Comparing these 2 - Which is better? PC

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Jun 16, 2011
Hi so I've still not got my new PC - About to purchase one, then another came up which seemed to be better!
Can someone shine some light as I cant understand why to major price difference here.

Specs -
Intel i5 4670 Quad Core 3.4Ghz Processor
8GB DDR3 1333Mhz RAM
Intel HD 4600 Graphics
1TB SATA Hard Drive
DVD-RW Dual Layer Optical Disc Drive
MSI H81M-E33 uATX Motherboard (1150)
500W Power Supply
NO WINDOWS 7 INCLUDED
£370

Specs -
-Intel Core i5 4440 Quad Core Retail CPU(Socket 1150, 3.1GHz, 6MB, Haswell, 84W,Intel Graphics, BX80646I74770,4th Generation Intel Core,Turbo Boost Technology2)
-Windows 7 Pro 64Bit
-8Gb ddr III 1600Mhz
-1000Gb Sata Hard Drive
- Dvd Rewrite Sata
- ATX Power Supply Blue Fan 500W Alpine
-Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H Motherboard

WINDOWS INCLUDED
£350

Obviously I am lost here, would prefer to spend less money obviously but I've had my eye on the first one for a while.
Then this come along which seems to be better, minus a slightly less powered CPU includes windows 7 pro saving me about £50 all together.
Why? how is it cheaper? is the first one just expencive?
I know you get what you pay for but...the specs are roughly the same with one including windows (which is £40-70 )

Can any one shed any light?

Thanks.

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The lack of graphics card maybe? so confused!
 
to be honest they are more or less the same good and bad points on them both. when i say bad points i mean
(in comparison of machines buying one of them over the other)
for sound card buy an external one.
something along the lines of m-audio

or buy a mac (sorry that had to be said)
 
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Good man.
I have a focusrite interface USB sound card.
NO APPLE ARE SHITE (no offence, I am buying PC as I had apple products and they broke recently - over priced fanboy stuff imo )
Can you list a bad point about the cheaper one? as I'm more than likely going to buy it as its much cheaper for same specs.
Motherboard? its upgrade able, Ram can be changed, the price to performance ratio for CPU favours the cheaper one too I think.

Thank you for your reply!
 
well id argue that pcs are shit. i had nothing but crashes then. i couldn’t get work done.|
soon as i bought a mac i never had a problem again.
macs do not break easily at all. for a start you can take them back! why do you need to change ram? i bought the lowest specs and its still buzzing years later

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cheaper mother board and less hard drive space basically. with the other machine you obviously don’t get windows.

go for highest ram and best/fastest processor
you won’t be to botherd about graphics i guess. and your sound card will be fine

oh and you can upgrade any pc.
 
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Fair play, well my hate for apple is for another topic - I don't have £1000 to throw at them.
Cheaper mother board but does that mean it will break sooner? I have just looked at reviews between "gigabyte and "msi"
And gigabyte ( the cheaper ) gets better reviews?!?!
RAM could be upgraded to 16GB in future.
Processor benchmarks show little difference in performance, for price difference between i5 4670 and 4440. ( can be upgraded on both boards anyway ) I think.
I suppose I'm just scared, I need to get back on Reason asap, Don't have £500 to get an i7 ting, Worst of all I don't feel comfortable looking at all the different specs, whats missing, whats included, getting ripped off, having it break like my macbook.

If you were me; desperate to get making dnb again, Poor ( £400 budget atm ) you would get the "cheaper" one as it comes with windows, has the same ish specs (unless your gaming?) and is upgrade able the same as the higher priced one, yeah?
 
thats what i mean they are hit and miss with both.
one is better in one area the other is better in another.
to be honest it won’t make that much difference but the saying.... you pay for quality is true with everything you buy.
buy what you can afford. a gaming pc without the high spec graphics card would be ideal

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to be honest id probable;y get the cheaper one
 
Nowt wrong with PCs, its down to the user imo. I work in IT, I fix my own computers, never had a PC go bad on me.

