Advice sought please

russtobin

russtobin

russtobin

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Joined
25 Sep 2010
Posts
58
Looking to build new PC and would welcome as many inputs as poss.

Requirements are for a system that will handle graphics/video/mapping but not much gaming.

Budget approx £1000 to include motherboard/cpu/ram/hdd/graphics

Would appreciate as much feedback as poss in particular graphics card and motherboard as I think the cpu will be Bloomfield.
 
Hi there, welcome to the forums :)

May I ask what specific applications you will be using? As you indicate, i7 bloomfield is most likely the best option, but if your applications are heavily multi-threaded then the Phenom II X6 would be even faster.

You mention the main components (motherboard/cpu/ram/hdd/graphics) are required within the budget. Will you also be needing a case, DVD (perhaps blu-ray) drive, power supply or operating system included within this budget?

As for the graphics card requirement, you mention "not much gaming" - would you be able expand on this? Do you mean pretty much no gaming, just older titles, new games - but not often or something else entirely. Also do you know whether the applications that you will be running on your system can make use of GPU power (GPGPU)?
 
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Until you reply to CMNDR ANDI how bout this

Asus GeForce GTX 470 V2 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with MAFIA 2 £239.99
(£204.25) £239.99
(£204.25)
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £224.99
(£191.48) £224.99
(£191.48)
Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AMD 890GX (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £119.99
(£102.12) £119.99
(£102.12)
Corsair Dominator-AMD 4GB (2xGB) DDR3 12800C8 (1600MHz) Dual Channel Kit (CMP4GX3M2B1600C8) £94.99
(£80.84) £94.99
(£80.84)
Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower - Red Dragon Edition £82.99
(£70.63) £82.99
(£70.63)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply £65.99
(£56.16) £65.99
(£56.16)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
(£38.29) £44.99
(£38.29)
Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3) £35.99
(£30.63) £35.99
(£30.63)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91) £13.99
(£11.91)
Sub Total : £786.31
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £139.79
Total : £938.60
 
Doughnut007 said:
Until you reply to CMNDR ANDI how bout this

Asus GeForce GTX 470 V2 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with MAFIA 2 £239.99
(£204.25) £239.99
(£204.25)
AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £224.99
(£191.48) £224.99
(£191.48)
Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AMD 890GX (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £119.99
(£102.12) £119.99
(£102.12)
Corsair Dominator-AMD 4GB (2xGB) DDR3 12800C8 (1600MHz) Dual Channel Kit (CMP4GX3M2B1600C8) £94.99
(£80.84) £94.99
(£80.84)
Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower - Red Dragon Edition £82.99
(£70.63) £82.99
(£70.63)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply £65.99
(£56.16) £65.99
(£56.16)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
(£38.29) £44.99
(£38.29)
Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3) £35.99
(£30.63) £35.99
(£30.63)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91) £13.99
(£11.91)
Sub Total : £786.31
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £139.79
Total : £938.60
Click to expand...

not much gaming- GTX470?

crossfire motherboard - NVIDIA graphics card?
 
SOrry its been a long shift. I misread thought it said gameing video and mapping...
And the nvidia card is me being stupid

How bout this as a starting point

AMD Phenom II X6 Six Core 1090T Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £224.99
(£191.48) £224.99
(£191.48)
HIS IceQ 5 Turbo ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £117.49
(£99.99) £117.49
(£99.99)
Corsair Dominator-AMD 4GB (2xGB) DDR3 12800C8 (1600MHz) Dual Channel Kit (CMP4GX3M2B1600C8) £94.99
(£80.84) £189.98
(£161.68)
Asus M4A87TD Evo AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £86.99
(£74.03) £86.99
(£74.03)
Lancool Dragon-Lord PC-K62 Mid Tower - Red Dragon Edition £82.99
(£70.63) £82.99
(£70.63)
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent SLI Certified Modular Power Supply £65.99
(£56.16) £65.99
(£56.16)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £44.99
(£38.29) £44.99
(£38.29)
Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/LGA1156/LGA1366/AM2/AM3) £35.99
(£30.63) £35.99
(£30.63)
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99
(£11.91) £13.99
(£11.91)
Sub Total : £734.80
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.50
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £130.78
Total : £878.08
 
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Thx for the great welcome and prompt replies!

Specific applications will be video and photo editing apps from Adobe.

Is anyone aware of a graphics card with firewire i/p?

