Graphic Design / Gaming / Video Editing PC - €1600

dpi9000

1. What is your budget? €1600

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer?

Gaming (GTA V, Cities: Skylines, Dark Souls II)
Graphic Design (Photoshop, Illustrator)
Video Editing (Adobe Premiere Pro)
2d Animation (Toon Boom Studio, After Effects)
Sound Mixing/Composing (Audacity, Fl Studio)

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

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

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. Yes, 24 Inch 1080p - minimum. Needs accurate colours for design work.

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Keyboard and mouse.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay?

Bank Transfer, Visa, Paypal

9. When are you purchasing?

Within the next month.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Can build myself.


No sure if what I'm looking for is attainable with my budget. I'd be willing to sacrifice the gaming performance to bolster the graphic design/video editing capabilities. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm pretty green on the pc building scene, so I'm not sure if parts are compatible or not, but I put a build together on hardwareversand.de, but as I said, I'm not sure if this is suitable for my needs or if the parts are compatible.

HV20479KDE Intel Core i7-4790K Box, LGA1150 359,99 €
HV1143IDDE Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3, Sockel 1150, ATX 86,99 €
HV20MI49DE 16GB Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9 119,05 €
HV203F65DE Cooler Master N300, ATX-Midi-Tower, schwarz, ohne Netzteil 36,56 €
HVR600L8DE be quiet! PURE POWER L8 600W 78,43 €
HV1040MFDE MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G, 4GB GDDR5 369,99 €
HV13SB72DE Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s 84,79 €
HV12SE82DE Samsung SSD 850 EVO SATA 6Gb/s 250 GB 111,99 €
HV23ADG7DE ASUS Xonar DG, PCI x1 33,00 €
HV21LXA0DE LG 24GM77-B Gaming Monitor 259,55 €
HV202L2KDE Logitech K120 OEM Keyboard - black 8,99 €
HV202LXBDE Logitech Optical RX250 USB/PS2 (B) OEM 7,99 €
HVZPCDE Rechner - Zusammenbau 5,00 €

Total value: 1.562,32 €

DarkPassenger

That's a TN panel, high refresh rate, bad colour reproduction and viewing angles. You want an IPS panel, check out the dell u2414h

Digital Solitude

I'd get a Nanoxia DS3 case, €30 for excellent cooling and cable management, space for more drives and it's sound insulated.
Crucial BX100 256gb SSD is €90
Keyboard may have german layout, check on product page. I'd personally split for a better mouse and keyboard, you can feel the difference.

Everything is compatible though, use geizhals.de to knock another few euro off if you're building yourself

dpi9000

DarkPassenger wrote:

That's a TN panel, high refresh rate, bad colour reproduction and viewing angles. You want an IPS panel, check out the dell u2414h

The Dell U2414H looks like a great monitor, thanks for the suggestion, much appreciated.

Digital Solitude wrote:

I'd get a Nanoxia DS3 case, €30 for excellent cooling and cable management, space for more drives and it's sound insulated.
Crucial BX100 256gb SSD is €90
Keyboard may have german layout, check on product page. I'd personally split for a better mouse and keyboard, you can feel the difference.

Everything is compatible though, use geizhals.de to knock another few euro off if you're building yourself

Will do, thanks for the suggestions, I'll swap out the parts for what you listed here, your expertise is greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys.

dpi9000

So this is what the build looks like with your suggestions, I'll purchase the keyboard in store or off amazon.co.uk just to make sure it's the correct layout.

If you could take one quick last look over this to make sure there's nothing glaringly obvious that I'm missing, I should be ready to go on this.

HV20479KDE Intel Core i7-4790K Box, LGA1150 359,89 €
HV1143IDDE Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3, Sockel 1150, ATX 80,96 €
HV20MI49DE 16GB Kit Crucial Ballistix Sport Series DDR3-1600, CL9 110,19 €
HV203HSCDE Nanoxia Deep Silence DS 3 Dark Black, ohne Netzteil 66,63 €
HV20CA73DE Akasa AK-ICR-07 Interner 6-Port Card Reader mit USB 3.0, 8,89cm (3,5") 14,24 €
HVR600L8DE be quiet! PURE POWER L8 600W 74,89 €
HV1040MFDE MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G, 4GB GDDR5 367,32 €
HV13SB72DE Seagate Barracuda 7200 2000GB, SATA 6Gb/s 78,89 €
HV12CZSODE Crucial SSD 250GB BX100 89,89 €
HV23ADG7DE ASUS Xonar DG, PCI x1 33,00 €
HV21DY2JDE Dell U2414H 213,06 €
HV2023MCDE Logitech Corded Mouse M500 20,89 €
HVZPCDE Rechner - Zusammenbau 5,00 €

