Computer for Uni - £500

Mark101

Mark101

Mark101

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Hi,

Pretty soon I'll need to buy myself a computer for uni. I've not yet decided whether to get a laptop or a desktop; if the latter I will build it myself.

I already have a 1080p monitor, I'll get a proper keyboard/mouse either way and I'll get office software separately.

Uses: Office apps, MATLAB coding, gaming when I'm at home (Battlefield, Skyrim etc.)

Budget: I can get a student OS for cheap, so £500 absolute max. without OS.

For £509 I found a Dell Inspiron 15R laptop with these specs:

Processor Intel Core i3-2370M
Display 15.6in (1366x768)
Memory 6GB2 DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz
Hard Drive 1TB (5,400rpm) SATA
Optical Drive 8x DVD+/-RW Optical Drive
Video Card 1GB AMD Radeon HD 7670M​

Obviously a laptop is more portable and would mean I could have dual screens, but how much more power could I get with a desktop? Would like more gaming power than the laptop, but a balanced system overall rather than GPU heavy. I only really need 500GB storage.

Thanks :) Any input greatly appreciated.
 
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YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr III OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £159.98
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £97.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £64.99
1 x OCZ ZT 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £63.98
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £39.95
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £35.99
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £525.86 (includes shipping : FREE).



Something like that would do you nicely.

I haven't included the OS as windows 8 is due in october. You could use the developers copy for now as it's free. As a student don't you get a deal on the OS? So you shouldn't need to get it from here anyway.

I've added a 1TB drive as it's only £5 more to get the extra 500GB which makes sense to me. The PSU is modular which is handy when building in midi towers, you dont have an excess of unused cables blocking the airflow.

The 460 and 6850 were the default budget gaming GPUs. Now AMD has dropped it's prices the 7850 makes much more sense as it has 2GB of VRAM and they overclock very well.

Hope this helps, any questions or problems feel free to ask :)
 
Thanks for the reply.

I've amended the first post re. the OS; I can get it cheaper as a student, but would then certainly not want to go over £500 on the rest of the build (even that is stretching it but probably feasible). I've tried the Windows 8 preview but kinda hated it... :p

I have an i5-2500 and a 6850 in my home build, although that runs at 1680x1050 so presumably the frame rate drop with the same card would be significant when at 1080p. Is there anything in between the 6850 and the 7850 by price (6870's, 550Ti's, 460 Superclocked, 560's, 560 OC's) that would make sense as an intermediate option? Cards around £140 would push that build within the limit...

A couple of other thoughts:

How does the i3-2100 compare to the mobile chip in the laptop spec (i3-2370M)?

I have an OCZ ModXStream 600W which is (now) also £60 in my home build. How does that compare?

And I didn't realise hard drive prices were still up :( My 500GB was £30...
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D HD 7850 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £101.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) £44.99
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £39.95
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £35.99
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £490.86 (includes shipping : FREE).



How does that look? The 2120 isn't much more so there is a slight speed increase over my last spec. The GPU is slightly cheaper but on preorder, i would prefer the MSI GPU myself....longer warranty and games ;)

You have to keep in mind the warranties aswell. If you buy a laptop you will probably only have a year warranty and it wont perform aswell as the desktop CPU. My first spec was 3 years warranty pretty much through and through.

I'm confused if you have a gaming capable machine at home why add a GPU to a build for uni?
 
The rig at home is a family computer that I built. Being shared between several people, gaming is not always possible...

That build looks nice. The laptop is indeed a one-year warranty, and laptop repairs are often notoriously expensive (and sometimes impossible to accomplish at home).

I'm guessing that Intel's M chips are not as powerful as their desktop versions too... so the desktop becomes very tempting.
 
Mark101 said:
The rig at home is a family computer that I built. Being shared between several people, gaming is not always possible...

That build looks nice. The laptop is indeed a one-year warranty, and laptop repairs are often notoriously expensive (and sometimes impossible to accomplish at home).

I'm guessing that Intel's M chips are not as powerful as their desktop versions too... so the desktop becomes very tempting.
Click to expand...

Yeah that makes sense then :)

I have an overclocked 460 which i have oc'd further myself, although mine has the 256bit memory interface not 192bit. It's not a bad card even today, however being priced at £125 it's priced too close to the 7850 which is a much better GPU. That extra 1GB of VRAM will make a difference especially for BF3 which is notorious for being a VRAM hog

6850 (is on par with a 460) vs 7850
 
While that is certainly an interesting idea, I'm not sure I could get them to agree to it :p

I would have a hard time persuading them that a laptop was even comparable to desktop. I mean, it has lights and everything. And it's bigger.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D HD 7850 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £64.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £56.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £39.95
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £35.99
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £497.87 (includes shipping : FREE).



