Please spec me a budget build... newb

[shoey]

Hiya, first time poster & would like advice...

I'm looking to do a budget build of up to £500 (sans monitor, mouse, keyb..).

My main purpose is to run multiple Virtual Machines on it - I'm a developer & I'd like to play around with multiple OS & tools like visual studio, sql server, etc. I would like my virtual environments to run as smooth as if its on physical hardware (is that a dream?); I also do a bit of photo editing & finally I'm looking for a box with hdmi out so I can take advantage of hooking it up to the lcd tv as a big screen.

Given this scenario, what should i build? As I don't game I'm tempted to put more emphasis on the CPU & RAM rather than the graphics card, and it looks like there are am3 boards out there w/ onboard graphics which could do hdmi out. are they any good?

I would also like to overclock it a little bit - nothing extreme, just wanting to get a bit more milage for my money. What are the o/c capabilities of the amd vs the intel?

I've been out of the hardware scene for a long time & here's 2 very random sample builds I dug up from browsing:

AMD Athlon II X4 2.6Ghz £ 75.00
Asus M4A785TD-V EV (Onboard Graphics) £ 70.00
8GB (4x2GB) Corsair DDR3 1066 £ 176.00
500GB Maxtor STM3500418AS £ 34.00
CiT 2036 Black Midi ATX Case Inc 450W PSU £ 21.00
Samsung TS-H653N/HPDH 20x DVD±R £ 16.00

Total approx £392

or

same but with phenom ii x4 for £441

or

same but with i5, Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2, 512MB Sapphire HD 4770 for a total of £553

pls help out a newb!

 

[95thrifles]

Hi and welcome, yeah the build you did is pretty spot on, Id go for this personally, includes an aftermarket cooler so you can OC
Also got much better PSU, you dont want to skimp here, and a case with better cooling, important for clocking

2 x OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3G16004GK) £79.99 (£69.56) £159.98 (£139.12)
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 620 2.60GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £79.99 (£69.56)
Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £67.99 (£59.12)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £58.98 (£51.29)
Be Quiet! Straight Power E7 400W Power Supply £52.99 (£46.08)
Coolermaster Elite 334 Midi Case- Black (No PSU) £32.99 (£28.69)
Akasa AK-968 X4 CPU Cooler (Socket 939/AM2/AM3/775/1156/1366) £21.99 (£19.12)
Sony Optiarc AD-5240S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99 (£14.77)
Sub Total : £427.75
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £65.85
Total : £504.85

 

[shoey]

thx 95 - i had a look at ur linked guide - its great! pretty much filled me in on 4 yrs of knowledge gap in hardware. the thing that caught my eye was the appearance of raid on the m/b - very tempting !

 

[PermaBanned]

You'll actually use 8GB RAM? A small power graphics card can do wonders for photo editing and HD movies... something like the 43/550, 3450, 8400GS or others.

 

[shoey]

main reason for looking at 8gigs was to run maybe 2 vm's or so simultaneously, and assign them 1~2Gb of ram each..

hard to have it all & squeeze in a budget i know

 

[Samueltastic]

You'll actually use 8GB RAM? A small power graphics card can do wonders for photo editing and HD movies... something like the 43/550, 3450, 8400GS or others.

At current I have a 3450 in my new build as I plan on getting a 5850 some time soon. Think I paid around £25 for it and for the price it's a good little card and handles hd movies well.