I have also considered an Imac I27 as I already run a Mac but the cost is putting me off - it also won't run some of my mapping apps other than thru an emultaor:(

Not much gaming means that the machine won't be used primarily for gaming but it would be nice to have the ability - especially with the new COD on the way.

OS is not an issue as I can source Win7.

Already have an Antec case and a PSU that I bought quite recently.

Thx once again.
 
Hi there, For Adobe apps the i7 series is generally rather good.

This review shows Adobe premier performs better with the i7 950 than the AMD Phenom II 1090T Hex core, and this comparison shows the i7 950 again beating the 1090T in photoshop retouch artists speed.

As for "firewire i/p", is that IP over 1394? If so, I don't know of any consumer graphics card with a firewire port, perhaps some of the professional graphics cards support it.

Here is the spec I came up with:

803i7.png


I included a CPU cooler so you could try overclocking - the 950 chip should hit 4GHz without too much trouble using that cooler. Alternatively, you could buy a pre-overclocked 4GHz bundle from OCUK, and pay a premium.

If you feel that you would so well with 12GB of RAM, I suggest you go for this RAM instead, it should still be within budget.

The graphics card (GTX 460) is one of the best bang-for-buck models available right now, it will play the new COD (and pretty much any other modern game) very well.

I also included a standard hard disk and a 60GB SSD. If you put your OS and main applications on this SSD then you will find the system boots up very quickly and everything feels "snappier" in use. The 1TB HDD is there for storing all the rest of the files - it is nowhere near as quick as the SSD, but for a mechanical hard disk it is one of the best.
 
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Thx cmndr_andi

Further investigation has revealed that I'll need to replace the psu I've got as it's only rated at 400W max - may as well replace the case too!

One final question is about monitors - something like a 24" or so. LED or LCD?
 
May I ask what the model number of the PSU is? If it is a good antec one you could still run this system (downgrade the graphics card a bit) and still run the system perfectly well. If you definitely need a new PSU, then this one is great and will happily power the above spec (even when overclocked).

As for monitors, LED is LCD- the LED bit is just the backlight. With the current edge-lit technology it doesn't make the image quality any better, just improves vibrance, power consumption, heat production and allows for thinner designs.

If you are using a lot of photoshop and want accurate colours you may want to look for an IPS panel monitor (compared to the TN panels in the cheaper models). This article explains the differences between the panel technologies. Here is a really nice 23in IPS monitor (here is a review) - for a full 24in IPS (1920x1200 res) you have to pay a bit more (here is a review). If you don't need the benefits of the IPS panels and are happy to stick with a TN, then this is a good one to go for.
 
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russtobin said:
  • applications will be video and photo editing apps from Adobe
  • a system that will handle graphics/video/mapping but not much gaming
  • Not much gaming means that the machine won't be used primarily for gaming but it would be nice to have the ability - especially with the new COD on the way
  • OS is not an issue
  • have an Antec case and a PSU
  • Budget approx £1000 to include motherboard/cpu/ram/hdd/graphics
Click to expand...
Hello russtobin,

Welcome to OcUk forums! :)

That's quite a tasty budget you have there . . . of course unless the money is going to evaporate in seven days there is no need at all to blow all of that on a super system that meets your needs! :D

Here is a spec for your consideration, put together by the slackers/gurus at the OcUk store and pre-clocked to a mighty 3.8GHz for your convenience and comes with 8GB of fast DDR3 memory, as the board included graphics I didn't included a GPU in the spec as you don't appear to be gaming at the moment and there is some newer GPU's coming out soon so you can either wait for those along with the new COD game while using the IGP . . or select a GPU now with the £500 budget surplus you appear to have! :cool:

russtobin.gif
 
This is going to sound completely illogical but I haven't owned an AMD system since I built one of the original Thunderbird 600's which never seemed to work as well as the Pentium equivalent.
Thx for the input much appreciated.
 
russtobin said:
This is going to sound completely illogical but I haven't owned an AMD system since I built one of the original Thunderbird 600's
Click to expand...
So what you are saying is, based on your experiences of a product ten year ago which you may not have built properly or used a dubious supporting chipset or other item of hardware your not prepared to consider an AMD® system in 2010? :confused:

I agree, that's completely illogical but please feel free to spend extra money ££ to safeguard yourself against a problem that only exists in your mind! :cool:
 
Interestingly enough 3 of us built exactly the same AMD based systems and not one of us has ever used AMD since. I've never been disappointed with any of the many Intel based systems I've owned over many years.

So i guess what you're saying is kind of true if not a little harsh.

People tend to stick with what they know and trust.
 
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