I am building a new computer for general use. Web, productivity, converting video formats, streaming video to other devices in my home, mostly via Apple TV, only game use is Microsoft Flight Simulator. Photo editing is a hobby, and my images are now getting pretty big, and speed on rendering them in Picassa or Photoshop is something I am looking to increase.
I have been running a virtualized environment in my office, and love it for reliable backup and ease of restore, so am intending here to run a VMware virtual machine. Host OS and Guest OS will both be Win 7, 64 bit.
I have a pair of Seagate Barracuda, 2Tb drives, one of which will be internal, and the other used in a hot-swap dock for offsite backup storage.
Budget is not tight, but I would welcome tips to spend less, rather than more, if there will be little perceptible difference. I tend to keep my pc's for years, so would just as soon overbuild a bit now, just to put off having to do it again, anytime soon.
There is no video card in the build list. I have a Zotac gt 220 synergy edition 1gb ddr2 which is currently driving the two monitors that i intend to continue using, very well, so I figure I will keep that.
My VMware guru says he strongly urges an Intel i7, which I question, but he has never steered me wrong. In my office, I am using a much more humble build with an AMD Phenom II, x4 810, and it is running Win 7 on the host, and 4 XP Pro virtual machines, and it takes all that I can throw at it with no problems...admittedly, it is all just productivity and light graphics.
I have built plenty of systems, but none in the last 6 or 7 years, so am not current on what is hot. Requesting feedback on my shopping list here: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VXSg
I am not at all sure about my choice of motherboard. Apart from making sure it has the ports and slots that I need, what else is there to consider?
TIA,
Mike
I have been running a virtualized environment in my office, and love it for reliable backup and ease of restore, so am intending here to run a VMware virtual machine. Host OS and Guest OS will both be Win 7, 64 bit.
I have a pair of Seagate Barracuda, 2Tb drives, one of which will be internal, and the other used in a hot-swap dock for offsite backup storage.
Budget is not tight, but I would welcome tips to spend less, rather than more, if there will be little perceptible difference. I tend to keep my pc's for years, so would just as soon overbuild a bit now, just to put off having to do it again, anytime soon.
There is no video card in the build list. I have a Zotac gt 220 synergy edition 1gb ddr2 which is currently driving the two monitors that i intend to continue using, very well, so I figure I will keep that.
My VMware guru says he strongly urges an Intel i7, which I question, but he has never steered me wrong. In my office, I am using a much more humble build with an AMD Phenom II, x4 810, and it is running Win 7 on the host, and 4 XP Pro virtual machines, and it takes all that I can throw at it with no problems...admittedly, it is all just productivity and light graphics.
I have built plenty of systems, but none in the last 6 or 7 years, so am not current on what is hot. Requesting feedback on my shopping list here: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VXSg
I am not at all sure about my choice of motherboard. Apart from making sure it has the ports and slots that I need, what else is there to consider?
TIA,
Mike
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