[amitw79]

Thanks for your suggestions Aroy.

I also tried to find out the prices from Janakpuri District Centre hardware shops and in conclusion, overall a difference of around 3-4K is coming in the parts I was planning to buy from US.

However it seems now that it is better to buy from Delhi itself.

Any particular vendor you would like to recommend in Nehru Place?

I have zeroed in on coolermaster 600W PSU for this system.

As far as HDD goes, max I would say I might get 1TB *2 Seagate 7200 rpm.

Your suggestion regarding four fans and a good cabinet is well taken, as my system might be running in a non AC environment for sometime.

Dust is sure the devil. But fret not, I got a vacuum cleaner which also blows air out, so that should help in blowing out the dust from the cabinet

Thanks again for your wise suggestions

Thanks @anku94 also for your suggestions.

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by amitw79

Thanks for your suggestions Aroy.

I also tried to find out the prices from Janakpuri District Centre hardware shops and in conclusion, overall a difference of around 3-4K is coming in the parts I was planning to buy from US.

However it seems now that it is better to buy from Delhi itself.

Any particular vendor you would like to recommend in Nehru Place?

I have zeroed in on coolermaster 600W PSU for this system.

As far as HDD goes, max I would say I might get 1TB *2 Seagate 7200 rpm.

Your suggestion regarding four fans and a good cabinet is well taken, as my system might be running in a non AC environment for sometime.

Dust is sure the devil. But fret not, I got a vacuum cleaner which also blows air out, so that should help in blowing out the dust from the cabinet

Thanks again for your wise suggestions

Thanks @anku94 also for your suggestions.

amitw79

Send me a PM and I will give the details. Alternatively send you cell phone number and I will send the business card.

Get at least 800W power supply with a matching Server Grade cabinet. Very few high quality work station / gaming quality are available in Delhi. Server cabinets are the best bet.

Avoid Seagate 1TB. There were some problems. Try the 1.5 or 2TB.

Do not run a Gaming System when the ambient is above 25 degrees. That is only in winter. You will blow the system up. And then there is no warranty for boards blown up due to heat. Keep in mind that the high capacity HDD will also give errors at higher temperatures.

The normal warranty for components varies but I have got the following last year

5 Years - Seagate, Western Digital
3 Years - Graphics card, Power supply
2 years - CPU and MB
Life Time - RAM
rest of the components are usually 1 year.

Finally if you have a good vacuum cleaner, use it once a month to clean up the Desktop.

[2500cc]

Friends, Could you please suggest a Desktop motherboard which supports atleast 8GB of RAM ?

Cheers,
Rajesh

[prateekm]

Originally Posted by 2500cc

Friends, Could you please suggest a Desktop motherboard which supports atleast 8GB of RAM ?

Cheers,
Rajesh

Most of them in the market do support 16 GB of RAM (4*4gb). You could either go for a Gigabyte, MSI or ASUS (which I heard has bad A.S.S). If you want us to suggest you a particular model, do tell the processor details and if you want DDR2/3 slots. Oh, and your budget too.

[2500cc]

Hi Prateek,

thank you for the quick reply, This system will be for my testing (Virtualization) purpose.

So i'll be buying a AMD Athlon Processor (64-bit Dual core), Am not really particular about the processor speed (anything above 2+ Gigs will do), so i would probably buy the cheapest available Processor from AMD.

RAM: is of very high importance for my testing purpose. I would need atleast 8GB of it.

Last time (year ago) when i bought a PC, there was no motherboard in the desktop class which was supporting 8GB RAM.

Do you suggest any particular motherboard model for AMD procs, which supports 8Gigs of RAM

Originally Posted by prateekm

Most of them in the market do support 16 GB of RAM (4*4gb). You could either go for a Gigabyte, MSI or ASUS (which I heard has bad A.S.S). If you want us to suggest you a particular model, do tell the processor details and if you want DDR2/3 slots. Oh, and your budget too.

[Aroy]

Originally Posted by 2500cc

Hi Prateek,

thank you for the quick reply, This system will be for my testing (Virtualization) purpose.

So i'll be buying a AMD Athlon Processor (64-bit Dual core), Am not really particular about the processor speed (anything above 2+ Gigs will do), so i would probably buy the cheapest available Processor from AMD.

RAM: is of very high importance for my testing purpose. I would need atleast 8GB of it.

Last time (year ago) when i bought a PC, there was no motherboard in the desktop class which was supporting 8GB RAM.

Do you suggest any particular motherboard model for AMD procs, which supports 8Gigs of RAM

What is your budget? All depends on it. Most of the desktop boards come with two slots hence the RAM will be expensive, and you will be stuck to 8GB. Consider Server Boards, they come with 4 to 16 RAM slots and are at times cheaper than high end work station boards.

If your budget permits go for Intel Server Boards, they are generally bulletproof and come with a good warranty.

In Delhi you can get Intel Server MB + Processor for around 20-25K. A lower end combination may go as low as 10K, but then you will loose the cost advantage in the prices of RAM.

My son has a Sony Vio laptop with 6GB RAM and runs VMware on it. He has a couple of Virtual Machines, one for office - Win7, one for personal use- XP and if he wants he can configure one for games. I think he can add more RAM to it. Think of this option also.

