Tell Me About Windows Eight

[bettingpython]

I bought a reasonably powerful computer for what I considered to be a decent price at PC Club. That was closing in on 10 years ago, and it's just now getting to the point that I can't live with its performance anymore. PC Club is gone and I haven't found any vendors of built machines I'd go with, so I'm going to have one built. So here's what I want:

Machine and OS for under a grand. Windows 7 obviously.
I don't need a monitor, keyboard, mouse, UPS or printer, All my peripherals are in great shape.
I'll be getting my MS Office suite through an inexpensive .gov program.
I don't game.
I want it to start fast, open programs fast, perform tasks fast and shut down fast when I'm done. I like to get what I'm doing done and GTFO.
I want at least dual drives with automatic backup and defrag. OS on a separate drive would be sweet. Same goes for a lot of RAM. Did I mention I want fast?
I want superb audio and video processing. I want to stream HD video without freezing, buffering and out of sync audio/video.
It needs good cooling and quiet operation.
I'd like to have a multimedia card reader and lots of USB ports, both front and back.
At some point, I'll want to add photo and video editing software. I'm getting into that area more, so I also need advice on what to be looking at there.
I want this one to last as close to 10 years as possible as well.

Based on those criteria, what would you gurus suggest?

1 COOLER MASTER Silencio 450 RC-450-KKN1 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Item #: N82E16811119250
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy -$10.00 Instant
$69.99
$59.99
2 Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136533
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy -$40.00 Instant
$299.98
$219.98
1 EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) FPB 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Item #: N82E16814130625
Return Policy: VGA Standard Return Policy -$20.00 Instant
$15.00 Mail-in Rebate Card
$134.99
$114.99
1 OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular High Performance Power Supply compatible with Intel Sandybridge Core i3 i5 i7 and AMD Phenom
Item #: N82E16817341018
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy -$40.00 Instant
$30.00 Mail-in Rebate Card
$129.99
$89.99
1 G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9Q-16GBXL
Item #: N82E16820231429
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy $87.99
1 MSI Z77MA-G45 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Item #: N82E16813130647
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy -$5.00 Instant
$10.00 Mail-in Rebate Card
$119.99
$114.99
1 Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I52500
Item #: N82E16819115073
Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy $209.99
1 OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Item #: N82E16820227706
Return Policy: Limited Replacement Only Return Policy -$65.00 Instant
$10.00 Mail-in Rebate Card
$149.99
$84.99

Without mail in rebates 982.91 another bill for your OS

$1100

That rig will boot in under 30 seconds.

 

[WTJ]

No need to wait. Head to the mac store for your best options. I was a pc for 15 years and have never for a second regretted switching.

Yeah. My last PC is running Vista, but I never had too many issues. Probably because I use my Mac 95% of the time....

 

[LightningCrash]

Macs are decent PCs.

saw this on CL, looks a decent deal.
http://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/sys/3242540662.html

 

[flatwins]

If anyone is interested on the life of SSDs, we replaced all our company laptops about a year ago. These laptops are in use by guys truly "in the field" in Oklahoma and Texas connecting to natural gas meters. The conditions for equipment are less than optimal. We decided to go with SSDs due to the dust and wind in these environments though we have the identical setup for office laptops.

In the past year we've lost around 7 or 8 SSDs and they have been a mix of field and office machines so I don't feel the harsh environment has much effect on this type of drive. We had one actually melt the other day. Cooked the drive from the inside.

They perform well, that's for sure, but from a durability standpoint, I can't say they are superior to the spinning drives.

 

[Perplexed]

In the past year we've lost around 7 or 8 SSDs and they have been a mix of field and office machines so I don't feel the harsh environment has much effect on this type of drive. We had one actually melt the other day. Cooked the drive from the inside.

Out of how many SSD's installed, and what was the average lifespan amongst the failed drives?

 

[vvvvvvv]

No need to wait. Head to the mac store for your best options. I was a pc for 15 years and have never for a second regretted switching to a PC running a NeXTSTEP/BSD derivative operating system.

Fixed it.

Meh, that's a little over the top, SSD's only have so many read write cycles, that's some expensive and short lived storage right there, that's why I am running raided 1TB caviar blacks for storage still. But I love the hell out of my SSD OS drive. Plus 16 gigs of ram make for some rather sudden performance since I don't use a whole lot of swap file.

For anyone considering an SSD for personal use, go hybrid.

 

[flatwins]

Out of how many SSD's installed, and what was the average lifespan amongst the failed drives?

We have close to 300 SSDs in service with almost all of them being right at a year old. We replaced one after about two months in service with the rest of failures occurring throughout this year and I just did one this past week and another the week prior.

Fortunately we've been able in all cases to get a backup of the machine even though the SSD fails the diagnostics. We had pretty good luck saving data off the spinning drives too but had a few instances where the drive was complete toast.

On the one SSD that melted, I got a backup of it before it decided to self destruct.

 

[Joeh]

Just finished my upgrade.

Ivy Bridge i5
asus MOBO
16gb Ram
7850 2gb
64gb SSD for OS
2x 1TB Caviar Black 7200rpm Raid 0

All OC'd of course. Not super stable yet, but I haven't messed with it too much either. Been working on getting my eyefinity setup going.

Smooth as butter for the most part. Quite the upgrade from my old 9950 Black Edition and Radeon 4870.

For anyone who doesn't have a friend, or doesn't know how, shoot me a PM for build help in the Tulsa area. I'm usually available to help and it's much easier than you think.