Buying a new Desktop

[poorquality]

Hi everyone, after many attempts at building a system I am happy with I decided to head to the forum and ask those who know more than myself. I was hoping someone could help me put together the best overall desktop for a maximum of £1,000.

The PC in question will be mainly used for graphic design/multimedia, a lot of work within the Adobe CS5 Suite and music production within Ableton Live, working off of 2 monitors. So I think I'm looking for a good processor, decent RAM and a good quality graphics card and a large HDD.

I've seen the Intel i7 hexa-core processors, and I really want one, or the AMD one! As far as RAM goes I was looking at 8GB min, but hopefully around 16GB, and from what I read on the forums so far, there's no real benefit to 1600mhz ram over 1333?

The HDD I've been eyeing up is 750GB with 64MB Cache and 7,200 RPM.

As far as graphics goes, am I right in thinking the Radeon's are cheaper than the Nvidia cards? Is the difference massively noticeable? I wouldn't know what to pick so some advice here would be awesome, preferably something that runs games at a high level, but is capable of outputting to multiple screens.

Power supply varies between 600-650W depending on the various setups I've tried.

The soundcard I'm looking at is the X-Fi titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series.

Also worth noting I don't require an Operating System so that knocks the price down by £79 lol

As you may be able to tell, building a PC is not my area of expertise, I would appreciate anyone having the time to help me put together a system, as I say it has to be a maximum of £1,000 which I'm assuming I can get a pretty decent system for that? I have a tendency to pick the parts that seem 'shiniest' (3.4ghz over 3.2 just because it's more!) so I'd appreciate a kick in the right direction as to the spec I would really need within budget if anyone has the spare time to help

NOTE: I was contemplating posting this in the spec section of the forum but thought as I don't officially have an official spec ready for critique it probably would be better put here, but please let me know otherwise.

 

[Wozza63]

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 650D GAMING CASE


Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X6 1100T (3.30GHz/9MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION


Motherboard
ASUS® M5A99X EVO:USB 3.0, SATA 6.0Gb/s, Quad CrossFireX™/SLI™


Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)


Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item

Free Item
FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above!


Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)


1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM


Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)


Processor Cooling
TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)


Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)


Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs


USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD


Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED


Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE


Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE


Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)


Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)


Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days

this is £978.00 so additions can be made, this will max pretty much every latest game and give you plenty of power for your work, please be aware the GTX 570 supports a max of 2 screens

 

[poorquality]

Thanks for the suggestion, my only concern that I can noticeably see is the Soundcard is on board, but as you say there is some room to maneuver in the price so I can look around those settings.

 

[Wozza63]

i didnt notice you were doing music production, the onboard sound these days thoguh is pretty awesome and the mobo will have all the ports you need including optical, it may be worth trying it out and then if you dont think its that great then give PCS a ring and ask for the card you want

 

[poorquality]

That's not a bad idea thanks, I could also transfer my current card over if necessary.

The AMD processor is much cheaper than the Intel one's, is there a massive difference in quality?

 

[Wozza63]

meh its debatable, you could get an i5/i7 if you want but it will be more expensive

ill see what i can do for intel

 

[Wozza63]

Case
FRACTAL DESIGN R3 - BLACK PEARL CASE


Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics


Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, NVIDIA®SLI™, ATI®CrossFireX


Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)


Graphics Card
1.25GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 570 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item

Free Item
FREE Batman Arkham City with any Nvidia® GeForce GTX560 or above!


Memory - 1st Hard Disk
750GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD7502AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)


1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM


Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)


Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)


Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)


Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs


USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD


Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED


Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE


Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE


Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)


Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)


Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days

£1,019.00 got worse parts in some ways all for a processor, worth it?

 

[poorquality]

Thanks you're a star, I think I'll stick with AMD then, as even though it's only £19 over budget, it's still over and that eats into my monitor budget so the first option seems better. Might wait to see if anyone else wants to weigh in before ordering it though, but now I have a solid base to go on, thanks again

 

[poorquality]

Sorry for the double post but as I put it together I noticed you picked an expensive case (£145) now this does fall within budget, but is there anything special about this particular case meaning I should get it rather than say... NZXT Phantom White Gaming Case at £109? I prefer the look of the Phantom White case but thought I should enquire first as to the differences...

