specing a system - help required

firestrike · 18 Aug 2008 at 23:41

I am going back to university so I could do with a new computer. It will be used for CAD, Photoshop, Revitt, SketchUp and 3dsmax. I am struggling to spec a small form factor system, I am a bit out of date now and I have never done a SFF system before.

I have a budget for around £650, to include :
Case
PSU
Processor (q6600? possibly overclock)
Graphics card (radion 4850?)
Hard drive (About 750GB)
RAM (4gb)

I will use the dvd drives from my existing system. i was thinking about having two hard drives in the system (second to come from my current com(250gb))to allow me to have a back up of important documents.

I think that’s everything but it probably isn’t

. Thanks for any help you can give me everyone.

Tute · 19 Aug 2008 at 01:10

Hey. \o.

The first decision when building a SFF system is the case. There are a number to choose from, the cream of the crop being the likes of the Silverstone Sugo SG01 Evolution, Silverstone Sugo SG03, Lian-Li V350, Thermaltake Lanbox, and the Aspire X-Qpack. They're all around the same price, have good cooling, and take mATX boards with full size PSUs so really it's just a case of which design you like the best.

For CPU i'd take a quad-core for design software, something like a Q6600 would suit you fine.

Motherboard, well, I have the Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R and it's a brilliant little board, probably the best all-rounder available. It might well be overkill if you're not overclocking though.

For storage, a couple of Samsung F1 drives (500GB each?) would do.

And RAM - if you're overclocking, get a nice PC6400 or faster kit. If not, then the cheapest 4GB kit will suffice.

I don't know what graphics cards are good for design personally, hopefully someone can help you there. I don't know if the current "high end" cards are any good for the work you do.

Guardsmon · 19 Aug 2008 at 18:29

If you wondering why you haven't had more replies its because tute did a pretty fine job of rounding it up. Though I wouldn't go more than PC6400 for a Q6600 unless you planning on pushing it past 3.4 - its would be pointless.
If you're going m-atx it might be a better idea to get 1 Samsung F1 1TB instead of the 2x 500, it would allow you to put your old 250GB in - would give you more space for your money + the added 16mb cache that comes with the 1TB over the 500GB, but if you had 2x 500GB you could setup them up in raid 1 to give you backups of everything.

Might be worth a look at the GA-G33M-S2L - little cheaper than the one tute listed but still good board.

Graphics wise. Possibly a matrox P69-MDDE128LPF. I've just installed one in work and the guy seems happy with it. We also installed a few fireGL's a few months back, but we had issues with 4GB of ram with them, not sure why. Might be worth a look at the new FireGL's (ours model was about 2yrs old) and the nvidia quadro series.
Sorry but again not too clued up on cards for your sort of work.

Guardsmon · 19 Aug 2008 at 18:32

On cases I'd have to go for a V350B or a sugo 01 (I'm a lian li boy who has a fondness for the sugo 01

) Other one to note that tute missed was the NZXT Rogue, but thats a big ole ugly thing

firestrike · 20 Aug 2008 at 13:56

thanks for all the replies. After having a look through them ive come up with a rough spec below. I dont suppose someone would mind having a quick look through it please.

Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £76.99
(£90.46) £76.99
(£90.46)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £99.99
(£117.49) £99.99
(£117.49)
GeIL 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz Black Dragon DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GB24GB6400C5DC) £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
Lian-Li V350B Aluminium Mini-Tower - Black £76.99
(£90.46) £76.99
(£90.46)
Akasa AK-P040FG8-BKUK 400W Green Power 80+ £43.99
(£51.69) £43.99
(£51.69)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 2.40GHz Guaranteed to run at 3.00GHZ (1333FSB) - Retail £105.99
(£124.54) £105.99
(£124.54)
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R Micro ATX (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Sub Total : £508.93

Total : £610.86

I am not sure how powerful i would need the PSU to be. I am also still curious about the shuttle systems though they do seem a bit limiting and expensive. ohhh and 1 more thing, what is the reliablity of the radeon drives like now as ive heard a few problems? am i better sticking with nvidea