Help Speccing my Dad a new pc please

Namak · 10 Jan 2015 at 11:52

Hi,

Hoping I might be able to rely on you guys to come up with some good build suggestions.... haven't been keeping up with hardware for a couple of years and don't know where to start.

It will mainly be used to deal shares with and will have a minimum of two screens in use, but would like it to be easily upgradeable to a four screen setup in the future.

No high resolution gaming will be done on it but it will need to feel sharp and responsive, even when all screens are filled with charts and constantly refreshing graphs.

Need the whole box including Windows, case, psu etc but not the peripherals. Can it be done for under £700? budget can be stretched if it is really going to add something.

Would be nice if it was a relatively quiet so maybe a few extra £ on the case?

If not planning to use to hold much data is there any need to have a HDD alongside an SDD these days?

thanks,
will

stulid · 10 Jan 2015 at 11:55

Hi.

Does your dad have lots of tabs open at one time?

Do you know what inputs the monitors have?

Namak · 10 Jan 2015 at 12:04

Hi Stulid,

Yup, lots of tabs in Chrome (and probably Skype and several dozen other apps sitting in the background!!).

Haven't bought the monitors yet so imagine they will be HMDI these days? if you have any suggestion on that would appreciate your advice but more stuck on the core components and making sure they are all compatible and suitable. probably looking for roughly 22" screens.

stulid · 10 Jan 2015 at 12:14

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £142.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TPKD316G1600HC11DC01) £119.99
1 x SuperFlower Golden Silent 430W Fanless "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - Black £84.95
1 x Gigabyte H97M-HD3 Intel H97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £67.99
1 x Antec P100 Mid Tower Silenced Computing Case £62.99
1 x Noctua NH-U12S Ultra-Quiet Slim CPU Cooler with NF-F12 Fan £52.99
1 x SK Hynix 128GB SSD SH910A SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (HFS128G32MNB-2201A) £49.99
Total : £591.49 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Silent,

Silent case with noise dampening and thick construction so it doesn't vibrate etc.

Fanless PSU, yes it is expensive but that is what it costs.

Quietest CPU cooler I have personally used (and I have had many).

No mechanical HDD so that is another noise problem eliminated.

------------------------

The motherboard has 3 display outputs which you can use,

Integrated Graphics Processor - Intel® HD Graphics support:
1 x D-Sub port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200@60Hz
1 x DVI-D port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200@60Hz
* The DVI-D port does not support D-Sub connection by adapter.
1 x HDMI port, supporting a maximum resolution of 4096x2160@24Hz or 2560x1600@60Hz
* Support for HDMI 1.4a version.
Support for up to 3 displays at the same time
Maximum shared memory of 512MB

Should he then need to add more monitors you can add a gfx card and use some outputs from the board and gfx card together.

Example,

YOUR BASKET
1 x Palit GeForce GTX 750TI KalmX SILENT 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
1 x Palit GeForce GTX 750 KalmX SILENT 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x Palit GeForce GT 730 SILENT 2048MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £44.99
Total : £274.52 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Which are silent passive cards.

Namak · 10 Jan 2015 at 12:31

Great, thanks Stulid!

Do you think that there would be no benefit from a dedicated graphics card based on his requirements then, even if running two screens? Also is it pretty much plug and play using motherboard and card to power different screens? For some reason I thought (and this may show how out of date my knowledge is) that eyefinity was the best/easiest way of going over 2 screens.

Are there any areas where you think extra money spent would make much of a noticeable real world difference in performance?

stulid · 10 Jan 2015 at 12:40

There will be no benefit from using just two screens from a gfx card rather than the motherboard.

22" monitors are mostly 1080P or lower, so the boards outputs (via the cpu built-in gfx core) will cope just fine.

To setup both card and board, make sure in the BIOS the integrated graphics is set to enabled (think its default is auto) and install the nvidia driver and intel gfx driver.

Let me just setup my two screens (one of the card and one from my board) to show you.

stulid · 10 Jan 2015 at 13:43

Right im back.

My first attempt was greeted with just a pair of blank screens with just a mouse cursor.

But I cracked it.

I set up a monitor one to the board and one to the gfx card,

So I setup the BIOS to this,

I then installed Win8.1.

Which got me to the desktop with one display working.

Then the chipset driver (INF and ME driver etc).

Then intel display driver which asked for a restart which brought me back to the desktop with a single display.

I then installed the newest Nvidia driver and restarted again.

Which got me this,

david7bw · 19 Jan 2015 at 21:54

Hi Stulid

Thanks for your time giving advice for this build. My son Namak posted the original request for help. Many years ago i built my own PC and formatted the Hard drives etc - all a little hairy. however i have not ventured to PC building for probably 30 years.
I believe the mother board is not full size one - Is this a problem if I want to extend in any way.
I would enjoy it if it was quiet, so happy to pay the extra.
My son has now gone overseas for his work for a few months, so i will try to take over.

Thanks david

stulid · 19 Jan 2015 at 22:00

Hi,

Here is a full size,

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-273-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2813

It has HDMI, DVI and Dsub on it.

Full size ATX do have more expansion slots, but do you need more than what the mATX board from Gigabyte has?

Also the MSI does have four RAM slots vs the Gigabytes 2, so that maybe a reason to go for the MSI.

Everything I listed is silent.

Harl0 · 19 Jan 2015 at 22:07

The board is a Micro ATX, but has a PCIe slot so has scope to expand to say a standalone GPU or sound card for example.

The stock Intel CPU cooler is near silent and the PSU is fanless (passive cooling); the Antec P100 is optimised for silent operation - A gnats fart would be louder

stulid · 19 Jan 2015 at 22:12

Harl0 said:
The board is a Micro ATX, but has a PCIe slot so has scope to expand to say a standalone GPU or sound card for example.

The stock Intel CPU cooler is near silent and the PSU is fanless (passive cooling); the Antec P100 is optimised for silent operation - A gnats fart would be louder

The noctua is certainly inaudible.

The stock cooler is a buzzy little turd.