Buying a desktop computer and need advice

bryan10025

I am buying a desktop computer off a guy i know and i was wondering if anyone has anything to say about it. I am an architecture student looking for a powerful computer for rendering images which can be very intensive on a computer. Do you think this will do the job or should i get higher specs, the specs are as follows.

OS Win Vista Home Premium 64 Bit

Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Cpu 2.83 Ghz 6 MB Cache

Memory 8 Gb Corsair DDR2 800 Mhz Ram

Graphics Dedicated Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Graphics Card 512 MB Gddr4 Ram HDMI HD Audio Pcie 2.0 Support

Motherboard Gigabyte Ga Ep45 Extreme Overclocking MB Supports Intel Core 2 Quad See Online For Description

HDD 500 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM

Monitor Samsung 20 inch LCD Monitor Movie Wide HDCP DVI-D

Speakers Creative Gigaworks T40 Series 2 Speaker System See Online

Wireless Keyboard & Mouse

1x Blue Ray Writer

1x Blue Ray player

Case Coolermaster ATCs 840 Solid 100 per cent Aluminium With Slide Out Motherboard Tray

900 Watt Powewr Supply Energy Efficient


The whole thing is costing me 600 euro.....good deal??

Serephucus

I have that case, and it's lovely. Make sure you have room for it though, it's huge. (W) 243 x (H) 580 x (D) 630 mm. Alone that's worth at least €130.

As to whether it's a good deal, I'm not too sure on what that hardware would go for. Better wait 'til one of the other lads here gives is a look over. Sounds ok to me though.

bryan10025

cool thanks, what i am particularly interested in is the possibility of adding more power or a better processor to it in the future, will that require changing all of the components or is the setup flexible. I am a complete beginner when it comes to this kind of thing, i have only ever owned laptops but its time for more power in my computer!!

Serephucus

If you can get a make and model of the power supply, I can certainly tell you. Odds are though that yes, you could add whatever you like. All connections are standard, it just depends on what power it can deliver.

Tea_Bag

its not going to be very upgradeable tbh. you've got the upper end of the cpus the motherboard can handle, so no go there, and DDR2 ram, so if you wanted to upgrade your CPU in the future, you'll have to get a new motherboard, CPU and RAM.

that said, its going to be hard to beat that value because there is a monitor (albiet small one) included.

what is the upper limit of your budget OP?

bryan10025

im afraid this is all the info i have with regards to the power supply, the guy i am getting it from builds computers for lots of poeple and this in one he built for himself a year ago, so presumably it is a good quallity machine! My budget is pretty tiny, i am a final year college student so cant really afford anything, my own laptop died the other day so i am loking for a quick replacement, since this one is already made up it seems like my best option.

I was thinking the motherboard was kind of maxed out from the little knowledge i have of this kind of thing, still a good starter that i can work on in the future, once i get finished college and get a job i will be able to get a new motherboard!

Thanks for all the advice

bryan10025

One last question, could i upgrade the graphics card......would here be much benefit to doing so??

Serephucus

Yes, and yes. In that build, the main bottleneck is going to be the graphics card. It's ok, but it's quite old at this point, and your power supply could - most likely, this is why I was wondering what model it was - support a newer GPU as well.

Monotype

A little too dear. If you were able to find a cheap second hand hard drive (new ones are extremely overpriced just now), you could build an equivalent system with the same functionality and newer features (including a better graphics card).
What might drive up the value is a blu ray reader drive and and blue ray writer - is this really necessary? If you were to buy this, you could sell the reader (or the writer if you have no plans to use it). Also, a 900W PSU for this system is ridiculous. If it is actually a good quality one, it could be worth a bit. It might be a really bad one though.

bryan10025

Well the guy builds computers for lots of people i know so maybe i could ask for a better graphics card if in return for the blue ray reader and writer which i relly dont need. What PSU should i be looking for if you think the 900w one is not right?

akazzz

With your needs, I would suggest getting a ssd.

Good ssd brands to look for Crucial, Corsair and Intel. The amount of storage is up to you.

Alkers

What programme do you use for rendering? Would be worthwhile finding out what spec they recommend? Not sure if it's CPU or GPU intensive.

bryan10025

i would use maxwell render and v ray for rendering, i use sketch up and rhyno for 3d drawings, auto cad for 2d drawings as well as photoshop, indesign and illustrator.

There seems to be a lot of issues with the computer i have been looking at so basically i have been thinking about it and my budget is around seven or eight hundred euro for the whole lot, i dont need any blue ray player or writer or any of that stuff, what do you guys recommend for around that price?

The guy selling it is a friend of ours so he said he could lend me this computer while he builds me another so i can get it custom made for what i need!!

Tea_Bag

€800 you say?

Job done. im a little drunk so wait for a second opinion from Monotype, Serephucus, Deconduo, IMH etc to give a second heads up, but im pretty sure i covered all bases.



