My buddy called me and asked about my Alienware M14x laptop.  I don't use it much and the battery konked out for some reason.  It is like new with the Aerobeam microwave receivers and the checkpoint friendly bag.

He loves to barter and trade,  and makes out well doing it.  He says,  'Its an Alienware....  Its great bartering material.'  LOL


He Builds computers as a hobby/side business,  I have been out of the computer building scene for a while.  His main business is construction and snow removal.

He gave me this list... All new.  

Asus 970 Pro Aura motherboard.
AMD 8350 black edition unlocked Piledriver 8 core Processor.
Saphire Radieon 3 gig Dual-X R9 280X unlocked.
Two PNY 250 gig SSD drives.
16 GIG PNY Anarchy CL10 DDR3 ram.
Gigabyte 2.4/5.8 wireless adapter.
Lepa G series 1200 watt modular PSU.
Raidmax Narwhal case.
6,  Thermaltake Riing fans.
Nzxt Single din fan controller.

And then he tossed in another build for a used JL 10 inch sub and JL 1000.1 amp and a real nice yellow LED roof light that I found on the interstate shoulder and took home and fixed.

New Intel Extreme DZ68BC.
Used Intel Core i5 2400 CPU.
New 8 GIG of Corsair (Vengance IIRC) RAM.
Used Nvidia GTX 660.
New 3 TB HD.
New Nzxt double din fan controller.
4 used Corsair fans.
new Unknown MFR case.
New Lepa 1200 G series modular PSU.
New Dual band PCI-e wireless card.

Anyone????  



Decent builds?  

Like I say I have been out of the computer building scene for a while.

why didn't you get good video cards

What do you consider "good"?  

Not a smart ass comment....  Genuinely curious.

an assembly of parts without a defined end use is hard to comment on.

are you
playing games?
writing code?
surfing the web?
video editing?
etc etc etc

that said, there is not much "new" in the desktop arena.  sure, clock speeds go marginally up, the number of cores keeps going up, blah blah blah.  
but no real innovation.  SSD's are mainstream technology now.  high performance GPUs are a dime a dozen.  LCD monitor? 60" 240Hz if you want.
so there is not a lot to differentiate desktops.  these days: buy quality mid-priced components, use it for 3-5 years, throw it away, start over.

and the software environment is a far worse situation.
- windows 10, otherwise known as "microsoft could have produced this in 2005".
- linux, no innovation since 1975.  better sound drivers.  no more uucp.

ar-jedi

OP could have just as well be written in crylic.

The new GTX 1060 blow away both those video cards....and it only costs $180

Some flight sim.  and a bit of video and picture editing.

In that case those CPU's are crap.

Ok....

Some guidance might be nice.  Whats not crap for the job.

ETA, I am currently using a HP Elitebook with an i5 and 4gigs ram for editing.  While not as snappy as I'd like,  It does the job. I find it pretty hard to believe they are "Crap" processors as you say.

http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpus

Thats what I like to see.  

Thank you!


It seems to edit well despite the performance shown in the comparison.  

Cpu benchmark

What you built is lower than run of the mil stuff available today. No offense. Just sayin.

I built my tower years ago and first had a i7-2600k. Ran that on a Gigabyte board until the board crapped out. Managed to get 5Ghz stable out of it with an H-110 cooler. When I got a new board (an ASUS) I actually went down to an i5-2650k.

By today's standards those are lame... But the thing is 99.9% of what I do the i5 is plenty of CPU.

I'm eyeing a 1080 to replace my old Radion 6750 Dirt 3 GC since I can make use of PCI 3.0.

Oh well.

Im not out much.  

And they are fun to build.  



As long as the do what I need them to do....