Theo or Polaris?

Nor

Nor

Nor

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Theo

Polaris

Asked a few questions before, but ready to make a purchase now.

What I want from the PC is:

  • Silent
  • Can run HD video
  • Will run Windows 7 reasonably quickly at 1920x1200.
  • Mostly for surfing/working. Photoshop is probably most intensive thing it'll do
  • Doesn't have to excel at gaming

Many thanks in advance, and grateful for any component changes suggested.
 
tbh id give a slight advantage to the Polaris just because its an amd, from my experience amd dual cores are very slightly better than intel pentium dual cores.
if you want it mainly for photoshop/other then id still go for the polaris.

hope this helps

however i really dislike the idea of a 4850 even tho its a great little gaming card, it is prone to overheating (from my experience) so watch out.
 
Thanks for the reply fella. I could perhaps look at increasing the spec of the GPU then. Any suggestions?
 
Those are not going to be silent. Fairly good chance they wont even be quiet. However this is subjective.

I'd be looking at a matx core two duo system in the antec mini p180. Use the onboard video, a G45 chipset is quite capable of hd playback and the G35 one probably is too
 
Get the polaris as its more futureproof, although it uses ddr2 which means (chances are) if you want to upgrade you will need a new motherboard. Have you considered building?
 
mtb_kng said:
Get the polaris as its more futureproof, although it uses ddr2 which means (chances are) if you want to upgrade you will need a new motherboard. Have you considered building?
Click to expand...

Aye, I've built all my systems in the past. Just thought OCUK would do the clever thinking for me component-wise. You reckon I could get a more tuned system for my needs if I did it myself?
 
Yes, you might even save a few quid. look at my signature, that only cost me £190 (without that hard drive).
 
The case is this one, which does seem expensive. However the build I did in it a few weeks ago made less noise than the crt beside it. I was really pleased with this.

The spec I built to was determined in this thread. it is probably not appropriate for you, but would be a solid starting point.

At £338 delivered,

Antec mini p180
Intel G41 matx board
e8400
4gb cl5 corsair w/ some form of heatspreaders
Corsair 400W
Akasa alpine pro

The motherboard is not an overclocking one, I'd suggest the asus p5e-vm or a gigabyte matx board if you have this in mind. Similarly the cpu cooler is a quiet one rather than a high performance, i used it without the fan and relied on case airflow. hit 60 under load, which is fine. Processor may be overkill, the e7*00 series will save you money and run pretty much as well. Better if clocked.

This system would be overspecified for your intended use, but is a starting point. The case + psu went together very well, and 4gb of corsair 800 is fairly standard. The intel board was chosen because I don't ever want to have to do any maintainence on the system if I can help it.
 
In case you wanted to build it yourself:

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD3P AMD 790X (Socket AM3/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £82.00
(£71.30) £82.00
(£71.30)
AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 545 3.0GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £70.99
(£61.73) £70.99
(£61.73)
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel (KHX6400D2LLK2/4G) £49.99
(£43.47) £49.99
(£43.47)
NZXT BETA Classic Series Case - Black (No PSU) £45.99
(£39.99) £45.99
(£39.99)
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD5001AALS) £43.99
(£38.25) £43.99
(£38.25)
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £42.99
(£37.38) £42.99
(£37.38)
Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £18.99
(£16.51) £18.99
(£16.51)
Sub Total : £308.63
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £48.06
Total : £368.44
 
Thanks lad, been mulling this over last week. Reckon I prefer the AMD Jon so going to go down that route.

Super, looking at your spec, am I missing a video card? Cheers.
 
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