Non-gamer spec help

Herman Gelmet · 24 Oct 2011 at 00:05

I have a budget of 400-700 and I need an updated pc to help with lots of graphics work, including animation of fractal content and 3d terrain, as well as PS Lightroom databases. I am mainly interested in the processing power and associated rendering speeds. Minimal gaming but something that can cope pretty well with modern games (e.g. fifa 2012) would be a bonus.

I already have a decent case, monitor and 6gb ram which I am hoping to use in the new build (will find out what spec it is). I may need to get a new psu (currently hiper 530w) and dvd rw if my current bits are not up to the new build (wattage and connectors etc).

I want...
W7 64b pro
i5 or i7
Asrock Extreme 4 3G or Asus z68
Minimum 1tb sata II (was looking at WD20EARS - 2tb)

I'm not sure about the gfx, psu or dvd drive.
Would I need a soundcard, or is that a tad old-fashioned?

Can you help with this? I would like some guidance on which bits go best with other bits.

My old bits will be passed down to my lad for a project of his, so not too worried about keeping too much of it.

Many thanks.

Reaper 392 · 24 Oct 2011 at 00:18

as long as the case can fit full sized ATX motherboards then there shouldnt be any problem reusing it. also, as long as the RAM is DDR3 then you can reuse an even number of sticks of it (because sandybridge, the only processor worth buying right now, uses dual channel RAM)

the PSU should be chucked in the bin, unless you want to become a member of the ever expanding hiper explosive club: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17694588

for the DVD drive just take the cheapest SATA DVD+/-RW you can find

graphics wise an Nvidia card would be great for you, as its cuda cores will be able to massively speed up a lot of your work. not sure which one until i work out what your salvaging from the old PC

unless your working with audio you dont really need a sound card. onboard sound has come on a long way recently

as for OS, i assume there is something that win7 pro does that win7 HP doesnt that you need. heres a basic comparison between them: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare
also, i dont think its shown there, but win7HP can utilise a maximum of 16GB RAM, including that on the graphics card. win7pro and win7ultimate can uutilise a maximum of 196GB RAM

PSU depends on the graphics card you go for, but i suspect a decent 500W PSU will be ample for what you will be getting

Herman Gelmet · 24 Oct 2011 at 08:34

Reaper 392 said:
as long as the case can fit full sized ATX motherboards then there shouldnt be any problem reusing it. also, as long as the RAM is DDR3 then you can reuse an even number of sticks of it (because sandybridge, the only processor worth buying right now, uses dual channel RAM)

The case is full sized ATX (Antec P180 SPCR Advanced Super Midi Tower Case) so I should be OK there.

It looks like I need to get DDR3 ram as well (as my old ram is DDR2) and I'll be looking at getting 8gb (seeing as you pointed out the need for dual channel). Can you suggest some that will go well with this spec of machine?

the PSU should be chucked in the bin, unless you want to become a member of the ever expanding hiper explosive club: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17694588

Oh dear! I have had no problems with this one, although I think an earlier PC had the same issue.

for the DVD drive just take the cheapest SATA DVD+/-RW you can find

That was my plan.. I may even be able to re-use mine but I can't recall what connection type mine is. Need to look inside. Easy and cheap so not an issue.

graphics wise an Nvidia card would be great for you, as its cuda cores will be able to massively speed up a lot of your work. not sure which one until i work out what your salvaging from the old PC

OK, so not salvaging much by the look of it (see RAM above), just case and monitor!

unless your working with audio you dont really need a sound card. onboard sound has come on a long way recently

Although I am not planning a PC for audio usage I do intend to get an Access Virus synth sometime next year and need something (not right away) which can handle MIDI and good sampling/sequencing software ability.

as for OS, i assume there is something that win7 pro does that win7 HP doesnt that you need. heres a basic comparison between them: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare
also, i dont think its shown there, but win7HP can utilise a maximum of 16GB RAM, including that on the graphics card. win7pro and win7ultimate can uutilise a maximum of 196GB RAM

I couldn't see a similar comparison of the 64bit Windows 7 packages. I have XP Pro and it has served me well and been generally stable for many years. Does the 64bit version of W7 HP have the same memory limit? That appears to be my biggest hesitation, as I want to be able to expand in future if needed, without changing OS.

PSU depends on the graphics card you go for, but i suspect a decent 500W PSU will be ample for what you will be getting

I was thinking with all that processing power I would need to get a big PSU, but thanks for the advice.

So, what about cooling, gfx and memory?

My old sytem is based on this:

Asrock Fatal1ty FP-1N9 SLI
e4500 @ 2.2ghz duo core
DDR2 6gb Corsair xms2

I would be interested to see some info about how fast (ghz) the 2 cpu's mentioned will actually run at. I don't have time to search the web now (as I am about to begin working at home) but a rough comparison of how an i5 or i7 would compare to my E4500 2.2ghz would be useful. For me this would equate to render times: if a 5000 frame fractal-based animation took say 100 hours on my old machine, roughly how long on the newer spec machine

Thanks for your help Reaper!

Herman Gelmet · 26 Oct 2011 at 08:24

Any ideas would be welcome as I'm hoping to buy the part soon.

Thanks

Doomedspeed · 26 Oct 2011 at 10:25

This is a comparison of an e4500 vs i5 2500k. Down the page its tested some 3D MAX renders, the time is atleast a 1/3 of what the e4500 can do.

The improvement would be a lot.

If your not interested in overclocking the i5 2500 is the same as the i5 2500k performance wise, it just doesn't have an unlocked multiplier. the non-k version is cheaper too. Non-overclockers should go for a h61/h67 motherboard aswell.
GPU wise the GTX560 will be a good starting ground. I know the Ti edtion is good but i don't know whether it'd benifit your uses properly.

Herman Gelmet · 26 Oct 2011 at 21:40

Doomedspeed said:
This is a comparison of an e4500 vs i5 2500k. Down the page its tested some 3D MAX renders, the time is atleast a 1/3 of what the e4500 can do.

The improvement would be a lot.

If your not interested in overclocking the i5 2500 is the same as the i5 2500k performance wise, it just doesn't have an unlocked multiplier. the non-k version is cheaper too. Non-overclockers should go for a h61/h67 motherboard aswell.
GPU wise the GTX560 will be a good starting ground. I know the Ti edtion is good but i don't know whether it'd benifit your uses properly.

Thanks Doomedspeed, that comparison is exactly what I needed to see and if I thought it would have been benchmarked somewhere I would have looked for it myself! I am impressed there is one but not at all surprised that someone at OC knew where to find it

I think I was looking at the 'k' versions and I would be looking to overclock in future but it's not needed initially with those speeds!

I have a spreadsheet with some pricings listed and I will add the non k's with h61/h67 as a cheaper option. I am pretty sure the GTX 560ti is on that list... (yep indeed it is) but I don't think I came up with that suggestion.

I will start to get an idea of the options and costs once I have updated my spreadsheet, and then I can think about ordering.

The only question left (today

)is about cooling and does that change drastically if I do decide to OC the cpu?