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New PC and Need Tips!

LondonBridgeLondonBridge __BANNED USERS regular
edited July 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
I ordered a new Shuttle XPC from Newegg and it's my first since 2004! So I'm looking for tips on a smooth install.

1. I'm getting a 500Gig HDD with Vista Home Premium 64bit so I'm wondering how much space should I partition for the OS, games, and media?

2. Anything I should know about Vista to ensure a smooth install?

Thanks!

LondonBridge on

Posts

  • wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    it's likely you'll hate vista for the first couple weeks. it's seem a bit slow.

    That's normal. Over the first couple weeks Vista will do a full index of everything in your drive, and also look at the applications you use the most. For instance, if the first thing you do when you turn on the computer is open firefox and iTunes, like me, it will recognize that behavior and actually start pre-loading Firefox and iTunes into ram before you even start them, allowing for a much quicker start. I didnt' think that that feature was a big deal but I recently re-installed vista and I really noticed the difference.

    If you want to partition the hard drive I'd do it 200GB for OS/games and the rest for media. 500GB is not a ton of space anymore though, especially if you're looking at a lot of video, and some game installs are 10GB+ now.

    wunderbar on
    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
  • LondonBridgeLondonBridge __BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2008
    wunderbar wrote: »
    it's likely you'll hate vista for the first couple weeks. it's seem a bit slow.

    That's normal. Over the first couple weeks Vista will do a full index of everything in your drive, and also look at the applications you use the most. For instance, if the first thing you do when you turn on the computer is open firefox and iTunes, like me, it will recognize that behavior and actually start pre-loading Firefox and iTunes into ram before you even start them, allowing for a much quicker start. I didnt' think that that feature was a big deal but I recently re-installed vista and I really noticed the difference.

    If you want to partition the hard drive I'd do it 200GB for OS/games and the rest for media. 500GB is not a ton of space anymore though, especially if you're looking at a lot of video, and some game installs are 10GB+ now.

    Thanks. I can't believe how far behind the times I am, ugh! My last Shuttle was King in 2004 so I'm not looking forward to any new headaches.

    LondonBridge on
  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    If you haven't ordered the HD yet getting a 10,000 RPM hard drive (like the Seagate Barracudas they sell at NewEgg) just for your system drive does help a lot with load times and general OS performance.

    RiemannLives on
    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • DmanDman Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    RiemannLives wrote: »
    If you haven't ordered the HD yet getting a 10,000 RPM hard drive (like the Seagate Barracudas they sell at NewEgg) just for your system drive does help a lot with load times and general OS performance.

    I recently got a computer and decided not to go for 10,000 RPM. I heard they do reduce load times for some things, but they are noisy, which would be too annoying for me. And the price/gig wasn't great, so I got a standard 7200rpm(or whatever standard is, close to that anyways) 500g, and its working great for me. I got a intel q6600 chip, good mobo, 4 gigs fast ram, and vista has been running faster then XP did on my old computer.
    I haven't had any problems with vista so far, but I mostly just use it for media and gaming, so I don't really care if some random apps won't run on 64bit or vista or whatever. Vista 64 bit and still smiling here.

    Dman on
  • RiemannLivesRiemannLives Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    The seagate barracuda I have is not noticeably louder than my other drives (especially the optical drives). They do cost a lot more per Gb though so you just get a 100-150 GB drive for your system and use a bigass 7200 for applications and data.

    RiemannLives on
    Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
  • LondonBridgeLondonBridge __BANNED USERS regular
    edited July 2008
    RiemannLives wrote: »
    If you haven't ordered the HD yet getting a 10,000 RPM hard drive (like the Seagate Barracudas they sell at NewEgg) just for your system drive does help a lot with load times and general OS performance.

    Thanks but the 10k HDDs are too expensive plus I already ordered the system. In case you're wondering what I got its below. Any other install tips are welcome. I just learned that during the install I should use one stick of RAM and then use the other when done.

    1 x ($299.99) BB SHUTTLE SX38P2-PRO X38 RT
    $299.99


    1 x ($49.99) GIFT ASUS|Alone in the Dark R
    $49.99


    1 x ($187.99) VGA ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/512M RT
    $187.99


    1 x ($124.99) CPU INTEL|C2D E7200 2.53G 775 45N R
    $124.99


    1 x ($74.99) HD 500G|WD 7K 8M SATA2 WD5000AAJS %
    $74.99


    1 x ($77.99) MEM 2GX2|A-DATA ADQVE1B16K R
    $77.99


    1 x ($28.99) DVD BURN SAMSUNG|SH-S223Q/BEBN LS %
    $28.99


    1 x ($109.99) MS WIN VISTA HM PREM SP1 64BIT 1PK%
    $109.99

    LondonBridge on
  • TransparentTransparent Registered User regular
    edited July 2008
    You are almost certainly going to have to use the hack to turn the fan speed up with the 4850 in a shuttle case. It's an easy fix but be aware of it ahead of time.

    Transparent on
    PAXtrain '10, let's do this!
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