Logistical questions for new gaming rig

[busher16]

Hi there I just found this forum today and have been very pleased with the information I have come across.

I can already see I am going back to the drawing board for a lot of the pieces I had mentally picked out for my new gaming computer.

my question is do any of you use a separate Hard dive for your OS or do you install your OS on a separate partition?

For a gaming PC I had intended to get a Vid Card with HDMI and buy a new LCD monitor that would support it. Is it worth it to go HDMI over the other options that can be somewhat cheaper?

I noticed a lot of people have an issue with tigerdirect.com. do you recommend any other Canadian based sites? (afaik newegg is American
based)

I will be going with a fresh windows 7 64 bit install. would the professional be better than home. I will probably use this computer to also remotely connect to my current PC (running XP) and I have heard that the home edition has some issues with drive mapping and remote desktop.

I will probably be back in a few days with a list for you to critique but for the most part these were the only questions I was unable to answer through the search feature

[glc]

1. You can use VNC to remotely connect if you can't get remote desktop working. That works across all operating systems.

2. Almost all decent gaming video cards have HDMI now.

3. Newegg does have a Canadian ordering site now - but an excellent Canadian-based site is ncix.com.

4. Separate hard drives only make sense for higher end systems, and if you do that, you may want to look at solid state drives for the OS and programs. Personally, I keep everything simple and use a single unpartitioned drive unless I would be storing a ton of data (in the terabyte range) - then I might use a separate large hard drive for that.

[busher16]

Thank you for the response

1. so you do not think the professional is worth the extra cash?

4. in my past 2 builds I have used 2 HDDS and 1 partitioned, respectivley. what do you use for a quick easy recovery in case something happens. I know I have had to re-install my OS here and there for whatever reason and having it on a dif drive/partition has saved me a lot of hassle of not having to re-install a bunch of stuff. I do have a 1TB external drive that I do back stuff up to but I would be open to a more efficient way of handling it

[David M]

You have to decide which features you need and how much more you want to spend for them. For the vast majority of people the OEM Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium version is good enough. That runs around $100.

Differences between Windows 7 versions...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...e/default.aspx


I would do as glc suggests, one large fast internal drive for everything and all your data backed up to a large external drive. The best clone software I know of is Acronis.

No partitioning is necessary unless you have a need to run a second OS. Keeping things simple makes things more reliable.

If you want a no fuss very quick recovery then clone one of your hard drives and update the clone from your back-up external drive. Now your dealing with three hard drives total and a system that's fully backed up. If you want protection from lightning or if you have a house fire, then you can back up on the internet for about five bucks per month using something like Carbonite.

The higher end graphics cards are also coming with Mini DisplayPorts for which DVI or HDMI adapters can be purchased in case your monitor or television does not have a Mini DisplayPort or your DVI or HDMI ports are already in use.

[Nikon]

idk about these online backup services.it sounds great, and is... for small users with minimal files that need to be backed up. for a full system backup, it could potentially take weeks to upload that much data, at which point it would need to be updated...

[David M]

Originally Posted by Nikon idk about these online backup services.it sounds great, and is... for small users with minimal files that need to be backed up. for a full system backup, it could potentially take weeks to upload that much data, at which point it would need to be updated...

It's not THAT bad. If you have a 56k dialup modem I would not consider it.

Some of these services also backup very frequently and automatically so you don't have to upload a bunch of data all at once.