These are some smart guidelines for anyone interested in purchasing a new computer or upgrading. It is aimed towards the majority of the public and not enthusiasts.

Whether purchasing a new PC from Dell (or other vendor) or building a custom computer, you want to tailor the hardware to your own needs and requirements. Unless of course you have an unlimited budget and can afford the very best with all the bells and whistles.

Keep in mind that if you will only use the computer for browsing the web, checking email, resizing family photos or any other home activity that does not involve the latest games you don’t need an expensive computer. You would do very well with the most basic options provided by a manufacturer such as Dell. In which case, the most important factor would be choosing a warranty that fits your needs. Although, if you’re buying a computer with Windows Vista, I would recommend 2GB of RAM. At least make sure you don’t buy a computer with Vista that has less than 1GB of RAM.

CPU Pins

Arguably the two most important performance factors in a computer are the processor and the memory (RAM), but that is not always true. It is very dependent on the applications that you use. Though for most home and office computers this is true. For multimedia applications and gaming, the most important hardware is your video card and RAM.

For multimedia editing or gaming, I recommend at least 2GB of RAM (or up to 4GB) and a video card which supports DirectX10 and has at least 512MB of memory.

Processors have come to the point that most are fast enough to keep up with the newest games on the market. As long as you have a dual or quad core processor. The “bottleneck” is typically elsewhere though. It will definitely be of benefit to you to purchase a faster processor, but I would suggest when you have a limited budget to spend your money elsewhere first (such as towards RAM).

When customizing a PC through Dell or other companies, you usually have two or three options for processors on one machine. If you upgrade to the next highest processor option, you probably won’t notice more than around a 5% performance difference unless you upgrade to additonal RAM first. This isn’t necessarily true from one system to the next though. One computer may have much slower available processor options than a higher priced PC.

If you’re building a custom computer you can probably get away with the lowest priced dual or quad core processor on the market. You probably don’t require much more than that unless you are a serious gamer or into High Definition media for example.

What I do recommend is buying the latest technology. This doesn’t mean purchasing the fastest processor available. There are different types of processors. For example, if you purchase an AMD processor you could go with an Athlon 64 X2. This is a 64 bit dual core processor and although systems are not fully 64 bit compatible to date, these processors are the latest technology and offer the most beneficial performance. Or you could go with a quad core from Intel.

When purchasing a hard drive avoid 5400rpm hard drives in desktop computers as 7200rpm drives are very affordable. You could also opt for SATA for speeds up to 3.0GB/s. The main benefit with SATA is a higher speed cable. SATA drives are also very affordable. Just make sure you purchase a motherboard with SATA 3.0GB/s support if that is the type of drive that you buy (most boards support this now).

The smallest hard drive you can buy is usually around 80GB. You can store about 41,000 large high quality images from your 8 megapixel digital camera or up to 4 million small images on an 80GB drive. A lot of people will never fill this space. New computers typically come standard with twice that. If you have no special space requirements don’t go overboard on drive space.

These are just several recommendations to aid you in your purchase.