Storage Devices and Divine Intervention

     This week was a very busy week for us. Not only did we research storage devices this week and come up with our selections, we revised the previous parts we had as well. A lot of Major changes were made this week to the parts we found. Basically, we were not spending the right amount of money on each of the parts according to some of our friends. They were dissatisfied with the way our computer project was coming along and decided to give us advice (Thanks Sida, Albert, Fayaz, and Jack).As a result, we re-organized our budget and decided how much money we were going to spend on each part. Even though it was kind of frustrating realizing that the parts we decided on weren't the best, it was a good learning experience that put us back on the right track. Our new budget chart is shown below. 

     Originally, we were going to go with the AMD FX-4350. But, our friends convinced us that we were not spending enough money on the processor and recommended processors like the i5, i7, and AMD FX-8350. We decided to go with the AMD FX-8350 because AMD processors are better than intel processors for gaming. Also, two very cool things I learned while re-researching processors were that there are 1024 bytes in a gigabyte(and not 1000 as I had thought. Mind blown) and that the speed of the processor in ghz can only be compared to the speed of a processor in the same family of processors. Therefore, an AMD FX-4350's processor speed can only be compared to another AMD FX processor and not any intel processors or other brands of processors. Here is a comparison chart of the AMD FX-4350, which we originally were going with, and the AMD FX-8350, the new processor we decided on.

     All of that was fixing past research; now onto this week's research! This week we researched storage devices, which come either in the form of a hard drive or an SSD (Solid State Drives). SSD's are much more expensive than hard drives but are much faster than hard drives. We decided to go with both a smaller SSD and a bigger hard drive. We would be able to put programs which are frequently used onto the SSD and keep programs which are not often used on the hard drive. Here are the two storage devices I found which we decided to go with.

     Overall, we cleared up a bunch of our past research with our friends' help. We are also faced with a dilemma: whether to buy the computer parts now or wait till black Friday. We did some research and realized that many shops jack up prices right before black Friday so that it would appear that they are giving out "good deals" when they are actually not. It might actually be a good idea to buy sometime soon before they start cranking up prices. We will see.