for longevity WD in my experience does better
add 120gb mlc ssd and win 8 64 bit with classic shell, totally worth it, boot time about 5 seconds
My current computer freezes about 3-5 times a day depending on usage. It takes literally 5 minutes to hardboot and turn back on. I’m used to that crap by now. I went over to a friends house to work on a group project, turned on his desktop with Win 8 and an SSD, blinked and just stared in shock as it was up and ready in under 10 seconds. Ridiculously worth the extra money even if you only turn it on once a day.
i wanted to throw my last computer out the window because it would take so long to boot and reinstalling windows was like pushing a rock up a hill, these days when i see other people waiting for their computer to boot i feel sorry for them.
The first computer I built myself was an AMD 386 40 MHz clone in 1990-ish with a 20 MB hard drive, and I’ve built all my desktops since then. My current work computer has a couple year old Phenom II 6 core CPU with 16 GB of DDR3 memory, a pair of Samsung SSDs and a pair of 2TB Samsung hard drives. My two software development machines are virtual machines and each has its own SSD. I can boot both Windows 7 VMs at the same time in under 10 seconds all without glitching the YouTube video I’m watching on the host machine with my morning coffee. Hardware has come a long way since the days when you come back to your desk in the morning with coffee and the computer still isn’t done booting 
i avoided windows in those days
now if windows 3.0 could be put in a core i7 4770 with full driver support…
all this talk about SSD!
i added one!
120 gb samsung 840 evo for 99.99 from amazon
($60 after use of reward points)
Congrats!
Every time I reboot my laptop I smile because it boots too fast. 
I have the cooler, it’s good, but:
AMD?
no ssd?
7,2 HDD?
believe me PCs have developed some in those 8 years
combination of ssd and slower hdd is the way to go
with LED monitors - beware the pwm
At some stage I’m going to be swapping one into my laptop, I’m finding that since I bought my present laptop a couple of years ago, HP G62 with a Core i5 M460 on Windows 7 home premium 64bit, (I know it’s outclassed now) that I can do everything that I need to do on it including lots of Photoshop (Elements 9) while on the net with 5 or 6 tabs open (Firefox) without any slowdown. The start-up time has got longer despite all the “housekeeping” clearing unused programs and running virus scans, spybot and adblock etc. I’ve been really impressed with SSD’s performance and want one but there’s lights and knives to buy.
For those of you who still boot have you heard of suspend to ram and turning off the hybrid sleep mode (which is useless and just wastes your time and ssd and is unbearable with a lot of ram)?
Leave them on.
Good choice, I was going to add a +42 on that one… It beats any CPU upgrade.
Personally I would go for an Intel CPU and mainboard, as they are pretty far ahead of AMD at the moment. Although it might be a bit more expensive.
Not sure about the 27 inch 1920x1080 monitor. The resolution is rather low for 27 inch. And I would strongly recomment an IPS screen, for a lot better enjoyment of your nice new Deft-X beam shots :). I prefer the extra height of my 24 inch 1920x1200 screen.
The current generation of nVIDIA graphics cards is very good and a bit more power efficient and quiet than AMD. But AMD 7870 is not a bad choice.
Some nice articles:
CPU: The Best CPU for Gaming in 2024 | Tom's Hardware
Graphics: Best Graphics Cards 2024 - Top Gaming GPUs for the Money | Tom's Hardware
SSD: Best SSDs 2024: From Budget SATA to Blazing-Fast NVMe | Tom's Hardware
If you want a really good power supply, I can recommend Seasonic. They even have fanless ones that are really efficient and don’t get warm at all. But they are expensive. They have several models listed and tested here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_PSUs . The Corsair is probably pretty good already, at least some of them are made by Seasonic, not quite sure about the model you picked.
thanks for the info - if for some reason the monitor is crummy i can return for free to amazon and just buy another one… the monitor is actually coming tomorrow, so i can try it with my laptop
The nice 27” screens have a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels (but are pretty expensive). For me, 1920x1080 at that size would mean big pixels. Nowadays they use that resolution for 5 inch telephone screens :). But if you like big pixels, it might be good. I would think it takes up more desk space and doesn’t show a more detailed picture. It might have more lumens though ;).
TN screens don’t have great viewing angles. The one you picked has 170° H x 160° V, which is typical for TN. IPS screens usually show 178 degrees in both directions. That is just some spec, like distance on flashlights though, you will notice different colours at much smaller angles. Also, with a big screen like that, you already have quite an angle when looking at the sides when sitting in front of it, so you might notice colour differences at the sides already. If you look at a TN screen from above, you’ll notice the colours change a lot and the screen actually becoming inverse.
There are pretty cheap 1920x1080 IPS screens with around 22” size, for example this one: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-monitor-vs239hp
I don’t know whether it’s a good one, just picked a cheap one with HDMI input (although you could use a converter on a DVI input for HDMI devices) and 5 ms response time (which is quick for IPS).
You can use something like LCD monitor test images to test and calibrate your screen.
the monitor is coming tomorrow evening - so ill test it out… it will probably look better to me than anything ive had… my laptop has a cheap matte screen… and my plasma tv is from 2006
the last monitor i had was a dell 24” which was nice for 2005… but im sure there are lots of better things out now
if i dont like this 27” after a few days/a week tops ill swap it for a 24” most likely
it has decent reviews on amazon, which is why i got it… and all i have to do to return it is put it back in the box and call ups and it free no hassle returns
Plasma should be way better than TN and from what I read even IPS. My work laptop has a TN screen, and I don’t like it at all. But there were no options available with a good screen at the time.
Actually I’ve been using a 22” CRT at home till just a few years ago because I didn’t like the picture quality and response times of the LCD screens. So maybe it’s just me being picky and it’s fine for you.
i hope so because i am picky too hehehe.
When I build a computer, I always refer to passmark.com. There are up to date comparisons on hard drives, video cards, CPUs etc. for example Intel makes the fastest chips, but AMD is the fastest for the buck. In other words, at any given price point, AMD is the fastest. There are handy charts to use to compare.
An example chart
The link for this page is
HERE
very useful! thanks for sharing