New PC

wooky

wooky

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Martyn
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After spending the weekend with no PC and my good lady deciding she didn't and doesn't want a Mac, it'stime for new PC.

So I've spent the day looking around the web while restoring the old XP machine so we've something to get us by and basically am no futher forward and just 'slightly' more confused than when I started...

PC's not for gaming, but home/office use with photo processing, the most intensive stuff being stiching panoramic's with PTGui and outputting tem with PanoVR2. Photo processing will be getting with Photoshop Elements 12.

Options I've come across so far are this in John Lewis:

1: Lenovo IdeaCentre K450 Desktop PC, Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 2TB+8GB SSHD, Silver & Blackfor £629

And these on Amazon:

2: Ankermann-PC.WildCAT GAMER., Intel Core i7-3770 4x 3.40GHz, GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB, Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit, 2TB Toshiba HDD, 16 GB RAM, 24x DVD-RW Writer-, Card Reader, £769

3: Ankermann-PC.WildCAT GAMER., Intel Core i7-4770K 4x 3.50GHz, GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB, Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit, 2TB Toshiba HDD, 16 GB RAM, 24x DVD-RW Writer-, Card Reader, £819

4: Ankermann-PC.WildCAT GAMER., Intel Core i7-4770K 4x 3.50GHz, Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X WindForce 3X OC 2GB, Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit, 2TB Toshiba HDD, 16 GB RAM, 24x DVD-RW Writer-, Card Reader, £889

Ideally the budget will be sub 1k which should include a new monitor/screen, which I've yet to look at or for, so any recommendations on this would be helpful.

So question is, what's the best bang for my buck from the systems listed, cos I ned something sorting PDQ cos of the amount of nagging I'm getting...

Alternatively any other system recommendations or pointers in the right direction would gratefully excepted... help....
 
I'd suggest having your own spec. built by a reliable company. Have a look here: http://www.cougar-extreme.co.uk/photography.html

They built my last PC and were excellent in their approach to customer service and quality of build. My link shows the "off the peg" photo editing set ups they build, but you can tweak the specs as much as you wish.
 
I would go for system 3 as the graphics card is nvidia based not ati based (personal preference) and that seems to be the only difference.

To be honest though, if the most intensive thing you do will be the panoramic stitching, just stick with the lenovo, it's a great brand and you don't need an i7 processor.
 
As normal really in all of these threads that pop up, at least an i5 quad core, 8gb, ssd boot drive.. Look at novatech site, they use good quality parts, have a good selection, great customer service etc

Then add in a dell ultra sharp ips in whichever size you can get with the change.
 
You don't need a graphics card with the software you are proposing to run. i5 is also fine. Would prefer 16G of memory. I'd agree with getting one built, and aim for i5-4xxx, 16G memory, onboard graphics, 120/128G SSD as boot drive, ??TB main drive, decent PSU.

As to monitors, Dell U2413 (or even 2x U2413s).
 
Oh... snap... :D
neil_g said:
As normal really in all of these threads that pop up, at least an i5 quad core, 8gb, ssd boot drive.. Look at novatech site, they use good quality parts, have a good selection, great customer service etc

Then add in a dell ultra sharp ips in whichever size you can get with the change.
Click to expand...
 
arad85 said:
You don't need a graphics card with the software you are proposing to run. i5 is also fine. Would prefer 16G of memory. I'd agree with getting one built, and aim for i5-4xxx, 16G memory, onboard graphics, 120/128G SSD as boot drive, ??TB main drive, decent PSU.

As to monitors, Dell U2413 (or even 2x U2413s).
Click to expand...

But, onboard graphics would then be a bottle neck. So with specs that high you'd may as well get a dedicated gpu card anyway...
 
mr.si said:
But, onboard graphics would then be a bottle neck.
Click to expand...
Bottleneck for what? The onboard graphics of the processor is plenty fast enough to handle rendering of images - it's equivalent to a mid level graphics card of a few years ago. There really is no need of external graphics cards these days unless you have lots of monitors, you are playing GPU intensive games or know that your app can utilise GPU acceleration (all those mentioned by the OP do not use any acceleration). A quick google shows a 660 is ~£140 - that's a good amount to save for practically no gain. I'm running a 6400 x 1440 desktop (3 monitors) off a GT640 perfectly happily and the only reason I chose that rather than lower level chip is that I couldn't find one that was passive and supported 3 monitors digitally.

EDIT: PS, the machine the 640 is in is an i7-2600K, overclocked to 4.7GHz, with 16G memory (overclocked) and twin SSDs. If I thought I could get it to go faster for what I want to do, I would ;)
 
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Why not buy a current copy of "Micro Mart" next issue on Thursday and check out Suppliers and Specifications.
You`ll get a better deal from Some of them than the Big stores
 
After a wee while on PC Part Picker how's the following spec look?

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor (£162.94 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: SilenX EFZ-120HA5 86.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler (£31.06 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Pro3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£70.64 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£112.00 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Plextor M5S Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£124.74 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£113.88 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£44.92 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-P14 FLX 65.0 CFM 140mm Fan (£18.98 @ Novatech)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 500W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£47.67 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£13.18 @ Scan.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) (£71.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £811.77

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2iDO6

Interested in a any thoughts/recommendations/comments re the component list, or anything I've missed from the list, given there's I've not selected a graphics card option and was going to stick with the onboard graphics option to start with.

Thanks
 
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If it was me, I would get a couple of Seagate 2Tb drives instead of one WD.

Only cost you another £16, otherwise just get one and save £48. (ebuyer).
 
I'd get a Samsung SSD. Some great deals on Amazon ATM and rock solid reliability as they're all built in house.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Talk Photography Forums mobile app
 
Got the spec pretty well sussed out, with the odd tweak here and there from that previously posted

OS will be Windows 8.1

Any thoughts/comments re the spec or any further tweaks I could make to improve for negligible cost?

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
Thermal Compound: Zalman ZM-STG2 3.5g Thermal Paste
Motherboard: Asus Z87-C ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Plextor M5S Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Storage: Seagate Constellation CS 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Asus GeForce GT 640 2GB Video Card
Case: Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDR-208DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Monitor: Asus MX239H 23.0" Monitor
Total: £1082.78
 
I'm wondering if getting SSD drives is worth the extra expense - recently upgraded my PC and was thinking about getting SSDs but could not justify the extra cost so just went with 2x 1GB Toshiba HDDs. (DT01ACA series)
 
You're living in the middle ages computing wise if you're not on SSDs - at least for boot drives. I think I have more SSDs than HDDs here now (although all my media is on HDDs)....
 
Can't deal with using PCs with HDDs any more, just so slow in comparison to SSDs.

HDDs have been the bottleneck on PCs for most tasks since dual core CPUs appeared.

Wouldn't consider a new build PC without SSD, even for a super budget build I'd stick a hybrid drive in so system and app files are cached at least.
 
Tried 2 different SSDs in 2 different machines and both failed. Don't trust them! (I think I'm just unlucky).

It wouldn't be worth putting an SSD in the machine.
 
i built my own
no graphics card
just a Sabertooth motherboard
i7 3---k cpu (cant remember the number yet
16GB ran but soon going to 32GB
1000watt psu
and full size case
1x 2tb hdd for storage
2x ssd 1 is 60gb for the operation system the other 120gb but is not running at the moment as it set to reserve (randomly by itself)

going to format it all completely to reset it

its very fast and about £800 with out the screen but the cpu was £200+

its worth building your own
 
One was 2 months ago and samsung I believe.
 
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