Please help! Need to get a new PC

bab2600 · Post by **bab2600** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:31 pm

Ok, i know the advantages of building a pc over store bought ones. I unfortuneately am stuck in a hard spot. I am in school, have very little money, and also am the artist for a webcomic. My current pc that I do all my work on is a laptop and has worked fine for the time being. The problem I have now is the hard drive is way to small, the graphics card is integrated so I can't upgrade it, and upgrading the memory seems like a waste with how cheap some of the new computers are. I am looking for a cheap pc that can handle digital art (mainly photoshop), that has a firewire port for connecting a camera directly for filming some stop motion animation, that can handle very basic video editing, and that is decent quality. Gaming is not really an issue since the only pc game I play is World of Warcraft. I found what appears to be a decent HP model for my needs. This HP also comes with windows vista as its operating system. I wanted to find if HP computers are decent in quality and if anyone knows about their tech support. I am also looking for any suggestions as to where to go for a cheap pc that will handle my needs and last at least 2 years. By this time I should have the money to build my own exactly as I want. Here is the model and the specs for the build I am going with and the price:

HP Pavilion a1750e series

Processor: AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 3800+ dual-core - 2.0GHz

Memory: 1GB DDR2-533MHz dual channel SDRAM (2x512)

HardDrive: 160GB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive

Front Ports: 9-in-1 memory card reader, 3 USB, 1394, audio

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE

Front-side bus (processor dependent): 2000MT/s

Price: 590 bucks

Basically i am looking for a pc that can handle multi tasking with some digital art programs and also some minor video editing. I would also like it if the pc can run World of Warcraft smoothly for when I play it. This seems like the perfect cheap pc for me, I just do not know HP as a company as far as quality with their products.

Thanks for any help

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:46 pm

Welcome to the forums.

As far as I know HP's are pretty sound. No idea what tech support is like though, best look around a few review websites for your laptop/hp's general reputuation I guess.

Seems very nice for the price, though laptops aren't my forte at the moment.

Dan

bab2600 · Post by **bab2600** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:28 am

Thanks for the info. The pc I am looking it is not a laptop. My old one was and was a great little pc for my needs (I use to do a lot of traveling all over the place and lugging a desktop around can be a huge pain). When I have the time and money I plan on formatting my laptops hard drive and installing windows xp on it as well as the bare minimum software. This way I will still be able to do any work on my pc on the go.

The last time I looked into pc companies was at least 8 or 9 years ago. Back then Dells were a great pc and deal with really good customization. Now I know Dells are pretty much crap now. Thats the main reason for me asking info. on HP. I did some research online and found a mixed bag of info. Some people rated specific hp models high while others were reviewed as complete garbage (these were the small slimline models and the low budget ones with celeron chips). Unfortuneatley I was unable to find a review for the model I am looking at since it is one of their new models with windows vista.

Indignity · Post by **Indignity** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 4:25 pm

HP PCs are imho are in the same category as Dell. The majority of their hardware is proprietary and you may need to purchase replacement/upgrades directly from them (Dell is notorious for this).

If you are in an emergency & need a PC, yeah, get this HP. Keep in mind the limitations that you will have to deal with down the line when this PC gets "old" or too slow for your liking.

Well, $600 may not buy you a killer system if you built it yourself, but you do have to ask yourself what you want out of it a year from now or even further down the line.

My honest opinion is maybe save a little bit & wait to see how the quad-core processors play out this year with Intel/AMD... If AMD decides they can't wait on their R&D to really outdo the Intel chips, there might be a huge price drop coming sooner than later.

The tasks you mention (Photoshop, Rendering & Video Editing) all take advantage of multiple core cpus & believe me going from a single core to a C2D processor was like night & day. I'm talking like encoding a DVD in 1/4 the time or being able to encode a 2 hour xvid video to vcd format in 10-12 minutes(including audio/pulldown/muxing)

That being said, my CPU is overclocked a bit & being cooled by water. I did quite a bit of research before I jumped at the most recent upgrade which started ~ 3 months ago & hasn't stopped LOL. I only planned on spending ~ $1000, but I'm up to around $1700 now only because I've been bitten by the mod/overclock bug :D

I guess to sum this up, don't let price determine your purchase ;)

mongol05 · Post by **mongol05** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 12:02 pm

that should work just fine for what you wanna do =)

tonman23 · Post by **tonman23** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:05 pm

From my experience, if your going to buy a pc like Dell or HP that have proprietary parts, buy an extended warranty. I learned this lesson the hard way unfortunately. My experience with HP tech support has been good though. Replacement parts came quick!

hq5 · Post by **hq5** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 7:48 pm

If you want a decent gameplay you should upgrade the GPU to 7600GT (at least)

imho

Kougar · Post by **Kougar** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:19 pm

If I may ask, what GPU did your laptop use? A 7300LE is darn close to the bottom of the totem pole of graphics cards, so your laptop might actually have a better one in it.

With the RAM I would suggest checking to see if they give you the option to have 1 x 1GB of RAM, so you can buy a single 1gb stick of RAM later. If not then I would suggest simply upgrading to 2gb, Photoshop is notorious for being memory dependant and will need 2gb if you do not want it to seem laggy depending on the size/resolution of your work.

As far as HP goes, honestly I equate them to Dell or very slightly better at best. I cannot say from personal experience, but HP's tech support has been rated higher than Dells from what I've read... ;)

LordEder · Post by **LordEder** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:01 am

I would put in a 2nd GB of RAM, because Vista is hungry

InspectahACE · Post by **InspectahACE** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:05 am

never been a fan of HP or Dell(other than the monitors)...but what ya listed seems pretty good...id up the video card tho...least a 7600 gt