Hello, I have been procrastinating wildly over this build, nearly bought a dell last week but pulled back from the brink. I am almost ready to take the plunge and like the look of the I5 deal at scan here http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/ My question is what else do I need? E.g. cooler for cpu. rig is for video encoding mainly, some light office work. No games at all. I have a monitor, mouse, etc. All comments greatly appreciated along with links to good threads here that can help. Budget is max £500, but low as possible. Cheers
Hi kolofan, This rig looks fine for your purposes and budget. It is just a bunch of components to build yourself - is that alright? If you are doing video editing then you will probably benefit from some extra memory (RAM). Another 4GB will be alright given your budget. You don't need a separate CPU cooler - this is only needed if you are over clocking your CPU and that's not actually possible with the processor in the machine you're looking at. One other thing to think about is the programs you are using to do your video editing. The intel sandy bridge processors have really solid acceleration for video encodes and decodes, if you are using the right program. I don't have a list of supported programs handy but perhaps you can tell us what program you use. Cheers
Thanks for the quick response. Yes I know that its components, this will be my first build. I have tools, space and a spare weekend. Mainly encode my own dvds with handbrake. Takes 2 hours on my laptop at the moment
The system will be much more powerful than your laptop undoubtedly. Here's a market ing blurb about Intel quicksync and supported programs that might help. http://www.intel.com/technology/quicksync/index.htm Basically, if you use one of these programs when you get to video encode and decode, then you can do encode and/or decode at the same time (i.e. Transcode) lightning fast and at good quality. The dedicated acceleration aside, you are still looking at a quad core modern processor. There are faster chips out there for sure, but it will be no slouch. The 2500k for instance will run faster and overclock well ... The CPU upgrade is less than £20, but then you would probably want a CPU cooler for ~£25 also. There's always something faster
A great place for hardware and packaged systems to build is newegg.com You can select your hardware individually or buy a pre-configured system to build yourself. For what your needing, a very good budget pc can be built for under $800.00
I'm sure they do, and warranty is usually 30days plus any manufacturers after that. Once you OverClock any of your hardware your warranty is voided.
found this online don't know if it is any good if you like amd and ebay it is a good option [URL="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-Phenom-II-x4-960T-3-0GHz-8MB-Quad-Core-AM3-95W-/260792093794?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item3cb86b8c62#ht_2369wt_905"URL]
Here is a list of good to ok UK etailers: Scan.co.uk Ebuyer.com Amazon.co.uk play.com, Yoyotech Best RMA I have had is with Scan and ebuyer, they collect and replace free of cost. (if it is a DOD of course)
Any reason why www.dabs.co.uk isn't on your list? Your list matched the one I have in my head bar that one ommission.
