I Feel The Need... The Need For >--speed-->

Hi all!


"Where" might be a good place to look for the "fastest" (highest performing?) computer a thousand dollars will buy (about $1,000 - roughly), please?


All replies welcome - Thx in advance!

 

You could always try Best Buy. They carry a number of well-equipped machines from iBuyPower and CyberPower in that price range and, online, they list several others.

 

Thx, but I guess what I'm really after is;

How can I be sure of a quick responding computer?

I bought this Lenovo that I'm typing on right now with an i7-1265U CPU and 16GB of RAM and I don't find it all that fast - in fact it freezes-up (a bit) at times, much more so than a supposed "lesser" Acer I have with a less powerful CPU and half as much RAM.

How can one know which chipset's/CPU's & RAM combo's are the fastest / most powerful?

 

Assuming you're running some version of Windows, have you "leaned" things out? Have you looked at the stuff that runs at startup, in the background, and/or as a scheduled task? I had an older Lenovo AIO until recently, and I was never a fan of their software - the stuff that they include a system utilities and such.

For this, you could try Tom's Hardware (https://www.tomshardware.com/) or Tech 4 Gamers (https://tech4gamers.com/category/reviews/). Hope this helps.

 

It DOES help - THX!!

 

Ok, based on the Tom's Hardware link, and a chart (or list) they have there, why might that vary from the following site (which is a site I've always looked to before, for matters of speed or power in computing)?

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-9600K-vs-Group-/4031vs10

 

Data, and the subsequent opinions, will vary from site to site, from reviewer to reviewer, et cetera, depending on the specific benchmark tests being run. Not all benchmark tests are created equal. All I can suggest is that you find sites and reviewers who seem to be consistent with each other on your selected hardware combinations. In the price bracket you mentioned your choices will be somewhat constrained and, as long as you manage to avoid purchasing a real dog of a machine, you should be okay. I would still look at what's running in the background: from experience, sporadic freezes are more often software-related than hardware.

 

So exactly how does a non-geek (non-techie type - and perhaps I'm bleeding over into the Software realm now, but...) look at what's running in the background?

 

Right click on taskbar, see task manager.

 

There are also probably things in Windows Services and Task Scheduler that are running unnecessarily. To find these, click on Start; in the Search/Run box, type either 'services' or 'task scheduler'. There are many online resources that explain the items you might find but, as I sorta mentioned previously, not all are created equal.

Whatever you do, do not just go disabling, deleting, or modifying anything you see in these areas without doing your due diligence. If you find something you have a question about, feel free to ask.