Total value: 1.514,85 €

Digital Solitude

A €33 sound card isn't worth it to be honest, motherboard has mic and headphone jack, for €33 there won't be a difference unless you've a well trained ear with solid equipment, and even then it'll be minimal at best.

After that you're good to go.

Serephucus

Ditto on sound card.

I'd also maybe look at an ASUS board. Only for the reason that I'm not really a fan of Gigabyte's UEFI (BIOS), and ASUS gives you some really cool stuff, particularly fan control.

The only other thing that jumps out (unless I missed it) is the lack of a cooler for your CPU. Getting something that powerful (and overclockable) and not having a good cooler is kind of a sin.

(Also the stock one sounds like a hair dryer)

Best bang-for-buck cheap air: Hyper 212 Evo
Flagship air: NH-D15
High-end AIO: Kelvin 240 (Uses an Alphacool ST30, for those curious)

Don't forget to run the lot through Geizhals.de for ~10% off!

dpi9000

Digital Solitude wrote:

A €33 sound card isn't worth it to be honest, motherboard has mic and headphone jack, for €33 there won't be a difference unless you've a well trained ear with solid equipment, and even then it'll be minimal at best.

After that you're good to go.

Thanks, I've ditched the soundcard.

Serephucus wrote:

Ditto on sound card.

I'd also maybe look at an ASUS board. Only for the reason that I'm not really a fan of Gigabyte's UEFI (BIOS), and ASUS gives you some really cool stuff, particularly fan control.

The only other thing that jumps out (unless I missed it) is the lack of a cooler for your CPU. Getting something that powerful (and overclockable) and not having a good cooler is kind of a sin.

(Also the stock one sounds like a hair dryer)

Thanks for the input. Any particular ASUS board that I should go for?

I ditched the soundcard and added the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO cooler, thanks for the tip.

BloodBath

I don't think the i7 4790k is worth that kind of money tbh. Prices have inflated a lot lately. The Xeon 1231v3 can be got for over €100 less. More if you include the cheaper B85/H97 board that you can use and cheaper cooler. Especially since you aren't overclocking.

You can lock the Xeon to 3.8ghz anyway which isn't far off an overclocked 4790k.

I'd put that money towards a second monitor if you have the desk space. The second monitor obviously doesn't have to be as good as that Dell one. You only need 1 high quality wide color gamut for the video/picture work.

An average IPS panel will do for everything else.

dpi9000

BloodBath wrote:

I don't think the i7 4790k is worth that kind of money tbh. Prices have inflated a lot lately. The Xeon 1231v3 can be got for over €100 less. More if you include the cheaper B85/H97 board that you can use and cheaper cooler. Especially since you aren't overclocking.

You can lock the Xeon to 3.8ghz anyway which isn't far off an overclocked 4790k.

I'd put that money towards a second monitor if you have the desk space. The second monitor obviously doesn't have to be as good as that Dell one. You only need 1 high quality wide color gamut for the video/picture work.

An average IPS panel will do for everything else.

Thanks for the tip on the processor, I think I'll go with the Xeon 1231v3.

I was also thinking of spending a bit extra for a 27inch 1440p monitor.

Would you recommend a adding a second monitor or going with a larger higher resolution monitor? I have a dual monitor setup at work, but tbh I think I'd get more value out of just having the one larger monitor. Guess I answered my own question there.

BloodBath

That's the other option and it's a good one. The 970 will handle most games at 1440p with ease anyway.

Be prepared to turn some settings down a little in the most demanding titles though if you want a solid 60fps.

Digital Solitude

Radeon R9 290 preforms similarly to 970 at 1440p at €70 less, just to muddy the waters a little more Both fine cards, stick with the 970 if you'd prefer nVidia though