Help an ignoramus out? xD (pc on a budget)

CompuChump

CompuChump

CompuChump

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22 Feb 2014
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Hi everyone!

I'm not entirely sure this is really the right forum for me as things seem to be geared toward high end machines here and I'm on a pretty tight budget, but there's clearly a lot of knowledge here so thought I'd give it a shot anyway. :P

Basically, I need to replace my 7 year old laptop (yeah, I know >.<) with a 64 bit system capable of running this software : Animate Pro 3. Minimum requirements are at the bottom of the page, but there's no recommended specs anywhere so I'm not really sure what I'll need. I also haven't bought a computer in... well... 7 years, so I don't even really understand what I'm looking at when I'm browsing PCs nowadays.

I'm looking for an idea of the minimum I'll need to spend for something that'll connect to wifi and run that software -well-, doesn't matter really if it's a desktop or a laptop, and I'm even open to the idea of building from scratch if it's cheaper, but I have no tools/equipment so I'd have to add the cost of those. Also if anyone has any suggestions of a good buy for my requirements that would be wonderful as well!

I have monitors I can use so I don't need a new one, but I will need to buy a copy of a 64bit Windows if it's not installed already and as far as I can tell that's about £180 on its own... :(

Thanks for reading, and big thanks in advance for any help!
Cheers,
Dan
 
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Hey, cheers for the quick response! Turns out I was looking at Windows 8 Pro... not sure what the difference is but I guess I shouldn't have too hard a time finding that out on the old Google. :P

And my budget is as little as possible really. I guess I could spend £400 but if I only need to spend £300, or less, all the better. If I must spend more than £400 I'll think about it. >.<

Just as you mentioned 7 also, would you recommend 7 or 8? 8 looks kinda odd from what I've seen of it...
 
Well definitely build from scratch with a £400 budget, you'd save yourself a lot of money. Here's something to get the ball rolling;
BTW I prefer 7, but some like 8 :)

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Kaveri 7700K 10 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 6 GPU Compute Cores) - Retail £125.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X AMD A88X Chipset (Socket FM2+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £83.99
1 x Avexir MPower Yellow Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CM) £49.99
1 x Seasonic G series 360w '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply £47.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x BitFenix Comrade Midi-Tower - Black £29.99
1 x Samsung SH-118AB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM £12.95
Total : £408.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).




Tight budget, but still got something in there - should be really quite capable, don't expect max settings in games though!
 
Oh right, ok, cheers.

I don't need to run any games, just the software I linked to. Do you think ~£400 is the lowest I can go for what I want then?

Also for doing that how much would I be looking at spending on tools etc. I have some thermal paste somewhere but that's it... and I'd be looking at buying Windows on top if I built from scratch so that's about £500 with the OS?

I can't really spend that much to be honest. :s
 
 
 
AMD:

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £86.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02733) £73.99
1 x Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x Avexir MPower Yellow Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CM) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x SuperFlower Amazon 300W "80 Plus Bronze" Power Supply £29.99
1 x BitFenix Comrade Midi-Tower - Black £29.99
1 x HIS ATI Radeon HD 5450 1024MB GDDR3 SILENT Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card (H545HR1G) £23.99
1 x OcUK 20x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
1 x Arctic F12 Case Fan - 120mm £3.98
Total : £433.99 (includes shipping : £11.75).

 
Ah, cheers you two.

RJC - your intel suggestion is definitely far more acceptable for my budget, I've got it noted down.

edit: Another thing that would help me - is there a good site for comparing different processors etc.? Every time I search for them I get different sites that lay everything out differently... makes it difficult to know what I'm looking at. :s

edit2: killed some links :P
 
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CompuChump said:
Ok, links are gone, ta.

Is there an easy way to tell if what I'm looking at can do 64bit btw? Is it only the processor that determines that?
Click to expand...

All the modern processors are 64bit, don't worry about that - you'll only need a 64bit operating system to ensure it
 
Oh ok, so basically any PC I buy new will be 64bit now? That makes things a lot easier.

So then given that this is the minimum spec of the software I want to run

Microsoft Windows 8 (64-bit), 7 (64-bit)
2 GHz Intel® Core 2 Duo processor or higher
4 GB RAM (Minimum)
500 MB available hard disk space for the software
NVIDIA® fully supporting OpenGL with 256 MB RAM
Monitor supporting 1024 x 786 resolution

I guess if I go for 8GB RAM, and I guess anything with more than 2 cores/2 cores at 3Ghz up and a proper graphics card instead of dedicated I should be ok, right?
How far over 'minimum requirements' do you reckon you have to go to get good performance? :P
 
The minimum is well, minimum. Generally it just doesn't work smoothly on minimum specs, but it still works - I'd go with one of the 6/8 core AMD builds like RJC's one. Great performance with those
 
98% of cpus are now 64bit and the specs we do are all 64bit ready.

Both the Intel and AMD specs will be fine and beat the minimum specs.
 
Ok, I'm sure they will do the job - I'm just trying to figure if I can realistically cost cut further without damaging performance too badly or dramatically reducing its long-term usefulness.

Every penny counts at the moment unfortunately. :(

edit: Any reason for suggesting the AMD over the Intel, Shivy? I thought Intel were generally more popular for whatever reason.
 
Ah ok, that makes sense, thanks.

I know you've been really helpful already (you really have, so thank you) and I'm asking a lot of questions, but do I need to be worried about compatibility much or is it not a huge issue? If I'm looking at swapping out some components I mean.

I know I need to check the RAM has the right number of pins for the motherboard, oh, and motherboard and processor need to have the same socket, but that is as far as my knowledge goes. If it's a big subject then I'll google it, but if it's simple to explain I'd appreciate the low-down. :P
 
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I think all the builds so far look fine in terms of compatibility. I'm not really too wellversed in terms of amd builds but faster ram is a midst have on those with built in graphics
 
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