New PC Time

LeeRatters

LeeRatters

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Lee
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I am currently running XP & have been since just after the kids were born I think........

It's ok for net browsing. It's ok for media playing. It's okish for CS2. It's reasonable for LR3 [until exporting, then I have to export & go have a shower/tea/etc] BUT in no way can you do more than one thing at a time so time to upgrade.

I have Novatech near to me so was going to use them to build me a new tower.

I'm guessing a budget of up to £700. Obviously the cheaper the better, but I fully understand it may be more sensible to go slightly over budget to get better components as a PC isn't something that's upgraded often.

I'm not really into PC's so was wondering if I could have something to go off with recommendations for what processor, RAM, graphics card etc etc

I shoot a 5D2/450D for referance to image file sizes. I have 2 external drives for images & 2 80Gb internals for music etc

Thanks
 
Current i5, 8 or 16G RAM, SSD boot disk (get one big enough you can store your scratch files on). Any graphics card will do (even on-chip Intel will be OK). Should be fine with £700
 
Have you got to buy a new monitor?

How about going for a Mac mini, I have one, changed from a PC and love it. Not that difficult to get used to. And so quiet, none of them noisy fans blowing masses of dust into the air :D
 
I've been happy with my novatech purchase. No bloatware and choice of windows 7 or 8.

Specs are constantly changing but I've yet to fill my 128 GB SSD with a fair bit of software

Is your budget including a new screen? For lots of photo work a better screen may be more important than outright speed

Hope this helps


David
http://vintageman.zenfolio.com
 
Thanks All :)

I havent got a top quality, expensive screen but it seems fine & is calibrated etc so I was just concentrating on the PC tower for the moment.

Yes a nice widescreen would be nice though :)

Just had a tattoo done from the same funds which was cheaper than I thought so I could have another £200 to the budget now...
 
I'm in the same boat as Lee, about to get a new desktop. I see that most recommendations are for an i5. Apart from price just how different would an i7 be for performance?
 
hollis_f said:
Apart from price just how different would an i7 be for performance?
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Almost negligible in real world performance (and I speak as someone who has both). The i7 gives an extra 10% or so performance boost on H.264 video encoding and some highly intensive image filtering operations, but that's about it. If you think of them as "the same performance" on a clock by clock basis, then you will see performance scale with clock speeds (i7s tend to have a slightly higher clock speed) so a 2GHz quad core i5 (which you can't get by the way) will be half the speed of a 4GHz i7 (which you also can't get but hopefully you see what I am saying...)
 
Yup... Will do you fine. You may find you want to swap the 2x4G sticks of memory for 2x8G sticks to give you 16G at some point, but that is a nice machine.

BTW: as you have waited so long, you might want to wait a few days. Intel are releasing a new CPU core next week. Things may get a little cheaper in a week or so...
 
arad85 said:
BTW: as you have waited so long, you might want to wait a few days. Intel are releasing a new CPU core next week. Things may get a little cheaper in a week or so...
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That's exactly what I'm waiting for now......

I've heard the GPU of the new chips are meant to be good so I'll either get a "haswell" chip and do without an additional graphics card or see if the current i5s drop in price.
 
Russ77 said:
I've heard the GPU of the new chips are meant to be good
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Yes, you should be fine as long as you don't intend on overclocking (onboard GPU = more power to dump off the chip).

In fact, if I didn't overclock (I'm currently at 4.7GHz with my i7-2600K) I'd probably have jumped to Haswell with integrated graphics. It's probably a very smart choice for 95% of people...
 
arad85 said:
BTW: as you have waited so long, you might want to wait a few days. Intel are releasing a new CPU core next week. Things may get a little cheaper in a week or so...
Click to expand...

Thanks for that Snippet Andy. I've been thinking about a new PC for a while now and Was going to spend some time this weekend investigating upcoming developments. Now I know to leave it a month or so.
 
LeeRatters said:
So, bumping an old thread because I've been so busy lately I've still not sorted anything PC wise :) lol

What do people think of this please - http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/novatechlifenti30.html

Intel Core 3rd Gen i5 Processor
8GB Memory
1TB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GT 620 1GB Graphics

£560 with Windows 7 Home.
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I have one! Very nice pc although mine is more for internet music and football manager. Very quick! From off to loaded FM13 takes 1 min 40 seconds!
 
Thanks for the input All :) I have a bit on the next few weekends so going to be a fortnight before I can actually go down to the place anyways unless I just order online.

:)
 
Check out building one on Scan.co.uk
http://3xs.scan.co.uk

I'm thinking of getting a desktop (Though gotta sell my ps3 first to justify it) and Scan seem to have some good prices on their custom builds
 
arad85 said:
Current i5, 8 or 16G RAM, SSD boot disk (get one big enough you can store your scratch files on). Any graphics card will do (even on-chip Intel will be OK). Should be fine with £700
Click to expand...

To access more than about 3.6Gb RAM you will need a 64 bit OS.

.
 
petersmart said:
To access more than about 3.6Gb RAM you will need a 64 bit OS.

.
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This is correct. But try buying a PC from one of the retailers these days with a 32 bit OS ;)
 
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