If you build the right machine, maintain the software/OS, dont put the computer online, create a back-up image, then you will have a trouble-free system. Crashes are usually to do with certain plugins with certain OS'.

Mac is not superior to PC, it's just marketing bullshit, especially when they use the same components. PEople might argue that the Mac OS is better, no it isnt, I see loads of mac usera moaning about logic crashing all the time.

Both are equally good, but Mac is overpriced for no reason, the price does not make it bettert. Just set the computer up properly and keep it offline, and you will be fine..
 
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the 4670 will turbo boost upto 3.8Ghz, if the cooling is good enough, far higher than the 3.3Ghz turbo boost of the 4440. 4670 is definitely the best option....but, you will need to get windows aswell, that will cost you another 80£ on top, unless you already have a copy of windows 7 or 8 which can be activated on the new machine (you can transfer from one PC to another no problem (as long as the little green sticker with the code is still in tact on your old PC)...MS may ask you to confirm activation and switch during the process)

You can ask the shop to install windows for you, it will be cheaper (ask them for an OEM version, can only be bought with new computer), than buying a copy off the shelf separately


as I suggested previously, you should look for a X or Z97 motherboards (rather than the 81 or 85), for maximum upgrade possibilities in the future - but you wont really have many issues with either of those computers, in terms of power.



There are 2 important things which you cannot work out from those specs tho...

Noise - what kind of fans are installed? how loud are they? (easily and cheaply fixed, not a deciding factor really) does the CPU come with a stock fan or something better?

Hard Drive - what speed are they? ideally you want minimum 7200RPM for music production, NOTHING less, 10,000RPM is better but expensive - my bet is that they have put cheap 5200RPM ones in there...ask them before buying, and ask if they will upgrade it for a few quid extra before sending



anyways either of those is fine, the 4670 is much better in terms of speed - most likely both will come with only 2 sticks of RAM, you will want to upgrade that to 16GB at some point (4 sticks, 1 per core) - and an SSD is probably the best upgrade you can possibly add to any computer system today.




(ps please ignore silly mac people....a mac these days is nothing more than a PC with makeup...although the new little round one looks kool, its still a PC)




edit: as for benchmarks - most of the common ones do not have much relevance to music production, you need multicore benchmarking - also, does Reason actually support multiple cores properly? not used it in years...if it doesn't...
 
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edit: as for benchmarks - most of the common ones do not have much relevance to music production, you need multicore benchmarking - also, does Reason actually support multiple cores properly? not used it in years...if it doesn't...

Yes it does. Since the release of Reason 7 it has been 64 bit and so supports upto 128GB RAM and multicore, hyperthreaded processing.
 
Nowt wrong with PCs, its down to the user imo. I work in IT, I fix my own computers, never had a PC go bad on me.

If you build the right machine, maintain the software/OS, dont put the computer online, create a back-up image, then you will have a trouble-free system. Crashes are usually to do with certain plugins with certain OS'.

Mac is not superior to PC, it's just marketing bullshit, especially when they use the same components. PEople might argue that the Mac OS is better, no it isnt, I see loads of mac usera moaning about logic crashing all the time.

Both are equally good, but Mac is overpriced for no reason, the price does not make it bettert. Just set the computer up properly and keep it offline, and you will be fine..

i agree to some extent the thing is that people look at deals like this because they can’t build computers or have little knowledge of them.

everyone has different expriences and for me the imac ended up the being the best decision i made.

don’t forget cracked copies can ruin your computer.
thats why i buy absolutely everything, im serious about this music making shiz!!!

PERSONAL OPINONS ALERT.....
after using iOS i realised how shit microsoft windows really it is.
windows dose not have the solid,secure and quality feel for a start,
theres is a reason why people like me decide to buy apple products. apart from the above, its because apple only bring out quality products.
iOS is a quality product same as the machines the phones tablets everything associated with apple.
i mean i was chuffed to bits to get my mac they way it was boxed up the quality of the keyboard,mouse,screen controls...........
from my point of view these little things add up to a better user experience and leave me a very happy customer.

