£500 inc vat - business + 3d modelling machine??

Slime101

Slime101

Slime101

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I need a machine for work, i shall be doing general office based tasks, also using photoshop CS, acrobat, AutoCAD and most importantly SolidWorks.

Budget is tight at 500 max including vat and i need everthing including a monitor, kbd and mouse...

I've looked at pre-built systems but the specs are poor in many areas so what can i get by building my own??
 
Going to struggle to get everything for £500. Well, you can do it quite easily for system to do "general office based tasks", but when it comes to 3D modeling and photoediting its going to need to be a bit better (more RAM mainly), plus you'll probably want a semi decent screen, which is going to be hard on your budget.

Im a gamer, dont really use the programs you listed (aside from the odd bit of photoshop but not much) so am not the best person to advise you on PC spec, but I know if your doing this as a career you'll probably make life easier with a decent screen (i.e. around £200 for a 22" minimum)

Just my 2 pennies though :p
 
I know its tough, in the last company i did this for my graphics cards were £1500 each and i had 2 of them linked to dual 20" high res monitors :D

Still, this is a small company and 500 is the limit, thankfully my 3d solidworks models will be smallish and leightweight.
 
For solidworks you are going to need a card like the fireGL or QuadroFX. Unless you are doing intense 3d modelling the ram is not so much of an issue, 2Gb min requirement. A core duo as a minimum.
 
I currently run SW on integrated graphics at home but its not a patch on my old Quadro FX setup, i wouldnt touch a fireGL these days.
 
I was about to disagree with ducky spud until I saw you needed the monitor. That does indeed make it tricky since it's probably £150-200 out of the way straight off.

E5200, 7300 if there's £30 left from the budget, 4GB of OCZ/kingston (or whoever's 2x2gb kit is hovering around the £40-45 mark this week); the cheapest motherboard you can get your hands on (need the cash elsewhere) and the smallest hard drive you think you can work with.

At this sort of price point I'd actually be tempted to throw a week's wages into improving the build; okay so it's your own cash but you'll be making your own life a lot easier. Obviously not always (often!) possible.
 
A weeks wages....haha, got a mortgage to pay thanks!

Monitor can be had for £100 tops, i dont need anything too special, im getting by on my netbook at the moment!

Storage isnt really important, i dont see the need for TB's of drives, couple hundred gig will be more than enough.
 
LG W1952TQ 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor£133.39
(£115.99) £133.39
OcUK Value Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2 Motherboard/OCZ StealthXStream 500w PSU/Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Barebones System£123.04
(£106.99) £123.04
Options applied to the above product:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £48.99
(£42.60)£48.99
(£42.60)Options applied to the above product:
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (KHX8500D2K2/4G)£42.99
(£37.38)£42.99

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate "Passive" 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £72.44
(£62.99) £72.44

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3250410AS)£37.94
(£32.99) £37.94

Logitech Cordless Desktop EX110 (967561-1120)£23.99
(£20.86) £23.99

Sub Total : £419.80Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout)Shipping : £12.50VAT is being charged at 15%VAT : £64.85 Total : £497.15
 
Slime101 said:
A weeks wages....haha, got a mortgage to pay thanks!

Monitor can be had for £100 tops, i dont need anything too special, im getting by on my netbook at the moment!

Storage isnt really important, i dont see the need for TB's of drives, couple hundred gig will be more than enough.
Click to expand...

I was more commenting on the amount you have to work with than the actual possibility of coughing up :p

How much will you have post-graphics card, assuming you've got one picked out from the above post?
 
SW is mine, i used to work very closely with a large uk dealer on a major multi-national install....this is a new project and new company.
 
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