Hi

We've got a section in the magazine called 'Justify My PC', where readers have been writing in, explaining why they chose the PC they did. I'd be interested in putting the question to forum members, and maybe we can use some of the best in the magazine itself.

So why did you choose the PC you did? Are you a gamesplayer, work in a small office, just after something for the Internet or just to do some word processing? And are you happy with the system you bought/built?

Let us know!

Simon

The forum software doesn't seem to like this, but I'll keep going!
this is my 'Power Tower' home PC

AMD Athlon 800
Epox 8KTA2 mainboard
384MB branded PC133 RAM (got it whilst it's cheap)
2x 18GB Fujitsu 10K SCSI HDDs
Plextor 40TSi CD-ROM + Plexwriter 1210S CDRW
Toshiba SC1201 DVD-ROM
ATi Radeon All-in-Wonder
VideoLogic SonicFury
Tekram 390U3W SCSI card
LS120 + Panasonic 1.44 FDD
No name Rockwell 56K external modem
Umax 1220S scanner, Epson 640 printer
CCL full tower Pro case with 400W PSU
Win98SE

Not bad eh? Entirely self built, components cost around £2000, although several bits came from my last box. Most people will consider an all SCSI system to be overkill, but I do a fair bit of web and graphic work (Photoshop etc) on it, as well as games, e-mail/internet and office apps , so the extra RAM, performance and reliability makes for a much more pleasant computing experience (and I can afford it - you get what you pay for).

GM

Ok Then, heres my 'home brewed' PC:

Abit KT7A-Raid
Athlon 1200/266 with themoengine HSF
2x Seagate 20 Gig DMA 100 drives (raid 0)
512Mb Hyundai PC133
Radeon 64Mb DDR VIVO
Videologic sonic fury
Plextor 16x 10x 40x CD-RW
Pioneer 16x 40x DVD-Rom
3.25 Floppy
Lian Li PC-60 Aluminium Case
Enermax 450W PSU
19" Mitsubishi Monitor
Connected to net with cable modem via netgear router/firewall
Win98/2000 dual boot

It gets used mainly for games, digital photography, graphics and lots of internet stuff.
Needless to say, its pretty quick, but its also nice and quiet. The only probs I have had have been getting the Abit board to run stable, but now it's rock solid.

Steve

My Home built PC's
from ZX81,Spectrum running QBasic!!!
Atari ST520 cubase 20MB HDD

My first Pc 286 4mb ram 125Mb Hdd green screen runing DOS

I try to keep things simple by having specific PC's for specific jobs

1.Celeron 500 voodoo 3 256/20Gb liteon CDRW wavelab cubase and MIDI music software
2. Cyrix 233 voodoo 1 128/4Gb HP CDRW internet office apps games (easy to download and burn)
3.Celeron 500 SiS 128/3Gb MCSD course
4.Pentium 166 windows ME development PC for testing new bits of software and hardware
5.Toshiba satellite Laptop for mobile use(4Gb Hdd upgrade)

I wait until prices are sensible and now i'm looking for a 1GHz machine to get into video editing..

I had a foray into networking and need to get hold of a few cheap ISA nics and 50 metres of CAT5

Hi Simon,
As a “newbie”, I decided to have my first computer built for me in January this year, after much trawling through magazines.
P3-800 / Gigabyte 6VXC7-4X
128mb./133mhz SDRam (since increased to 512mb-Crucial)
20 Gig. 5200 HD.
Creative DVD/CD
Imation LS120
Nvidia Geforce 2MX 32mb
Intel Ham Data/Voice/Fax Modem
Phillips 105s 15” Monitor
Pinnacle DC10+ (recent addition)

Win 98se
PQ Partition Magic 5.0 (my best ever buy)
eSafe Desktop A/virus/Firewall
Office 97 SR2
AOL 5.0 (tweaked with MTUspeed)

I use multi-systems for Video/Photography editing, and ECDL studies, (mature student) I now have Win 98 as stable as it will ever be, after months of learning and tweaking, thanks to the many “Guru’s” mainly on magazine websites, and Forums such as this, Thanks Guys.
My only regret, being on a tight budget, is that I purchased before the dramatic price drops this year, and now feel that If I had waited, I could probably have saved a third of my outlay

If it makes you feel any better, I can still remember paying £120 for 4MB of RAM. Ouch!

Anyone else want to justify their PC? We've only a couple more to run in the magazine at the moment, and if we don't get more, we're going to replace it with something else!

Come on guys and gals . This is a nice, easy way to get yourself a mention in MM's hallowed pages - it worked for me .

GM

my current system is for gaming as u can probably tell

it does a good job of converting to divx as well

amd athlon at 1582mhz
2048mb ram
60gb 7200rpm hdd
22" monitor
diamond supra 56k modem (no adsl in my area)
diamond monster mx 300 sound
bush 250watt rms dolby 5.1 speakers
12*40 dvd rom
16*8*40 cdrw drive
64mb ddr radeon 8500 thingy

i can keep 60fps at resolutions 0f 2058*xxx if i tweak the game configs a bit

the fop32 fan is too noisy for my liking though so thats the next thig to be upgraded