Subscribe now and choose from over 30 free gifts worth up to £49 - Plus get £25 to spend in our shop
Please..
It'd time for a new computer I can't see snything off the shelf I like so I've decided I'm going to build one. It's primarily for document producing and internet shopping however I also do a fair amount of video and photo editing as well as the occsional game. I'd like it to be as fast as possible so what processors and graphics cards should I be looking at?
Budget ?
I've just finished building one with an i5, 8 GB RAM and a 250 GB SSD. Plenty fast enough for heavy duty photo editing.
I'm enjoying the almost instantaneous boot delivered by the SSD to the extent I'm never going to have another PC or laptop with a conventional hard drive.
Rosss, im about to sell a barebones kit that I no longer need. i7 chip and mobo with ram. 1000W PSU,well vented case. Just needs ssd,/HDD OS and decent graphic card if you're interested. Can send specs andmpics this evening
The Ars Technica and Toms Hardware system build guides are what you should start by reading.
Tom's also has a system hierachy so you can compare CPUs and GPUs
Stoner's may be a good start, the only thing that might not be right [guess at this point] would be the PSU - lots a capacity and good quality are a must, but if you are going to be drawing <400W peak [most modern systems with anything less than the most beastly GPUs or pair thereof] then unless it's a [url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_Plus ]80plus Gold[/url] or better PSU then you're likely just going to be wasting a lot of power at idle.
It might be better to swap that unit for a 500W one or so. Depends on the GPU really.
I am sure he'll tell you what you need to know about it.
1000w is a monster, but I got it for stability running a big graphix card and other PCI munchies.
this one
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/corsair-hx1000w-power-supply-review/10/
(80Plus cert too)
Stoner, I'm only just starting to look but if you don't mind sending me an email it can't hurt!
will do
Not sure how power consumption would be an issues, surely the system would only draw what it needs? Yes, the efficiency will be lower but probably not so much that it would be a massive issue.
No need to spend more on the PSU than you have to, 1000W is for dual-SLI, multi processor, and mega overclocks and the like, for a typical PC it's way overkill. There's not that much drawback to having too much, other than cost, mind, but better spent elsewhere. (and don't cheap out too much, these days most PSUs are decent but they can still take out a whole system if they fail)
But in Stoner's case since he's selling a system it's not so much an issue, that was just general chat in case you don't take his 😉
There's a calculator here:
http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator
Which doesn't take into account overclocking but seems not bad.
I don't know enough about your usage to know what level of performance is really required, though. My ancient Q6600 (from 2007) ran vegas pro without issue, frinstance, it just took a bit longer to render- so I'd be surprised if any halfdecent processor isn't up for video crunching.
The Pentium K G3258 is probably the best value processor ever made, if you overclock it (reliably to 4.5K on air) then it's holding its own with a low end i5 costing about 4 times as much, in most applications. But again maybe your usage will hit its weakspots with hyperthreading/multicore? If you're building a lower end system it's a fantastic deal and very upgradable, higher end it'll be worth upgrading the processor.
uponthedowns - MemberI'm enjoying the almost instantaneous boot delivered by the SSD to the extent I'm never going to have another PC or laptop with a conventional hard drive.
It's one of those things that you don't need, but can't go back from 😆