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Should I get this PC?

El Blacksheep

Android Enthusiast
Nov 8, 2009
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Newegg.com - Recertified: HP Pavilion Elite E9220Y(NY553AAR) Phenom II X4 910(2.6GHz) 8GB DDR3 1TB ATI Radeon HD 4350 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

In the market for a new desktop PC. Must-haves:

- 1TB hdd
- 4+GB RAM
- Core 2 Duo or Quad Core (preferred)
- Dedicated vid card. No integrated crap. HDMI out
- DVD supermulti
- card reader (SD, MS Duo)

this guy has all that, plus:

- 2.6Ghz X4
- 8GB DDR3 RAM (woooo)
- wireless card (not necessary now, but might be useful later)
- lightscribe (lol, i guess it'd be neat to have but i'll probably never use it)

$580 after all's said and done, or $610 if I go with the next day shipping.

anyone know of any better deals?
 
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I'm curious what people do with all this memory lol... I haven't even filled up 500Gig yet. Of course I don't have junkware. And I delete irrelevant files.

I have an extensive collection of music on my current pc and I'm trying to get me a copy of Photoshop CS4 and Catia so I need a lot of space. It's kinda like the old saying, "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it." lol
 
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The hard drive isn't the fastest, which will show when you really start to fill it up. Other than that, not a half bad deal. I'd get that A.S.A.P before it sells out though. It's well worth the price. The graphics card might leave you wanting more, but that's not bad. The processor can easily be clocked to about 3.1 gh/z safely with that one.

In short: hell yes dude, get it. That's a good deal, and it includes OS.
 
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I have an extensive collection of music on my current pc and I'm trying to get me a copy of Photoshop CS4 and Catia so I need a lot of space. It's kinda like the old saying, "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it." lol

I also have an "extensive" music collection. Music files don't take up much space. usually about 1MB/per minute of audio. And with VBR even less in most cases, with no loss of quality. 500GB can hold about 125K songs, I seriously doubt you have that much music, but if you do, you should consider using a self backup external drive, (two hard drives in one case, that hold mirror information), because having a hard drive crash on you would be a major PITA. I use three separate drives actually, one for my art/design/project files, one for video, and one for music. All wired into my network through ethernet, and available to any computer in my house, wired or not. (Yes it is encrypted, and SSID is hidden) Which makes music playback very convenient in any part of the house.

The CS4 Suite is 24.6 GB, a far cry from a TB. That leave 997.4GB of space... Thats alot of space dude. I'd rather have a faster 500 GB Drive. Personally.
 
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I also have an "extensive" music collection. Music files don't take up much space. usually about 1MB/per minute of audio. And with VBR even less in most cases, with no loss of quality. 500GB can hold about 125K songs, I seriously doubt you have that much music, but if you do, you should consider using a self backup external drive, (two hard drives in one case, that hold mirror information), because having a hard drive crash on you would be a major PITA. I use three separate drives actually, one for my art/design/project files, one for video, and one for music. All wired into my network through ethernet, and available to any computer in my house, wired or not. (Yes it is encrypted, and SSID is hidden) Which makes music playback very convenient in any part of the house.

The CS4 Suite is 24.6 GB, a far cry from a TB. That leave 997.4GB of space... Thats alot of space dude. I'd rather have a faster 500 GB Drive. Personally.

Which format are you using that gets 1MB/min? I guarantee that you are losing quality. Only a lossy codec can achieve that. I have a large collection of FLAC music at the highest compression level, and some of my songs reach 150 or so MB. Those are 20 minute long orchestral pieces, though. However, it still reduces to much more than 1MB/minute. I would really urge you to research music formats before you go criticizing people about their music memory usage.

On topic, I actually looked at that but decided to stay my course of building my own, as I need a fairly good graphics card for 3 and 4 (even 5) dimensional differential equation modeling. A good mid level one should work, but I also wanted a much more powerful CPU, and two 1 TB drives in Raid 1 Not as fun as games, but equally graphic intensive.