Tinkered a little bit. The G840 for gaming holds up well to the i3 but is much cheaper. I've used the Z77 mobo as you could consider dropping in an i5K much later and then overclock it, you can't OC CPUs on the H61 mobo. As the pentium CPU is much cheaper it's possibly easier to justify "writing it off" for an upgrade down the line.

G840 vs i3
 
Hmm, the Z77 board is good... but I'm not sure about the Pentium, especially with the 7850. For about half of the year I won't be gaming much, and might need power for stuff like writing MATLAB code, photoshop work and so on. Also, when I am gaming, I play Skyrim a lot. Are we entering the realms of CPU bottlenecking?
 
Mark101 said:
Hmm, the Z77 board is good... but I'm not sure about the Pentium, especially with the 7850. For about half of the year I won't be gaming much, and might need power for stuff like writing MATLAB code, photoshop work and so on. Also, when I am gaming, I play Skyrim a lot. Are we entering the realms of CPU bottlenecking?
Click to expand...

I've used the 840 in a number of office builds. It's actually a pokey lil CPU for the price. I don't have any experience with MATLAB but photoshop can use the GPU for a boost wether it be Nvidia or AMD.

I have the 460 running in my HTPC alongside an AMD 555BE CPU (@4ghz). If you look at the anandtech links for CPUs you will see the pentium 840 is better. I can run Skyrim and BF3 just fine on the HTPC so i thought the 840 might be worth consideration, as it leaves you cash to put elsewhere in the spec.

Hopefully Im helping and not confusing things for you. I like to give a few options so people can mix and match the specs. There are plenty of ways to balance the build out, only you can say for sure what suits you best.

YOUR BASKET
1 x VTX3D HD 7850 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £56.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Intel 330 Series 60GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail £53.99
1 x Gigabyte H61MA-D3V Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £47.99
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) £44.99
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £39.95
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £35.99
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £499.85 (includes shipping : FREE).



Managed to squeeze in a small SSD if that interests you :D
 
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No, certainly the more ideas the better!

It's good to consider all of the options before buying... that SSD is very nice looking, presumably enough capacity for the OS and perhaps a couple of programs? Certainly hadn't even considered that one...
 
Mark101 said:
No, certainly the more ideas the better!

It's good to consider all of the options before buying... that SSD is very nice looking, presumably enough capacity for the OS and perhaps a couple of programs? Certainly hadn't even considered that one...
Click to expand...

Yeah its good being SataIII helps too, the H61 mobo i used supports sataIII and USB3. 60GB is enough for the OS, apps and a couple of games for sure and there was still a storage drive in the spec :)
 
If you won't be playing games for the first six months then you could always use this spec and drop in a graphics card when you want :)


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £59.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x BitFenix Shinobi USB3.0 Gaming Case - Black £49.99
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £35.99
1 x Asus HD 5450 SILENT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Low Profile Graphics Card £23.99
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £504.91 (includes shipping : FREE).




Note I included a basic graphics card, this is because upon boot the onboard GFX is switched off so you do require some form of video output to do anything when switching it on.
 
 
Bacon? said:
Note I included a basic graphics card, this is because upon boot the onboard GFX is switched off so you do require some form of video output to do anything when switching it on.
Click to expand...

That's absolute rubbish! lol Adding a dedicated GPU much later isn't a bad idea though. If he wants to do this he might as well use the IGP now, adding a 5450 or similar dedicated GPU is a waste of money in my eyes.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £184.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £79.99
1 x OCZ ZT 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £63.98
1 x Toshiba (7K1000.D) 500GB SATA 6GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA050) £44.99
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £39.95
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £35.99
1 x Thermalright True Spirit 120 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/AM2/AM3/FM1) £24.98
1 x LG GH24NS90 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £489.86 (includes shipping : FREE).




Idlemans build is quite nice, he has used similar components to me in my previous specs. However his 7850 is 1GB, £10 more gets you 2GB of VRAM. A 2GB 7850 is the minimum gaming GPU to aim for now really, the 660 (non Ti) should land next month so might be worth waiting and mulling over your options.
 
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