Hi,

Was wondering if anyone built a pc recently? Im in the market for one after 5-6years and I've been out of the lingo. I believe Im looking for something which has most performance per ££. Its going to be used for some fairly heavy graphical work but little or no gaming. Looking at something of an i5 with 8gb ram, but thats as far as i got.

So if anyone has built a pc recently could you care to share some recommendations? Budget I suppose is cheap as possible, but not looking anything over £350-400. Im wanting dual screens for this set up so ideally to have some left over cash from the build to fund for better screens if possible.

Thanks!

i5 2500k, 8GB RAM to start off with.

What sort of graphical work, cause you've not really got the budget for a new rig and screens.

If your looking at an i5 setup with dual screens your going to have to rethink your budget in a big way

Sorry, i havent made it very clear , i've set aside around 250 for screens (& 350-400 budget for desktop) but would like to spend more if possible by spending just enough to get by for now in the desktop spec, i can always upgrade internals later.

Hi,

Was wondering if anyone built a pc recently? Im in the market for one after 5-6years and I've been out of the lingo. I believe Im looking for something which has most performance per ££. Its going to be used for some fairly heavy graphical work but little or no gaming. Looking at something of an i5 with 8gb ram, but thats as far as i got.

So if anyone has built a pc recently could you care to share some recommendations? Budget I suppose is cheap as possible, but not looking anything over £350-400. Im wanting dual screens for this set up so ideally to have some left over cash from the build to fund for better screens if possible.

Thanks!

i5 with 8gig is achiveable for 350-400 - as babs says, go for the 2500K these also have pretty reasonable on-chip gfx although not sure how it would work with graphical work (2d or 3d?)

A good place to start is SCAN - they often have bundles on their Today-only offers..

IE this weekend they have:

• Thermaltake Dokker Black Mid Tower Case with built in HDD Hotswap Docking for 3.5/2.5" SATA w/o PSU
  
• 650W PSU, Coolermaster GX RS650-ACAAE3-UK, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, SLI/CrossFire, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX v2.31
  
• Intel Core i5 2500K Unlocked, S1155, Sandy Bridge, Quad, 3.3GHz, HD3000 IGP 850Mhz, 6MB Cache 95W Retail
  
• Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3, Intel Z68, S 1155, DDR3, SATA III - 6Gb/s, RAID SATA, PCIe 2.0 (x16), VGA On Board, ATX
  
• 8GB (2x4GB) Kingston DDR3 HyperX Genesis Grey, PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-27, XMP, 1.5V
  

All for 365quid - just add a HDD and your sorted.

Of course the above assumes you dont already have a suitable case and beefy modern PSU.

£250 is one decent 22" screen though!

You could try either of these as a starting point.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/barebones/bb-i524gc.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/barebones/bb-81208b.html

John

If you can wait for an Ivy bridge, then the unlocked i7 version seems to overclock very well. Aledgedly to the tune of about 100%

If you are serious about the graphics work, you will want to spend more than that on screens IMO. Better to have one very good screen than 2 cheap ones too.

Chris

i5 2500k, 8GB RAM to start off with.

That's my system, I can confirm it packs a punch. Fit a decent cooler and thermal paste (I've got a Coolermaster HyperX 212 and Arctic Silver 5 respectively) and I can overclock it to 4.3 GHz (from 3.3 GHz) with absolutely no increase in voltage; warmest I've ever got a core is 57'c. 8 GB RAM will be more than enough, don't even use all of mine. Remember that you will need Win7 x64. For RAM I recommend Corsair but I am using GSkill at present and it seems fine; whatever you get 12800 is the speed to have as faster ones don't offer much benefit unless you know how to enable them properly.

As for HDD, I really rate my 1 GB Samsung Spinpoint F3, you won't be able to go SSD on your budget (also don't bother paying extra for a SATA 6GB HDD, SATA II is more than fast enough for a magnetic drive). Western Digital's Caviar Blue is okay if you're on a budget, Caviar Black is good but a wee bit noisier (don't get Caviar Green, they're 5400 rpm drives and hence should be avoided!)

Don't scrimp on the power supply, make sure you get a decent one because the cheapie ones all go pop within 18 months; the ones with the highest wattage are not always the best! I recommend Corsair for PSUs although they are pricey if you want a modular one. Avoid any PSU with a gold case, they're a bad omen!

