Choosing Computer Hardware
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Computer hardware sites.

The best computer hardware advice sites are the larger sites.  They manage to review more hardware, and are sent the latest equipment by manufacturers.  They have staff to write regular article son what to buy and how much to spend:

• Tom's Hardware guide

  Tom reviews CPUs, motherboards, video cards and memory. He has a large selection of old reviews and is up to date with the facts, pointing out underwhelming hardware wherever he finds it.

   

• Anandtech.com

  Anand reviews a large variety of hardware, in-depth analysis of the latest chips, motherboards and other hardware. He also has regular "low-end" and "high-end" Buyer's Guides, both for business users and gamers.

   

• Sharkyextreme

  Sharky keeps tabs on hardware and processor prices and others. He has Buyer's Guides and a weekly guide to CPUs: Sharkyextreme.com - weekly_cpu

   

• Other hardware sites

  • Aceshardware.com
  • Hard OCP
  • Arstechnica.com
    Ars has recommendations for budget, "hot-rod" and "god" systems
    Arstechnica.com/guide/system/index.html
  • CPUreview.com
  • Personal Computer World UK - magazine site featuring reviews of computers, laptops, printers etc.
  • Pcpro.co.uk - Online version of the informative (but somewhat dull) computer magazine.

  • Motherboard HomeWorld (motherboards.org)

   

• My advice on buying PC Hardware.

  Look to see what Anandtech is advising right now. They have Buyer's Guides for rich and poor, business and gamers alike, if there are no Buyer's Guides immediately visible in the Guides section, click through "List more Guides articles" link.

  Sharkyextreme has Gamer's Buyer's Guides, again under the Guides section.

  As of September 2007:

  I would buy a moderate speed Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD (X2 5000+) CPU.  You may want to consider buying a quad core Intel CPU, which are now very affordable.

  Memory-wise I wouldn't be without 1 GB of memory and at least a 250 Gig Hard disk.

  Video cards matter most to gamers, and should be at least a NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS (see the graphics cards page for latest advice).

  If you have an existing machine, you may want to consider buying just a base unit (a computer with no monitor).  However, the same machine with a new LCD monitor might cost very little more (meaning that you could go dual-screen or give away your old monitor).

   

• Compare prices

  There are UK comparison searches in:
  • Computer memory
  • Computer processors
  • Hard Drives
  • see the computing section for a full list.

The price comparison websites page has a section on PCs for sites where you can compare hardware prices.

• Doom 3

  A page on the hardware you need and want to upgrade to if you plan to run Doom 3.

The page on buying computers has links to computer retailers.