 

[Tony1951]

I have just bought a new soundcard believe me they are worth the extra.

 

[Wozza63]

Sorry for the double post but as I put it together I noticed you picked an expensive case (£145) now this does fall within budget, but is there anything special about this particular case meaning I should get it rather than say... NZXT Phantom White Gaming Case at £109? I prefer the look of the Phantom White case but thought I should enquire first as to the differences...

i picked a quiet case for you as i thought it was going to be a workstation, the phantom is fine if you wish to get it both will be fine

 

[poorquality]

I have just bought a new soundcard believe me they are worth the extra.

Yeah I think I'll transfer my existing one from this desktop to the new one for now...

i picked a quiet case for you as i thought it was going to be a workstation, the phantom is fine if you wish to get it both will be fine

Ah ok, well it will be used for work as well as play, but it's in the home setting, is the Phantom particularly noisy then?

 

[Wozza63]

depends, that case uses a fan controller and you can make it either really loud or quiet, but i dont recommend putting it on silent when working on intense stuff

 

[NMEBowen]

i have a phantom with every fan slot filled,i dont really have to increase fan speed as nothing goes over 65c and its preety quiet the keyboad makes more noise typing as does the cavier black hdd but on full fan settings my temps drop drastically but the noise is more like one of those big swival fans even with silent fans. personally music production wise id go for the silent case as no matter how much sound proofing you use the phantom will still be loader due to the 3 massive 200mm fans i have fitted. my digi cam doesnt have sound recording otherwise id post some video`s for you.

 

[poorquality]

Alright thanks guys, I'll go with the first option then since it's noticeably quieter. I'm going to hold out until next Thursday if I can to order it just in case anyone else suggests something on top of your suggestions.

 

[poorquality]

I have just seen that I can now have a Bulldozer EIGHT-core 3.6ghz processor with AMD, and it falls within budget along with previously mentioned spec... should I take the leap?

 

[NMEBowen]

it may well be a good chip but you wont be taking full advantage of it untill windows 8 and more multicore programs come out next year but when they do i should imagine this chip is a monster .

 

[poorquality]

Hm tempting. I'm sorry to be annoying but is there any chance you could suggest the best laptop I could get within the same budget (£1000)? I'm weighing up my options, portability is a massive bonus but I'm guessing I'll never get a laptop that is any good compared to the desktop?

 

[NMEBowen]

il let someone else post a spec but when buying a laptop the majority of times upgrading means buying a completly different laptop as far as mobility goes your better off getting a mid size tower and a lan bag, yes it will be heavy carrying your pc,monitor and peripherals but 9/10 if your gaming you still need to plug in your pc so as i said your better off just lugging your whole desktop to a mates etc. im currently buying a thermaltake level 10 gt (a massive case) but it has a carry handle and with some little cables you can buy on many sites you can make your components safe to carry as i move alot between parents homes and transport is a issue but id much prefer a desktop over a laptop expecially as i can see some 18 hour gaming sessions on the horizon with battlefield 3 and id most likely cook a laptop.

 

[Wozza63]

il let someone else post a spec but when buying a laptop the majority of times upgrading means buying a completly different laptop as far as mobility goes your better off getting a mid size tower and a lan bag, yes it will be heavy carrying your pc,monitor and peripherals but 9/10 if your gaming you still need to plug in your pc so as i said your better off just lugging your whole desktop to a mates etc. im currently buying a thermaltake level 10 gt (a massive case) but it has a carry handle and with some little cables you can buy on many sites you can make your components safe to carry as i move alot between parents homes and transport is a issue but id much prefer a desktop over a laptop expecially as i can see some 18 hour gaming sessions on the horizon with battlefield 3 and id most likely cook a laptop.

lol i think the weight difference is somewhere between 2-3 tonnes difference..