Advice on new kit

[Barlick]

It's a good few years since I last bought this kit:
MSI Neo 2 (old Intel Springdale chipset)
3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
1Gb 3200 SDRAM
NVidia Geoforce 7600 AGP 256Mb graphics card
Two early SATA drives (Seagate & Maxtor: 250GB in total)

For working mainly with Adobe applications (InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat) I need to invest! Will a current system based on the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 GO 2.40GHz be a good choice at this time or should I hang-on for a new system based on the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 with 12Mb cache.

Cash available: £1000

 

[mp260767]

q6600 should do fine, with a p35 mobo like the abit ip35 , 4gb of memory, samsung f1 hard drive.

what case/psu are you running at the moment ?

 

[Barlick]

It's not a 'normal' case as such as the PC was put together at a local dealer. Having said that its done OK. With the £1000 I'd start from scratch. Specd a £1000 because I only have a 17 inch TFT. Presumably a 22 inch will suffice for Photoshop.

 

[mp260767]

came up with the following to give you an idea, tunqi tower was included as it will keep the processor cooler and run quieter than the stock one.

Hard drive can be reduced to the 640/750Gb models if you dont feel you need 1Tb.

Chose a 22" screen, might be worth popping into somewhere local to see if you can see the difference between 22/24 and see if it will make any difference to how you work.

Case was chosen as its fairly spacy, possibility of dual psu's, it is a matter of personal taste so might be worth just having a look through the case's and seeing what takes you're fancy.

Graphics card might seem a bit over the top as you didnt mention gaming but i reckon it should last you a while and give decent performance, tho it would be worth waiting to see what the new gfx cards offer that are due out in the next month or so.

Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £59.99
(£70.49)

Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775)
£29.99 (£35.24)

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail £111.99 (£131.59)

Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £94.99
(£111.61)

Samsung SM-226BW 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Glossy Black £169.99
(£199.74)

Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £81.99 (£96.34)

Lian-Li PC-A70B Aluminium Tower Case - Black £99.99 (£117.49)

Samsung SH-S223F/BEBN 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £13.99 (£16.44)

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK) £59.99 (£70.49)

BFG GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £104.99 (£123.36)

Sub Total : £827.90
Shipping : £14.95
VAT : £147.50
Total : £990.35

 

[Barlick]

Thanks for that.
Curious as to why a Lian-Li case has been suggested as Antec's seem quite popular and the money saved would enable a second 500Gb had drive for data storage to be included.

 

[mp260767]

Thanks for that.
Curious as to why a Lian-Li case has been suggested as Antec's seem quite popular and the money saved would enable a second 500Gb had drive for data storage to be included.

i have a lian li and like the build/quality, antec wise the p182 is a very nice case so feel free to change it to make way for another hard disk.

if you want an extra disk get the samsung f1 640gb for a system disk and use the 1tb for storage.

 

[Barlick]

That's great. Thank very much