My friend wants to buy an new PC for approx. 1000 euros (1200 $, £690), to be used for, as he puts it, "a bit of everything". This includes 3D Editing (Maya and 3D max studio), and gaming. I won't mention wordprocessing, etc. because more or less anything that can handle Maya can handle Word. This seems like a tough one to me , but for the price, I'm supposing he'll need: - 1 to 2 gigs of ram for the 3D Stuff - A reasonable graphics card - An AMD processor (not had much experience with them, is it worth going 64-bit)? - A 100 gig hard drive, he's already got an external one (20-40 gigs, I think) - A motherboard with PCI-Express (maximum updateability would be nice) - A 17"-19" CRT screen (he doesn't want an LCD, which helps the price) - Anything else I've forgotten (I know what goes into a PC, but I'm in a rush ). I know that he'll have to skimp on something, but I'm not sure what. I'll probably be buying seperate parts from the internet or high street stores, but if some company has a good offer for a ready assembled PC, then I might look into that as well. Help very much appreciated.
Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra - £76 AMD (Winchester) Athlon 64bit 3200 - £124 Hightech X800 IceQ II Turbo 256MB PCI-E - £153 2x 512MB DDR400 Ballistix RAM - £123 Western Digital 120GB SATA - £53 Hiper 580W Modular PSU - £70 ACER 17" CRT - £64 LG CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo - £21 CoolerMaster Cavalier 3 - £55 That totals £733, and I'd say with the coolermaster case its worth it, however, you could buy a cheaper case and fit the £690 budget if its that tight.
I think it would be cutting it a bit fine. You could get 3 of those 512 chips to make 1.5 GB, but again its pushing the price up.
you can get something like 2gb of ddr 400 (supertalent, not a big brand name but still one) on ebay for around £110 (under buy it now). or I did any way and it goes down to cl2 easy. i'd say capacity would be better over speed for grapihics work. (i mean it's still fast enough) edit: ah memory prices have gone up a bit since I last bought my memory but here's the ebay seller I got mine off: http://search.ebay.co.uk/_Memory_W0QQcatrefZC12QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQsacatZ1480QQsassZsavingQ5fstore
i would stay away from a 17 inch monitor too, youll need more room on the desktop than that i would imagine.
I Don't think the ballistix would be necessary. You could get 2gb of Corsair Value for the same price, and it would probably still be just fine. And the hiper power supply seems like a bit much, and damn I wish they sold them in the states. (That setup would still be fine, but it's also not inc. VAC) -Rob
17 isn't two bad with a ctr as you can push up the res. If they have the desk space dual monitors are a godsend for graphics work. also i tend to look at dot pitch on monitors as I find the smaller they are the sharper the image is. thats why the cheaper ones tend to have large ones.
I'd imagine you'll get better 3d work performance from a Pentium 4 due to hyperthreading. probably a better bet.
@Eliminos So you think it wouldn't be enough? @Rich_13 Good idea, but I'm a bit weary about buying from eBay, although I'll consider it. Somehow, I don't think dual monitors are an option for him for the moment. @chemo Yeah, I think I'll go with a 19 inch screen. @Sva4g3&* Yes, I think 2 GB of ram would definately be better. What do you mean "not including VAT"? @olv I hope it won't cost to much more... Can anyone else confirm that? @Shadowed_fury Thanks, you posted while I was posting. Thanks to all. Maybe he should just get a Mac... If I can convince him.
The P4's arent that much more than A64's. And stay off the Ballistix, its not worth it, get 2gb of value ram
What do you think of this spec. This is from www.dabs.com which are very good one prices. Its £77 over but I think you would benefit the extra memory and should deffenatley keep the larger hard disk if doing video editing or 3D editing. I video edit alot from my camcorder and extracting using DV getting the pure Digital Video uncommpressed takes up 14GB each 90min tape. I have a 120GB drive just for video capture and another 120GB for the editing. Graphics I skimped on as you say its mainly 3D editing. But a 600 pro should be enough to play some games as a second purpose for the PC. The case has a 500w power supplie with it and its ANTEC If you can go that little bit more then upgrade the VGA. apart from that everything else is sound I didnt add a keyboard or mouse. You can pick those up anywhere and from £5 so Ill leave that to personnal taste and comfort
if youre going lots of 3D then go for a P4 you wont regret 2GB of ram either then a 19" CRT that will do 1600x1200 at at least 85hz other than that, everything else is much of a muchness graphics cards depends on budget, X800XL or 6800GT is never a bad choice though a decent hard drive without going into 10-15k for cost reasons
