Hi everyone out there! Your opinion is very much appreciated! 

I'm looking for a new pc because my current Dell (about 5 years old) has increasing annoying issues.

I need a pc with a sufficient performance for the next 5 years. Gaming is not important but I like the best possible performance for all office applications and of course DVD Profiler.

My current configuration (to be replaced soonest):

Dell PC Inspiron 530
- Processor Quad CoreQ6600 (goes extremely hot, I have to clean the processor cooler every 2 weeks otherwise I have about 60°C when idle)
- Memory: 4 Gig (I can only use 3,5 because it's a 32 bit system)
- 2 HD's a 250 GB
- Power supply: 350W
- Graphic: ATI 256 MB (cannot be replaced because lack of power supply!)
- 2 DVD RW
- Operating System: Windows 8 (I hate it but I could not resist to upgrade from Vista for only 15€)

That's what I have seen:

- Intel Core i7-3770, 4x 3.40GHz, boxed (BX80637I73770)
- Graphic: MSI N630GT-MD4GD3, GeForce GT 630, 4GB DDR3, VGA, DVI, HDMI (V809-070R)
- Power supply 600 Watt Super Silent
- Memory: 16 GB RAM SAMSUNG / Kingston / G-Skill DDR-3 PC1600
- Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit (DELL OEM) Lizenz installiert incl. DVD und Key im Lieferumfang enthalten - READY to use
- HD: 1,0TB HDD SEAGATE SATA-3 6GBs 7200rpm
- 24xDVD-Writer SATA intern incl. Software Suite
- Mainboard MSI B75MA-P45, B75 (dual PC3-12800U DDR3) (7798-010)
- Price: 599,00 EUR


My budget is about 500-600€. What do you think?

Thanks for your proposals! 

Is the 600W supply big enough?

The graphic card is crap... And why would you get a DVD-RW drive when a BR-DVD-RW costs more or less the same?

The only good (and by far most expensive) component in your configuration is the CPU. If you could settle for an other CPU, you might get a better deal. Almost all programs won't use the big CPU and even games relay more on the the GPU.

It looks like a pretty solid system kahless.

I have an Intel Core i7-3770, 4x 3.40GHz, but mine is the 3.50Ghz model. It's quite fast and should be great for years of normal computing. Mine runs at a cool 30-35°C even in normal use, but I do have good cooling systems installed. Invest in a good CPU fan (like a Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO) if you can... and avoid the cheap liquid cooling solutions that can leak fluid.

I would agree to avoid Seagate HD's though. They're junk, and I had one of those fail before in the past. I've used Western Digital drives for years and they last forever.

I'd recommend getting a Blu-ray writer instead though, as the price is not going to be much more and it's better geared for the future.

You also might want to look into getting a small SSD drive to put the operating system and main programs on...it will boot up and programs will load faster. 90gb to 120gb should be sufficient there. I use an Intel 520 series.

You should definitely buy SSD drive for your OS & Programs. I would also go straight to Windows 8 64-bit. Even with 64-bit OS you should remember that maximum memory addressing for single 32-bit process is 4GB.

Not too fast on concluding suggestions !

The suggestion for a SSD drives is a very good one. It would certainly speed up starting the PC. After all, however large your core memory and HD drive, all things need to be loaded into memory and the rotational and head-moving delays of a hard drive really count here.

If your main issue with your current PC is the CPU's temperature and it needs a twoweekly cleaning: this is uncommonly frequent. The room with your PC is either very much filled with dust (solution: refresh the air in the house regularly and clean the room) or your power supply is also very dusty. For the latter, unplug your PC from the power outlet and use compressed air to remove as much dust as you can from the power supply. Unless you have a degree for electric equipment, do not disassemble the power supply! Under normal circumstances you'd need to clean the CPU cooler on a (half)yearly basis on worst case basis, so your situation is really out of the ordinary.
Also, if you do not remedy the larger dust problem, you'll probably have temperature problems with your new PC sooner than you'd like... Is your cat or a dog (hair!) often in that room?

P.S. Also check with the task manager if you haven't any programs that unncessarily burdon the CPU for lengthy times. You can use CCleaner to disable unrequired start-up processes at will. Too many software (from Adobe, Google, MS Search, MS WMP...) install start-up programs that do not really enhance anything.

