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- Joined
- 28 Aug 2008
- Posts
- 30
Hi all - I'm Looking for a little bit of help please!
My current system is starting to show it's age - comprising of an i7-920, 6Gb ram and a Radeon 5850 - and I'm looking at a complete refresh and passing this one along to the missus along with something like a 7950 or R9 270X to satisfy her light MMO habit (she currently uses my old Alienware M14X w/GTX 550M and it's constantly overheating).
It'll mainly be used for a mix of casual gaming (EVE Online and the occasional FPS) and photo processing with Lightroom/Photoshop CC. My work also involves a lot of building and testing VMs .
My requirements are
So with that said, my initial stab at this is below - came out a bit above budget and doesn't even include an OS. I *can* flex my budget a bit but I suspect people on this forum can come up with better.
My current system is starting to show it's age - comprising of an i7-920, 6Gb ram and a Radeon 5850 - and I'm looking at a complete refresh and passing this one along to the missus along with something like a 7950 or R9 270X to satisfy her light MMO habit (she currently uses my old Alienware M14X w/GTX 550M and it's constantly overheating).
It'll mainly be used for a mix of casual gaming (EVE Online and the occasional FPS) and photo processing with Lightroom/Photoshop CC. My work also involves a lot of building and testing VMs .
My requirements are
- I7 4770K - I tend to do a lot at once, whether running multiple VMs, watching a 720P video in VLC, browsing some forums or running a couple of Eve clients and, while I realise HT isn't black magic, I do believe it helps the way I work.
- R9 R290 or GTX780 - I have no brand loyalty - my current 5850 has lasted for about 4 years without a hiccup so far but then again, I haven't had any bad experiences with previous nVidia cards so either is fine.. I think the best compromise between power, price, noise and temps seems to be one of the 290s with aftermarket coolers.. like the DirectCU II or Tri-X.
- 16Gb RAM - working with libraries of 24-megapixel raw images tends to consume RAM fairly quickly.. my current 6Gb system struggles badly so I think 16Gb should be a happy medium.
- 256Gb SSD - I tend to keep my OS and critical apps on the SSD (not games or data) - my current M500 128GB has about 20Gb free - I could probably free some more but I've never been overly comfortable with that size. I'll also probably be looking at a 3TB HDD to partition for games and data (I do keep my active photo library on the data drive although this is synced with my QNAP NAS daily)
- Keyboard and mouse are more of an afterthought - I've been using the same old Logitech G15 II and MX518 for years and I see no reason to change them.. but the missus will need something for her gaming.. she doesn;t really care about them as long they work
- Monitor - I currently have two monitors on my desk - an old Acer 1080P LCD and an even older Samsung 1200x1024 LCD. I'll be passing on the Acer one and sticking the Sammy in the attic, and I'd like to replace both with a single larger monitor (preferably IPS) with at least 2560x1440. I know that without spending a fortune, I'm not going to get anything exceptional but something that is of reasonably quality and that I can calibrate later would be good. A height adjustable stand would be useful too.
So with that said, my initial stab at this is below - came out a bit above budget and doesn't even include an OS. I *can* flex my budget a bit but I suspect people on this forum can come up with better.
