Computer for photography.....and games

Bletch

Bletch

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James
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Hi guys
I'm in the middle of trying to price up a new computer. My budget is £2000 max. No monitor, keyboard etc needed.

Main use will be for gaming (Far Cry 3 and the like on a 27" monitor 1900x1200) but I also want to edit photos, possibly RAW.

Am I ok going with 32gb of ram? The price jump going from 32gb to 64gb is pretty steep, and I'd rather spend that money on a beefy gfx card.

Not sure about processor, i7? but which one?

Any advice is greatly appreciated

:)
 
I have no idea what the best graphics card is for gaming, but 16G is probably oiverkill unless you're goiung to be doing very complex edits in Photoshop.

Which processor: fastest i5 or i5-xxxxK if you want to overclock. i7 only for bragging rights... you won't get anything like the bang-for-buck you would with an i5 (and I speak as someone who owns a couple of i7 & an i5). At £2k all in, get a couple of SSDs - one for boot, the other as a staging drive you do most I/O to....
 
I'm in agreement with Andy, but just thought I'd chip in to point out AMD are still doing their 'Never Settle' bundle which gives you free games with their graphics cards (and Far Cry 3:Blood Dragon when it's released!). I'm in no way an AMD fanboy but it's definitely a great deal if you don't have the games already.

The single 7950 performed really well with FC3 at 1080p, but I don't know what FPS I was getting (as long as it's smooth I'm happy!).

But I'm quite sure you could get a terrific gaming machine for considerably less than your £2000 budget, I'm definitely not the best person to ask about parts though :p
 
Hi guys
I need to check out the prices of the fastest i5 processors, not bothered about overclocking though. So maybe I'll save some cash.
Free games are always a bonus Ross - Some of the GTX cards come with Metro Last Light... but now you've gone and got my interest over the AMD freebies that I didn't know about :)
It would be great to spend less than the £2000 for my new machine as I would dearly love to put the savings towards buying Photoshop.
A smallish SSD plus large secondary drive is also a must for me.

Thanks for helping guys
 
Toms Hardware publish a couple of excellent charts showing all processors ranked against each other, and the same for graphics cards.

Gaming CPU review

Gaming graphics review

In so far as RAM is concerned you can never have enough, especially since it is so cheap at the moment, so definitely go with 16 or 32Gb.
 
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bastic said:
what about Dell ?
have a look on XPS 8500
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-8500/fs

one on far right.
latest i7, 16gb RAM, 256GB SSD +2TB HDD, GF660 with windows 8 for under £1000
add screen for around 250 (24") and you have a nice desktop.

If I would be to buy build system, I would go for Dell.
Click to expand...

although ive never had any bother with them, trouble is dell sometimes use a lot of proprietary parts like odd format motherboards and PSU (add to that non-branded PSU). it could make upgrading and repairing difficult.

novatech (etc) will use all standard format parts. and their own PSU are actually a good brand (I forget what without googling) with different stickers.
 
neil_g said:
although ive never had any bother with them, trouble is dell sometimes use a lot of proprietary parts like odd format motherboards and PSU (add to that non-branded PSU). it could make upgrading and repairing difficult.

novatech (etc) will use all standard format parts. and their own PSU are actually a good brand (I forget what without googling) with different stickers.
Click to expand...

I assume that OP won't be upgrading PC himslef in near future anyway :)
hence Dell seems best option.

it is always better and cheaper to build on your own and fight with problems as they come along ;) almost always there is a problem ;)
 
Scan have pre-built over clocked bundles http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs-overclocked-bundles go down to intel and have a look I would go for Z77 chipset can add over clocked ram and everything.

2k will get you a beast gaming pc editing photos will be a walk in the park.

P.S would go for a gtx card 670 or 680 will play any game on max settings with high fps + £700 to £1000 would get you an amazing pc with careful shopping
 
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At the more expensive end. This is a computer configured using PC specialist! This costs £1626, all very high end parts though and cutbacks can be made quite easily!

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE R4 BLACK PEARL QUIET MID-TOWER CASE

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-3770K (3.5GHz) 8MB Cache

Motherboard
ASUS® SABERTOOTH Z77: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, THERMAL ARMOR

Memory (RAM)
16GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 X 8GB)

Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 670 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
Free Item
FREE METRO: LAST LIGHT GAME with GTX 660 & UPWARDS GPUs!

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
240GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)

2nd Hard Disk
3TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE

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

Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W PRO SERIES™ HX850-80 PLUS® GOLD MODULAR (£139)

Processor Cooling
Corsair H80i Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£69)

Extra Case Fans
2 x 12CM Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof) (£9)

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

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

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£109)

Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

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

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 9 to 11 working days
 
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Hi guys :)
I'm probably going to stick with Neil's original suggestion of the Novatech PC. It simply can't be beaten on price, it's just ticking all the right boxes - top GFX card, powerful i7 processor, SSDs, all under 2 grand...no bloatware= yay!

Mathew & Matt, I've used PC Specialist before, years ago and wouldn't fault them, also played around with various 'customise it' options at Cyberpower & ScanPC etc but none come close to the value of the Novatech PC that Neil recommended in his first post, so I'm going to opt for that.
Lukas - Not too keen on Dell, and the PC you pointed up needs a beefier GFX card rammed up its bum! :) A few friends always opt for Dell though, I guess it's something to do with the after support they get rather than performance.
Thanks again for all your help
 
neil_g said:
although ive never had any bother with them, trouble is dell sometimes use a lot of proprietary parts like odd format motherboards and PSU (add to that non-branded PSU). it could make upgrading and repairing difficult.
Click to expand...

That's certainly true on the workstations, I have a precision t5400 with dual xeons (in this case derived from the core 2 quad, so a few years old now) and the motherboard and PSU are in no format that I've ever met. As I discovered when I had a problem, I ended up buying another one from ebay for parts. Which is why it's now a dual xeon machine, rather than the single it started life as!

The cheaper ones (Vostro etc) are made from standard parts.
 
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