Depending on your habits for downloading (including for the next 5 years) and/or making many digital photos, 1 TB for the HDD seems a tad low. Especially since 2 TB disks are currently really not so much more expensive.

Also, make sure there are ample 'native' USB 3 connections, not only USB2. Especially if you're going to add USB HDD's at some point in the future, you wouldn't want just USB2.

If you are using now a low memory graphics card, I assume your current screen resolution isn't that much. Having a 4 GB new memory card of whatever brand and type makes little sense if your keep your current screen resolution because of your current monitor limitations. So:
If you are not into gaming and not into BluRay ('full HD' 1920x1020) movie playback on your PC, a simple graphics card will do of older generations. From DVDprofiler to MS office, the demands on the card are very low. (Postscript: Lewis's remarks are very true!)
If you are into gaming, take the best recommended card you can get and get an appropriately large and fast monitor.
If you need screen estate (spreadsheets, software development, picture editing, DVDprofiler with all windows 'on'    etc) take a card with much memory and select for instance a large monitor with really many pixels (for instance I have a Samsung SyncMaster SA850, 27" on 2560x1440 and it really is good to my taste).
The latter two recommendations will require a change of budget. So, consider carefully what you want. If it is just because of the the CPU temperature annoyance...

Quoting kahless:

Quote:
Quoting eommen:

Quote:
Not too fast on concluding suggestions !

[...]
The latter two recommendations will require a change of budget. So, consider carefully what you want. If it is just because of the the CPU temperature annoyance...

Thanks for your detailed comment. So I'd like to answer some questions 
Yes I have 3 cats and a dog. The problem with the temperature has 2 reasons:
1. The Q6600 is getting quite hot by contruction and needs a big sized cooler.
2. Dell sold me a system with a smaller standard cpu cooler what seems to be a little bit overstrained

Why do I want a new pc?
1. The Dell system cannot be upgraded because
  a. the mainboard does not support >4 Gig
  b. the graphic card cannot be replaced because the psu has only 350W
  c. The power supply and/or mainboard makes more and more trouble (need sometimes 2-3 attempts to boot the system)

And the main reason to look for a new pc is:

my minister of finance (best wife ever) approved a new system! 

Do you imply that you needed to clean twoweekly ever since you'd bought the thing? That is bad 

Your 'additional'  reasons for replacement seem to me completely technophile. No harm in that, but to see what you really need take a look at what you functionally need. Apart from visiting the Invelos forum, what else do you intend to do with it? (No need to answer publicly, just saying look at what you actually need, then decide on your minimal requirements).

BTW, your reason (c) is in my experience a sign of impending doom of your current boot drive. It doesn't spin up fast enough anymore, causing various timing errors cascading into boot failure. Make sure, if you haven't done so yet to back up on a USB HDD or whatever: data files, the recent DVD profiler back up, export files of all your links (Firefox) or Favourites (MS IE), your mail back up file, etc. etc.

As for your main reason  : congrats! But you might enquire what her wishes are for what she wants to do with it as well (functionally). It will surely help if it means you need to enlarge the budget! If it comes to the looks of the machine, let her decide if it means you can now use it in the main living room 

I did it. I ordered:



CPU (Prozessor):AMD FX-Series FX-8320, 8x 3.50GHz, boxed (FD8320FRHKBOX) (1x)
- Mainboard:MB MSI AM3+ 760GA-P43 FX (MB02169) (1x)
- VGA Card:NVIDIA MSI N650-2GD5/OC, GeForce GTX 650, 2GB GDDR5, VGA, DVI, H (1x)
- RAM:16384MB DDR3 Dual Channel 1600MHz SAMSUNG (PC3-12800) (1x)
- HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 3000GB SATA 6Gb/s (WD30EZRX) (1x)
- Drive:24x SATA-II DVD Brenner Multi Fromat Dual Layer (Black) (1x) (I came to the conclusion that I don't need blu ray for pc)
- PSU:Thermaltake Germany Series Berlin 630W ATX 2.3 (W0393RE) (1x)
- Case:Cooler Master K380 mit Sichtfenster (RC-K380-KWN1) (1x)
- Cooler:Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev. B (Sockel Intel/AMD)(SCBSK) (1x)
- MS Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit MULTILANGUAGE 1pk DELL OEM (1x)
- Cardreader intern:Ultron UCR 75 75in1 Card Reader/Writer schwarz intern 3,5zoll (1x)

Thanks for all your hints and comments!!