Build a new PC (def DIY)

OK .. after recent thread I started on PC...upgrade, and the storm of emails on s/ware

Decided that I will not upgrade that PC to W7 but leave as is on VISTA and donate it as new family PC ... and build myself a new one, last time I did this you had to sit there feeding in floppy disks to load DOS and then same for Windows 3.1 .. this was around 1993

Last few PC's have been package builds bought from Dell.

This time I want to build up again, and it now seems that once again you can get better performance & spec for same cost, it did go the other way.

Some basics are that I will use an ASUS mother board .. but no idea whether to go Intel or AMD Probably Quad core .. I'll put in a pair of 500GB HDD (have a 2TB DNS drive already)

4 GB at least of RAM nVidia Geoforce GPU (probably GTX 500 series) Need USB 2 & firewire connectivity Maybe a video capture card Windows 7

Use is general business work, video editing, Photoshop ........not into gaming. If anybody has any recommended sites for current PC specs / or build your own recommendations .. please let me know.

Also if anybody cares to recommend processor, motherboard or graphics card choice happy to learn.

Reply to
Rick Hughes
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Buy a copy of Custom PC. They give recommendations for all the bits you need for different types of computer. However, wait until the next issue comes out - the current one omits details of processors and motherboards, pending new processors that are due out soon.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

An excellent choice. I have 2 ASUS boards at home, but when I worked at a college that "made their own" by the 100 (we tested a design, then outsourced the assembly of the other 99) ASUS were consistently reliable and worked well with windows and linux. That was mid 2000's mind.

I've had good results with both down the line. My advice is stick to i3 unless money no object. When I spec'd my Lenovo laptop last summer, i5 had bugger all over an i3 in benchmarks and i7 was overpriced.

Spend the difference on a better (faster) disk, and/or more RAM.

I've had good reults with WD and Hitachi and Seagate still aren't bad.

Worth getting a decent brand - Kingston or Crucial are both generally good and Crucial have a good website for locating the correct RAM for a particular mohterboard.

Out of date on those - video changes by the minute.

USB2 standard, fireware whould not be hard to find in the ASUS range.

Pass

Reply to
Tim Watts

Turning the question around for a moment how much do you want to spend? And if not for gaming why do you want it to be so very fast?

If you are not into gaming, but are into video editing then you might want to consider adding SSD and more ram. There are some pretty good pre built deals to be had if you know what you want and don't get sidetracked.

First off decide how much you are willing to pay. The sweet spot for the moment in price performance is probably still around the i5 unless you want to burn loads of money for a modest increase in performance. There is the odd affordable i7 now, but the sky is the limit for how much extra you can pay for the final 10% increase in performance.

Depending how much faith you put in benchmarks try:

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Reply to
Martin Brown

Hard drives have gone up to "how much!?!" prices recently due to the Thai flooding. So you may want to see if you can manage with an existing drive for a little while, as 2x500GB HDs will currently cost you about 200 quid.

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Rick Hughes wrote, on 09/11/2011 21:56: [...]

There are, obviously, a great many "review" sites for computer components, motherboards, etc. I've found the following sites to have been more consistent in their evaluations than many other sites in the past but, inevitably, YMMV.

You might wish also to consider the Ars Technica guide to systems, if you haven't already, the last of which I can find was published in March

2011. It can provide some stimulus for further thought about what you want out of your new system, and future-proofing. I suggest that the issues of overall performance and compatibility are as much about the supporting chipset as they are about the CPU itself, which is where painstaking research into the detailed differences between motherboards may pay dividends.
Reply to
Dave N

Yup, safe choice. What I use for systems I care about. AsRock and MSI for lower end ones seem quite decent as well.

In spite of being historically an AMD fan I would say that Intel probably still have the performance edge.

Yup

No point spending any more than you need to at the moment - hard drive prices are silly. You won't edit a huge amount of video with 500GB but it will do. If you need performance and are not relying on them for critical storage, then get a PCI raid card (don't bother with a mobo with onboard RAID, since if you need to move the drives to a new platform its a darn sight easier to take the controller with you!) and set the drives up as a stripe set.

Ram is cheap, 64 bit windows allows access to plenty, so you could go for 8 to start with if you are playing with recent versions of photoshop. Even 4 can start to feel small.

Not that important what you go for if you don't need high end 3D performance.

Can probably find firewire and video capture on the same card. (failing that an external camcorder with firewire and analogue in will make a good video capture solution)

64 bit.