Don't bother paying extra for a Z68 motherboard unless you plan on using the onboard graphics. If you are getting any kind of graphics card, the P67 is just fine (just make sure it is a B3 stepping revision, otherwise you will get problems). I'd recommend avoiding the H67 as you cannot overclock with it. For motherboards I recommend Gigabyte and Asus. I've had bad experiences with DFI. MSI are supposedly good but I'm suspicious of them. For overclocking try and get a motherboard with more than 4 phase power.

Edited 26 February, 201214 yr by ckyliu

Actually, thinking about graphics cards, if you intend to go to a big high res screen at some time in the future, make sure it has a Dual Link DVI-D connector on it as the popular analogue, HDMI and DVI-I cannot cope with big graphics monitors.

Chris

Actually, thinking about graphics cards, if you intend to go to a big high res screen at some time in the future, make sure it has a Dual Link DVI-D connector on it as the popular analogue, HDMI and DVI-I cannot cope with big graphics monitors.

Chris

DVI-I can drive a dual link monitor (using one right now to type this reply on a Dell U2711) but confusingly the port is the same regardless of whether it supports single or dual link so the spec needs to be checked to make sure what resolutions it supports.

John

DVI-I can drive a dual link monitor (using one right now to type this reply on a Dell U2711) but confusingly the port is the same regardless of whether it supports single or dual link so the spec needs to be checked to make sure what resolutions it supports.

John

I think you are right at the top of what the DVI can drive there. General advice is to run anything bigger than 1920x1200 on DVI-D. For fairly heavy graphical work you are going to want to go large eventually and some big screens are specifically specified to run DVI-D only. My Hazro 30" job manual specifically states that the monitor must not be run from the DVI-I port regardless of supported resolutions. Mind the screens at that size are the most expensive part of the setup.

Chris

DVI-D and DVI-I are simply physical ports with the difference being that a DVI-I port contains the extra pins to allow VGA output through an adapter, a dual link DVI-I port has exactly the same digital output capabilities as a dual link DVI-D port as that function comes from the TMDS transmitters. The U2711 has a 2560x1440 resolution which is far beyond what single DVI can output (1920x1200 with reduced blanking) so if the ports did not support dual link, I wouldn't be able to drive the monitor at it's maximum resolution. I have set up several 30in 2560x1600 systems and every one of them uses DVI-I ports because that is what most graphics cards currently use to give them the flexibiltiy of both analogue and digital output, each of them run at the full resolution without issue which they could not do without dual link capability. I actually can't think of any graphics cards I've seen the in last few years that use DVI-D ports rather than DVI-I, Dell and Clevo at point were fitting separate DVI-D and VGA ports but single link, when Dell moved to dual link (from the M1710 to the M1730) they dropped the VGA port and offered the combined DVI-I port. Monitors on the other hand always use a DV-D port, I haven't come across any with a DVI-I port but I assume analogue input on a DVI-I port isn't part of the spec. What is confusing is that both single link and dual link DVI-I ports are physically the same in that they don't omit the central pins which they don't use but it's also the same with DVI-D ports both on monitors and PCs.

John

Might be worth getting this months Custom PC. i5 2500k system for around £360. think it might have only had 4gb so not much more to lift it up.

biggest killer in PC im finding the now is hard discs prices have shot up 300% in the last year with the flooding in Taiwan

Extra 4GB is only £40 anyway

Extra 4GB is only £40 anyway

You mean 8gb is only £40

That's well cheap!

I suppose the last RAM I bought was DDR2...

Extra 4GB is only £40 anyway

Well 240 Pin DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz isc £47 ,so not far off ( Mr Memory).

Sometimes Maplin do B grade bundles ,or Aria is another place to look.There's always overclockers ( think its .co.uk) .

As said ,lots of graphics - get a beefy ,hi end ,good name PSU, or you'll end up with problems .

Lol update on this i suppose, I got the 2500k i5, 8gb 1600mhz, Asus P8Z68 mobo and a case (Coolmaster with 500w psu) for ~£335, suppose you could call it bare bone essentials. My old HDD runs at 3gbs so it seems ok. HD3000 onboard gfx runs fine with most applications and even bf3 on low visuals. OC'd to 4.3ghz for a short while but the stock cooler wasn't really up for the job. Finding a budget cooler for some ocing in the near future, and a gfx card bit of gaming eventually. overall a very good buy imo, thanks everyone

Anyway if this is still going... itll be worth holding off now, as the news in the camp is Intel are officially releasing IvyBridge on the 23rd of this month.. - CPUs have around 15% performance improvement clock for clock, MUCH (50-100%) better GPU performance and also much lower power consumption