Ask A Guy Who Likes To Build Computers

So I got around to building a new PC Friday night. I basically went AMD on this build to try it out and say fuck it. So far, so good; plus Windows 10 loading at record speeds. I am basing this on post update boots, not that hybrid hibernate thingy that Windows started with 8.

Ask me about my weiner computer!

I built an i5 PC in December with a SSD main hard drive. Good lord I didn't know boot speeds like this existed. About 10 seconds to get into the OS? So nice. Did you get a nice graphics card to go with the PC?

I grabbed a newer Radeon R390x... MSI brand. Its been running fine and I haven't needed to OC it yet for what I do.

Solid states are very nice. With or without the hybrid hibernate, Windows loads in just a few seconds.

I've never built a PC. I like the one I bought a few years ago, but it has begun to show its age. I am curious to what I would need to upgrade the most (my guess would be RAM and at least the graphics and/or audio cards/whatever they are called) and what to expect for costs. I don't require anything fancy. I do game on this pc and use the net for videos etc. but I don't play games that most would require a high-end pc for gaming.

Really depends on your case and what your motherboard can handle. There's also your power unit. @Chris_Miller swears by Antec, but most Certified Gold PSUs are nice. I use modular Corsair PSUs.

Looking at the case, its an emachines model EL1358G. As for the motherboard... :shrug: No idea how to check that. And as for the power unit... :shrug: Haven't a clue.

Belarc Advisor will scan all your hardware and software. It will output the data in an html page.

According to the advisor, my system stuff is a below in the spoilers.

Spoiler: show

---OS---
Windows 7 Home Premium (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601)
Install Language: English (United States)
System Locale: English (United States)
Installed: 2/21/2012 1:17:06 PM
Boot Mode: BIOS (Secure Boot not supported)
---Main Circuit Board---
Board: eMachines EL1358G
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. P01-B4 11/04/2011
---Processor---
2.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon II X2 220
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded
---Drives---
3979.72 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
2735.96 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH70N SCSI CdRom Device [Optical drive]

Disk drive (2000.40 GB) -- drive 1
Generic- Multi-Card USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 3
Seagate Expansion+ USB Device [Hard drive] (1000.20 GB) -- drive 2, s/n NA4WF93R
TOSHIBA MK1059GSMP SCSI Disk Device (1000.20 GB) -- drive 0, s/n X1O6P25QT, SMART Status: Healthy
---Memory Modules---
2816 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 1024 MB (serial number 270C9173)
Slot 'DIMM1' has 2048 MB (serial number 045E3A91)
---Display---
NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 [Display adapter]
Vizio VW22LHDTV10T [Monitor] (22.0"vis, s/n TMCQAJ4705226, November 2008)

Your board can support up to 8GB of 1600 DDR3 memory.

Anything else would also depend on the power supply, as far as more drives or graphics. Graphics would need a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot at least but that would be a more expensive upgrade. Also usually a bigger power supply. RAM is cheap.

Sidenote, eMachines is owned by Acer.

Thanks, I'll take this into account for when I upgrade anything.