Selecting a New PC

[PC2K1]

I'm looking to build or buy a new PC. I need some experts advice. I wanted to able to do Home DVD movies, backup DVDs movies etc. and doesnt take much time in rendering etc.. What is the best and affordable and where? Usually checked geeks.com not too bad but s&h.

Build:
prefers intel:
Single Core2Duo or Mobo w/2 processors, what's the diff?
Video Card..?

Buy:HP Media ctr TV M7570N Desktop or ???

[INFRATOM]

If you want to build it yourself check Toms hardware or ananda tech and build one of their examples. Right down the parts and check the prices. Compare it with name brands. Never compromise build more than you need or can afford, low specs will catchup with you soon. Consider core 2 duo with 4megs of cache. In short get the fastest CPU, RAM and hard drive.

[normcar]

Min of 512MB of RAM, but should get 1 GB if you can afford it. The best setup for harddrives is 3, 1 for OS, and 2 for drive to drive conversion. Get the fastest CPU you can afford as this is where you will save conversion time. Unless you are a gammer, just get a Vista approved video card, so you don't have to upgrade if you get Vista. If you want to put out HD video to a monitor, then get a video card that has onboard HD "decryption", otherwise it will use a lot of CPU. Make sure you get a good motherboard, as this can cause you a lot of problems. Search the web for any motherboard you are buying to see if it has problems.

[Cobra]

Get a reasonably fast CPU, but remember that a balanced system will always be better. I have always used Asus motherboards, and I've had very few issues with them. I've heard good things about Gigabyte boards, too.

My Core 2 Duo system is incredibly fast for encoding. However, if you're on a budget and all your machine will be doing is encoding video, look at a Pentium 4 machine. Since the Core 2 Duo, prices for P4 CPUs have dropped dramatically. If it's to be a general-purpose machine and used for a bit of gaming, consider an AMD Athlon64 - they're better at gaming and unpredictable tasks than the Pentium 4 (although the Core 2 Duo is an outstaning all-rounder).

1GB of RAM is all you need unless you're a serious gamer. 512MB is the bare minimum.

Graphics cards don't matter much unless you're gaming. As normcar rightly says, make sure it'll be able to cope with Vista and if HD is your thing, look for HD support. In my experience, nVidia cards have been less trouble. I'm sure many can say the same about ATi. Just go with whichever you're more comfortable with, and any issues can be sorted later on.

[Scorpion King]

I build, you may not want to. Either way do plenty of research so you won't have a bunch of surprises.

I would rather capture mpeg-2 realtime instead of capturing avi then encoding. I like DVD DL and use it often. I also like fast dvd and cdr burners.

Get a good motherboard, power supply, roomy case, and a good monitor. Fast hdds and burners.

The one best idea I think I ever had was to buy Norton Ghost disk imaging program and when I first installed and activated XP I created a disk image. I then began to install drivers and software and creating disk images. I still have that 1st image file and also many others along the way. I can reinstall XP from just about any point I want in just a few minutes. I put drive D in a removable tray and put My Documents and Outlook email folder on that drive. I remove that drive and insert a drive containing my image files. I then rewrite drive C from an image file whenever needed. Shut down and change the drives back then restart XP. I loose nothing. I access the image drive from a bootable CDR I created.

Good luck.