-Nkk
 
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I'm curious what people do with all this memory lol... I haven't even filled up 500Gig yet. Of course I don't have junkware. And I delete irrelevant files.

Ubuntu virtual machine sips away at my memory. My last PC wasn't quite beefy enough to handle a VM, so I almost forgot it was an option. Now I get to keep Win 7 and setup a pure work environment in linux :)

Thanks for posting this, I was in the market for a new computer but must have skipped right over this when looking through NewEgg. I ordered mine on Sunday, it shipped today, I cannot wait!

How are you liking it so far? Did you get the onsite warranty?

It's made me quite satisfied. One of my major complaints on my old PC was that the integrated vid card couldn't handle the native resolution on my TV (which is my monitor) and so everything looked like crap. This vid card, while not a high end (or even mid range) model, does it's job.

The hard drive isn't the fastest, which will show when you really start to fill it up. Other than that, not a half bad deal. I'd get that A.S.A.P before it sells out though. It's well worth the price. The graphics card might leave you wanting more, but that's not bad. The processor can easily be clocked to about 3.1 gh/z safely with that one.

In short: hell yes dude, get it. That's a good deal, and it includes OS.

I haven't OC'd nor have I felt the need to. Also, I've got a SSD in my netbook; it really doesn't make a huge difference. 7200 RPM would've been nice but I'm happy with 1TB.

I was about to ask what will you use it for, but you answered it already, you can get a lesser computer for just playing media and surfing the internet.

For watching 1080p movies such as Blue Ray, you might need to upgrade the Video Card and a monitor that has a native resolution of at least 1920 x 1080.

Luckily for me none of that applies :) I'm actually a bit of a software developer (at least my degree says so. I'm not employed as one) and last time I checked I don't need a high end vid card to run X-Term. No desire here for a lesser computer :)

As for movies, this machine handles my Netflix DVDs just fine (as does my Xbox 360). I have no real need or desire for Blu-Ray, and when I do I can just buy a Blu-Ray player and plug it straight into the TV.
 
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Which format are you using that gets 1MB/min? I guarantee that you are losing quality. Only a lossy codec can achieve that. I have a large collection of FLAC music at the highest compression level, and some of my songs reach 150 or so MB.
-Nkk

i think cd quality is ripped at 320kb/s wich is roughly 11mb per 5min playback thats all u need my friend for quality, i would strongly advise against a 1 tb HDD and get 2 500gb HDD this is only down to; disk checks, registery scan, defrag, virus scans, it is actually quicker to scan 2 500gb drives than 1 tb.

as for dedicated graphics cards wel you dont need to worry about dx11 as most games still run in dx9, i have a gaming laptop thats 3 n half year old and the only game it hasnt played that i wanted to play was just cause 2, as for HD movies you only really need the screen native resolution at 1920x1080 a GPU wouldnt make no difference really i, i only know this because my dads laptop as shitty onboard GPU and it play HD movies fine. its the processor really and if it can handle the movies,

litescribe are shit you can only use their disks.
 
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i think cd quality is ripped at 320kb/s wich is roughly 11mb per 5min playback thats all u need my friend for quality, i would strongly advise against a 1 tb HDD and get 2 500gb HDD this is only down to; disk checks, registery scan, defrag, virus scans, it is actually quicker to scan 2 500gb drives than 1 tb.

Actually a CD is 1411 kbps (44.1 kHz x 16 bits/channel x 2 channels), and the digital music file is in a WAV container, not in MP3 format. You can compress it with a lossless audio code(FLAC, ALAC, etc) and get anywhere from 400 or less kbps to 1100 or more (up to 1411) kbps. It all depends on the loudness, detail (a monotone beep takes less data than an orchestra).

See Head-Fi.org: Headphones, iPod earphones, portable audio, MP3 players, high-end audio for more details.

Nkk
 
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