PC for circa €450

Polymorpheus

I'm thinking a PC (tower only) at around this price might be cheaper pre-built?

1. What is your budget? €450

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Mainly 2D design/graphics creation. Occasional 3D work with Blender, but nothing too intensive.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes - Windows 8. In an ideal world I'd be using Linux, except I want to be able to use Sketchbook Pro, Artrage, and certain Adobe products if required.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No.

5. Do you need a monitor? No.

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? I was thinking of buying this (separate from above budget).

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? An external wireless card in preference to an internal PCI wireless card.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No.

8. How can you pay? Debit card.

9. When are you purchasing? As soon as possible.

Addled

Little over budget but could drop down to an i3 to save money

Item|Price
Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2V, mATX, Sockel 1150|€39.51
8GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9|€59.15
FRACTAL DESIGN Gehäuse Core 1000 USB 3.0 black|€31.45
Corsair CX Series Modular CX430M, 430W|€42.63
WD Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€46.80
LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€12.73
Windows 8.1 64Bit Eng Intl (SB-Version) DVD|€82.12
Intel Core i5-4440 Box, LGA1150|€148.29
Netgear Wireless-N 150 USB Adapter|€15.11
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€496.78

truedoom

get a second hand pc.

somthing that was built in the last months.

if it's grapic design you'll need a good processor and lots of ram. maybe a graphics card.

Polymorpheus

truedoom wrote: »

get a second hand pc.

somthing that was built in the last months.

if it's grapic design you'll need a good processor and lots of ram. maybe a graphics card.

Thanks truedom, I'm keeping a look out but think I'll go for a new machine.

Polymorpheus

Addled wrote: »

Little over budget but could drop down to an i3 to save money

Item|Price
Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2V, mATX, Sockel 1150|€39.51
8GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9|€59.15
FRACTAL DESIGN Gehäuse Core 1000 USB 3.0 black|€31.45
Corsair CX Series Modular CX430M, 430W|€42.63
WD Blue 1TB 6Gb's|€46.80
LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€12.73
Windows 8.1 64Bit Eng Intl (SB-Version) DVD|€82.12
Intel Core i5-4440 Box, LGA1150|€148.29
Netgear Wireless-N 150 USB Adapter|€15.11
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€496.78

Thanks for that Addled. I'm thinking I might extend my budget to €600 to allow for a half-decent graphics card and a 120GB SSD (replacing the 1TB Sata - I have a 1TB external USB 3.0 drive for storage).

Crucial M500 120GB SATA 6GB/s 6,4CM (2,5") 7mm, €59.99

ASUS GT630-SL-2GD3-L, GeForce GT 630, 2GB DDR3, €52.23

Any thoughts on my selections above would be very welcome.

Addled

The SSD looks good and I'm not really to well up on gpus for graphics rendering but there's a guide tailored to hardware acceleration for blender here. Looks like it needs at least a 2GB card and strongly favours the older gtx 5xx series.

Others are praising the new maxwell 750/750ti cards in the forums as well, seems like the 6xx series were just more geared towards gaming, they don't do so well in crytpocurrency mining either.

Maybe you could get an old 560 second hand or alternatively the new 750ti for power efficiency but they're a bit outside the budget : http://www.hardwareversand.de/2048+MB/150987/MSI+N750Ti+2GD5+OC%2C+2GB+DDR5.article.

If you're just using it on occasion then the 630 is probably more than enough though.

Luck100

I suspect the 630 is hardly any better than the integrated graphics in the cpu (i5-4440 has HD 4600 integrated gpu). I'd say try running with the integrated graphics first, and if it's not good enough get a used gtx 560 or a new 750ti.

Addled

Luck100 wrote: »

I suspect the 630 is hardly any better than the integrated graphics in the cpu (i5-4440 has HD 4600 integrated gpu). I'd say try running with the integrated graphics first, and if it's not good enough get a used gtx 560 or a new 750ti.

I'd say that's the best option, the rendering acceleration is written in cuda so it will only work on Nvidia cards but the i5 should be plenty fast for CPU based rendering anyway. All in all it'll probably be a bit faster than a low end gpu.

Polymorpheus

Thanks again guys for the help. I think I might be better off spending that bit extra for the GTX 750 Ti. If I include this, could I keep all the other components as-is (i.e. power supply)?

Addled

Polymorpheus wrote: »

Thanks again guys for the help. I think I might be better off spending that bit extra for the GTX 750 Ti. If I include this, could I keep all the other components as-is (i.e. power supply)?

Yep the power supply is plenty for that card, it only consumes ~60w under load and doesn't need a PCI-E power connector.

Polymorpheus

Thanks Addled, think I might budget for this so. Cheers for all the help.

Addled

Polymorpheus wrote: »

Thanks Addled, think I might budget for this so. Cheers for all the help.

No problem, don't forget to run the items through http://geizhals.de/ search to get the best prices out of hardwareversand.

Polymorpheus

Hi guys, had to delay the purchase, and have since decided to go with Ubuntu 14.04 as the OS.

If you could have a quick glance over this build I'd really appreciate it! It's quite similar to the one above (main differences are the case/psu and motherboard). Unfortunately I'm unable to link to the items on hardwareversand (I got a message saying as a new user I can't post URLs...).

Item|Price
Case: Chieftec Mesh CT-01B schwarz, 350Watt, mATX|€48.29
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-HDS, Sockel 1150, mATX|€42.19
CPU: Intel Core i5-4570 Box, LGA1150|€168.98
RAM: 8GB-Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9|€64.34
GPU: MSI N750Ti, GeForce GTX 750 Ti, 2GB GDDR5|€132.69
SSD: Crucial M500 120GB SATA 6GB/s 6,4CM (2,5")|€56.99
Optical Drive: LG GH24NS bare schwarz|€13.32
Wireless Card: TP-LINK TL-WN881ND|€12.99
Total|€569.78

If you spot anything amiss that'd be great. Thanks again.

DERPY DERPFACE

Don't get a case with a built in PSU as they aren't great and could blow up your PC. Get a corsair or xfx PSU.

Polymorpheus

Thanks for that Derpy, I was actually looking around afterwards as I thought the case with psu probably had a drawback I wasn't considering, and I found lots of people warning against the poor quality builds, wattages not as claimed etc so I went back to the Corsair above recommended by Addled with the Fractal Design case.

Ordered now, looking forward to putting it together!

I don't suppose there's any extra internal cabling I'll need, or should everything be included?

DERPY DERPFACE

All cables should be included.

Recurve360

Youll want an Irish Kettle Lead as the PSU will ship with a German one. Other than that your all good. Motherboard will come with 2 sata cables for the SSD and optical drive.

TerrorFirmer

Luck100 wrote: »

I suspect the 630 is hardly any better than the integrated graphics in the cpu (i5-4440 has HD 4600 integrated gpu). I'd say try running with the integrated graphics first, and if it's not good enough get a used gtx 560 or a new 750ti.

Just out of curiosity, I've tried using the integrated GPU recently on my 4670K.

It's horrible. Performs about 20% of a GT630 in a lot of games. Battlefield 4 online for example is unplayable at lowest resolution and settings, game looks like puke and pulls about 15-30fps.

GT630 can run the game perfectly fine at HD resolution with low-medium settings.

The GT630 wipes the floor in any game that's heavily GPU dependent, which is most games.

The AMD APU's are twice as fast and would be comparable to entry level graphics alright.

Not a vote for the GT630 by any means by the way, but if you were expecting the Hd4600 to be on par or close to a GT630, you'd be very sorely disappointed!