Total build cost: €720.04 + €30 shipping
BenQ G2420HDBL (9H.Y3VLN.IBE) €149.00
Intel Core i5-2400 Box, LGA1155 €168.71
BitFenix Merc Beta €31.96
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W €40.88
Sapphire HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express €121.85
8GB-Kit GeIL Enhance Corsa PC3-10667U CL9-9-9-24 (DDR3-1333) €31.28
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA €15.23
Gigabyte GA-PA65-UD3-B3, Intel H61, ATX €71.23
Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000.C 500GB, 16MB, SATA II, 8,9cm (3,5") €89.90

onfortunatly, the HDD's are a blatant RIP OFF, so if you have any spare or can source any second hand, i strongly recommend getting this SSD instead. its only 64gb though.

Windows 7 can be bought here. This will eat your old build for breakfast, and then some.

bryan10025

Now that certainly looks more promising, i reckon it would be worth the extra few euro as it would be much easier to expand upon in the future without replacing the entire thing!! Thanks for the help, would appreciate if anyone could give me another oppinion on that set up.......as tea bag pointed out, he was a bit drunk!!HA

Monotype

Looks mostly fine. I wouldn't be fond of the RAM purely on looks, but that's probably why I've seen it dropping in price everywhere. The only cheaper RAM doesn't have heatsinks at all so it's good value.

The H61 board is fairly expensive and approaching the cheap P67 boards.
What I would do is either
-cut back on the board and save your money (lose out on a few features but still pretty much the same performance)
-spend the extra €30 to unleash the awesome power of the 2500K + P67
A third option might be to get a high quality board and throw in an i3 or something to upgrade down the line.

bryan10025

Well here is a p67 for only ten euro more,

http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=48248&agid=1601

would this be worth while, i am right on the limit of my budget as it is!

Monotype

The advantage with the P67 and Z68 chipsets over H61 and H67 is that you can overclock processors - but the only processors that you can overclock are the "K" ones, the cheapest being the 2500K. You can very easily get an extra 25% speed with overclocking. With this much power, you'd be unlikely to need upgrading for the processor for a very long time. The 2400 is still very powerful and is plenty for games so even with that, you wouldn't be upgrading for a while.
Just to clarify: the P67 board has no marginal value on its own unless you upgrade to a K processor down the line.

You should definitely look into getting a cheaper hard drive if you could find one as a lot of your money is leaking away with this.

bryan10025

Cool, i understand now, i have found a cheaper hard drive, 1tb for fifty four euro, so i can ofset what i save on the hard drive by upgrading to the i5 2500k processor and the p67!

Great advice from everyone, its been so helpful!!

bryan10025

Tea_Bag wrote: »

€800 you say?

Job done. im a little drunk so wait for a second opinion from Monotype, Serephucus, Deconduo, IMH etc to give a second heads up, but im pretty sure i covered all bases.



Total build cost: €720.04 + €30 shipping
BenQ G2420HDBL (9H.Y3VLN.IBE) €149.00
Intel Core i5-2400 Box, LGA1155 €168.71
BitFenix Merc Beta €31.96
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W €40.88
Sapphire HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express €121.85
8GB-Kit GeIL Enhance Corsa PC3-10667U CL9-9-9-24 (DDR3-1333) €31.28
Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA €15.23
Gigabyte GA-PA65-UD3-B3, Intel H61, ATX €71.23
Hitachi DESKSTAR 7K1000.C 500GB, 16MB, SATA II, 8,9cm (3,5") €89.90

onfortunatly, the HDD's are a blatant RIP OFF, so if you have any spare or can source any second hand, i strongly recommend getting this SSD instead. its only 64gb though.

Windows 7 can be bought here. This will eat your old build for breakfast, and then some.

just wondering what the deal is with the the windows seven upgrade pack, i have it on my laptop which i am not using anymore, any way of transfering the account across to the new computer?

Monotype

You can't usually transfer the license over but you can do clean installs with the upgrade. There's guides online if you search.

mcgarrett

As Bryan seems to have his answers maybe I could jump in and ask opinions on this for value.

It's on the Dell website and will be used for some gaming and video editing. Cost is 580 Euro.

Any feedback appreciated.

XPS 8300 Desktop


Base Intel® Core™ i5-2320 Processor (3.00GHz, 6MB) Microsoft Operating System English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT) Memory 6144MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x2048 + 2x1024] Memory Video Card Graphics : 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6450 Hard Drive 1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm) Optical Devices DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD) with Roxio and DVD Burn software Sound Cards Sound : Integrated 7.1 with THX® TruStudio

Tij da feen

mcgarrett wrote: »

As Bryan seems to have his answers maybe I could jump in and ask opinions on this for value.

It's on the Dell website and will be used for some gaming and video editing. Cost is 580 Euro.

Any feedback appreciated.

XPS 8300 Desktop


Base Intel® Core™ i5-2320 Processor (3.00GHz, 6MB) Microsoft Operating System English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT) Memory 6144MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x2048 + 2x1024] Memory Video Card Graphics : 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6450 Hard Drive 1TB Serial ATA (7,200 rpm) Optical Devices DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD) with Roxio and DVD Burn software Sound Cards Sound : Integrated 7.1 with THX® TruStudio

I'm just going to give a guess and say it's not the best value you could get. Make a new thread, post that build again, and answer these questions afterwards .