that my PC can't do on CS4, Quark Express etc.... just as well as a Mac.

[Fred Bloggs]

As for building your own PC, even the proper geek forums I hang out on are rarely recommending self-build these days. Sites that let you specify all your components are cool, but why build yourself? You save little at best, in fact if you consider bundled software it can work out more expensive, and really I value my time at much more than any potential savings Vs time spent building my PC.

Yes, I prety much agree. Last but one PC I bought ready assembled as it met my needs and I couldn't build it any cheaper. However, the latest one I did build as I wanted specific components used in the build. At the end of the day there's no simple answer, you pay your money etc... Personally though, if I wanted to use OSX I'd build a hackintosh (but I don't) using the same bog standard Intel/Nvidia hardware as Apple use.

[d000hg]

Also, as an owner of a new-style Aluminium/unibody Macbook... the actual styling of the laptop is pretty much perfect. It's sleek and light and thin and the metal construction is FAR more solid feeling that the typical plastic offerings. The detail is there too... magnetic power lead that snaps into place, magnetic lid closure, car-style CD drive... if you think design is worth paying extra for then that's pretty much end-of-discussion.