2/3 years iMac/iphone/ios/logic user
 
i agree to some extent the thing is that people look at deals like this because they can’t build computers or have little knowledge of them.

everyone has different expriences and for me the imac ended up the being the best decision i made.

don’t forget cracked copies can ruin your computer.
thats why i buy absolutely everything, im serious about this music making shiz!!!

PERSONAL OPINONS ALERT.....
after using iOS i realised how shit microsoft windows really it is.
windows dose not have the solid,secure and quality feel for a start,
theres is a reason why people like me decide to buy apple products. apart from the above, its because apple only bring out quality products.
iOS is a quality product same as the machines the phones tablets everything associated with apple.
i mean i was chuffed to bits to get my mac they way it was boxed up the quality of the keyboard,mouse,screen controls...........
from my point of view these little things add up to a better user experience and leave me a very happy customer.

2/3 years iMac/iphone/ios/logic user

just because something has shiney case, doesn't make it good quality :P

there is no good technical reason to use iOS over Windows, unless you want to use Mac specific software.

my quad-core PC running windows XP 64, which I bought off-the-shelf at the bargain price (at the time) of £700, ran for 7 years straight, being used 12hrs+ a day doing intensive audio and video processing, without a single problem, during that time most mac users that I know have had to buy a new one 2-3 times, and at 3-4 times the price.

apple is genius in designs, I will give them that, their new cylinder computer is a beautiful piece of art. but its still a PC, even if it doesn't run windows
 
there is no good technical reason to use iOS over Windows, unless you want to use Mac specific software.


like i said all i had was problems with a pc so there is a good technical reason from my point of view.
and for apple products in general i completely disagree. i mean I’ve been though endless phones (as i abuse them) no phone can handle what i do on them. since having a iPhone I’ve still got the beast 3 years later and still works like the 1st day!

as you can tell i will back apple up all the way even though the prices are high i will say from experience that apple products are generally better than anyone else’s.
 
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like i said all i had was problems with a pc so there is a good technical reason from my point of view.
and for apple products in general i completely disagree. i mean I’ve been though endless phones (as i abuse them) no phone can handle what i do on them. since having a iPhone I’ve still got the beast 3 years later and still works like the 1st day!

as you can tell i will back apple up all the way even though the prices are high i will say from experience that apple products are generally better than anyone else’s.

if you can afford a mac, then why not.

but saying its better than PC, is not true at all, the benchmarks, available compatibility and its market share prove that pretty conclusively.

what I have found, is that generally the problems occur because of the differences between the interfaces, and understanding how to setup drivers properly and problem solve when things go wrong....people who use only PC's, have exactly the same problem when they use Macs.
 
if you can afford a mac, then why not.

but saying its better than PC, is not true at all, the benchmarks, available compatibility and its market share prove that pretty conclusively.

what I have found, is that generally the problems occur because of the differences between the interfaces, and understanding how to setup drivers properly and problem solve when things go wrong....people who use only PC's, have exactly the same problem when they use Macs.

Completely agree with this. Macs are made to a specific spec so that non-technical people don't have to worry about compatible drivers or compatible anything really. Its a spec that will run what it needs to at a good enough standard to not warrant an upgrade every couple of years.

PCs are for geeks that like to tweak and tinker.

Oh, and OS X is nice but it is in no way superior to Windows. I use OS X 10.9 every day at work and its absolute shite for enterprise environments. OS X was built for the consumer and it should stay in the consumer market. If I had the choice over OS X and Windows, I'd pick Windows every day.

P.S. Windows 10 Preview looks the bollocks. The old start menu is back!
 
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lol could you not click view classic menu or is that different?

you get a full screen start menu with 8/8.1, I prefer it to be honest, but I use a touchscreen...I'm sure that touchscreens will be standard PC kit within less than a few years, so duno why they don't give people the option of getting rid of the start menu if they want, it makes a touchscreen interface clunky imo; but if you are using a mouse then its definitely essential
 
The Windows 10 preview assesses whether you have a touchscreen monitor attached or not and give you either the full screen (Metro) start menu or the standard desktop start menu.
 
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