[prateekm]

I took a Athlon II X4 635 for ~5k and it has 2.9ghz speed. 64 bit versions work fine on it. You could buy a cheaper one and save about 2k there. My motherboard is a Gigabyte 685 GMT which has usb3.0 + 16gb ddr3 ram support. 8 GB will cost you about 10k in Mumbai (4*2GB).

Here are the specs of the same.

[vasudeva]

After some upgrades, my PC hardware is like this (thanks are due to aagooswami for helping me out when I built this PC first in June 2009):

Core i7-920, MSI X58 M motherboard
9 GB DDR 3 1333 MHz (useful for VM Workstation)
5 TB Internal HDD (conventional 7200 RPM)
DVD writers
NVIDIA 9800 GT 1 GB DDR3

Main Softwares: Windows 7 64 bit, Office Pro Plus, Adobe 9 Pro Extended.

Although 9 GB ram may look like overkill, trust me it helps a lot in running VMs (can allocate 4 GB to each VM). Since I run only one 1 VM at a time (plus physical machine), each machine gets adequate specs. A better alternative to the messy process of dual/multiple boots.

[Gansan]

Mine was assembled by a technician right in my home last year. Pentium Dual core 2.2 GHZ, 4 GB RAM, 512 MB NVDIA Graphics card, 256 GB HDD, Samsung DVD drive and 17" Samsung LCD monitor. Runs Windows Vista Home basic.

[prateekm]

Opening up my cabinet for the first time since purchase (2 months back), I was surprised to see the amount of dust on the fan blades along with some of my dog's hair. I cleaned it up using my fingers. Is it advisable to use a vaccum cleaner (blower) to remove out the dust inside the CPU? Also, how frequently should one clean up the cabinet?

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by prateekm

Opening up my cabinet for the first time since purchase (2 months back), I was surprised to see the amount of dust on the fan blades along with some of my dog's hair. I cleaned it up using my fingers. Is it advisable to use a vaccum cleaner (blower) to remove out the dust inside the CPU? Also, how frequently should one clean up the cabinet?

If you live in a dusty area i.e. near a main road for light for example, clean the cabinet using a blower (blower function on a vacuum cleaner or a dedicated blower) every 2-3 momths especially during the winter and summer when dust is at its peak. Do not use a brush as it can dislodge parts if you arent carefule. U can stretch the cleaning interval to 3-4 months during the monsoons. If your comp chassis has filters they need to be cleaned more frequently say every 4 to 6 weeks.

Cheers!

[Thad E Ginathom]

If you live in a dusty area...

It's even worse if you live in a dusty area and have cats or dogs!

[optimist]

Originally Posted by prateekm

Opening up my cabinet for the first time since purchase (2 months back), I was surprised to see the amount of dust on the fan blades along with some of my dog's hair. I cleaned it up using my fingers. Is it advisable to use a vaccum cleaner (blower) to remove out the dust inside the CPU? Also, how frequently should one clean up the cabinet?

Clean it as frequently as you desire. only don't blow directly at the fans or carefully prevent then from rotating while you blow at them. The might get damaged by high speed operation they were not designed for and force dust in their bearings. they are best wiped by a moist cloth with a very light force.

Hard disks are air pressure sensitive. Never blow over their vent holes or cover them. Same obviously applies to cd/dvd drives.

i have seen some working in bank counters with dust literally flowing out of them. As long as they are not overheating, no problem.


optimist

[optimist]

Originally Posted by prateekm

Check out this one : Corsair Cooling Hydro Series

Courier rates are mentioned on the site itself.

Originally Posted by pranavt

The Corsair H50 is what I'm using. Good for someone who wants to do water-cooling but without bothering about it everyday. Since it's a closed system, it keeps working till the water pump fails. Keeps my C2Q at around 35-40 degrees all day, during gaming and CAD sessions.

sorry for the late reply. just got over 3 busy weeks trying to decide on the monitor set. I went in for 27 inch dell ultrasharp.

I was looking for a full blown multi loop water cooling . i'm planning to move upwards from the current 4Ghz freq. I will be building my own components now.

i guess it's time for a signature upgrade.

[aargee]

My current config is Pentium D dual core, 2GB RAM, 200GB HDD, 15" monitor & its gone wrong with some bad sector for some unknown reason. I'm trying to fix it, but missing drives & other things are consuming lot of time.

With Son growing up & to avoid fight with better half, I'm planning to buy another one. Here's the config I obtained...
Core i3 + Mother board - 10K
Ram 4G - 4400
HDD 500G - 1900
Cabinet - 1600
DVD writer - 1200
LG 15.6" LCD Monitor - 4775
Speakers - 500
Mouse + KBD - 725
Total - 25K (approx)

I intent to buy an affordable latest & greatest one for now as my idea to upgrade this configuration is after 4-5 years only.
Questions
1. Should I go for i5 which costs 5K more?
2. Is there anything specific that I need to be keeping in mind when going for this spec?
3. Is this config OK or should I settle for something less or more?

Usage - Browsing (95%) that includes downloading youtube videos; games that I like to play are atleast several years old like NFG UG, AOE3.

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated as my purchase time frame is by this month end. Tks.