If you take an i3-2100 dual core as a baseline, and compatible mobo, then you can step up to i5 quad core for about 60, and i7 quad for about

130 (prices ex VAT).

Video editing is one of those tasks that will take any horsepower you can throw at it, so personally I would spend the money on the i7.

(my C2Q 9550 box will do video work a good deal faster than real time, but its still not really quick enough for intensive work)

Reply to
John Rumm

Both my PCs here are home built with ASUS boards. One had some kind of CPU temperature sensor problem which caused it to shut down - with the actual CPU temp ok. Had to replace the MB.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

If you want to do that, get a real PCIe hardware raid card. Most of the cheap PCI cards and motherboards are 'fakeraid'... ie software RAID which doesn't get you any performance win. But the disc format does tie to in to that particular type of card. In that case it's better to use the OS' software RAID, so at least you can move them to a new platform without having to cart the (usually lame) controller around. (Assuming Windows 7 will do software RAID, Linux will)

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Using a small SSD for C: wil get you a big performance boost to, and theyre not expensive now

NT

Reply to
NT

I have windoze 7 64 bit. Google to make sure the software you want to use is OK with 64 bit. Some does not like it.

Reply to
Hugh - Was Invisible

If you got for Win Pro then you can always run anything that does not work in XP compatibility mode (in effect a virtual XP machine).

Reply to
John Rumm

Yup, that's why I prefer having a dedicated card, so you don't get problems when a mobo dies and then you can't shift the RAID volumes to another controller.

Not sure how much performance gain you get using the OS route - must admit I have not tried it for a long time. When I first built my machine that does some video editing, I went for a pair of striped 300GB drives, and got close to double the single drive transfer rate. However I was able to replace them with just a single 1TB a few years later, and that could out perform the previous stripe set all by itself!

Reply to
John Rumm

Yup, I managed to breathe some new life into my development/office machine by doing that. Its a Pentium 4 3GHz HT jobbie that was starting to get a bit passed it. Slapping a 64GB SSD in to replace the boot and applications partitions, has made quite a notable difference in many activities.

Had one built for a customer a while back with a modern CPU and SSD for boot/apps, and conventional HDD for music etc... that really did motor along quite nicely.

SSDs are just under the £/GB at the mo, so given the daft cost of HDDs not a bad move.

Reply to
John Rumm

If you're not doing any 3D stuff then you really don't need a separate graphics card. Integrated graphics will be fine. You'll need to save a bit to be able to afford a hard disk!

For video editing and photoshop you'll need plenty of memory and a decent CPU.

Get good brands for motherboard, PSU, memory & hard disk. It's not worth cutting corners.

With regards to a video capture card then I assume you are talking about analogue since digital does not really need a capture card. Don't cut corners here either. IME cheap analogue cards are all crap. I've not done any analogue for ages but the USB ones were to be avoided. The Canopus stuff was very good but I am not up to date on this market now.

It will always certainly be cheaper to buy a pre-built PC but you are unlikely to get exactly what you want. PC builders often put crap PSUs and motherboards in anyhow.

I like a quiet PC so will choose components with passive cooling or intelligent fan control.

Reply to
Mark

Don't need it to be 'very' fast, but want a good spec, that can handle HD editing ........ my current PC (Intel core 2 6600 2.4Ghz) flat lines on HD video, often failing to render at all ... so just want to have a PC that can process fast enough. Coupled with a good video card

Reply to
Rick Hughes

Using a small SSD for C: wil get you a big performance boost to, and theyre not expensive now

Not even considered that ... are they reliable ? assume they would be faster access.... and obviously need it to be reasonably large, assume around 100GB

Reply to
Rick Hughes

+1 However even a basic Nvidia card at 30 quid will give 10x or better speed and means that annoying window smears simply don't happen even with a relatively slow CPU.

Since starting to play with big graphics and a bit of video, thats what I am always running short of.

However, be aware that CPU speed versus cost is a very nonlinear chart. You can these days fget extremely good CPU at very low cost, and spend a hell of a lot more getting not very much better.

+1

Not the one I use..and the advantage is that old but still good bits like DVD drives keyboards and monitors can be recycled.

And right now disk drives are 'silly money' Use the old ones!

That tends to go against high CPU speed.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I would have thought that nearly all CPUs sold now would be OK there. The OP is looking at quad core and I think they'll all be quick enough.

Who do you use?

If you've got any. I've got loads of old PCs at home, all missing drives. Everyone destroys them nowadays.

I don't tend to buy top end CPUs -- too expensive and I don't really need one.

Reply to
Mark

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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