Approximate Purchase Date: Can begin ordering parts this week, looking to begin build by early April.
Budget Range: $800-1000 including shipping (have Amazon Prime), after rebates
System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming and work. Most work is manuscript writing and figure prep. This is purely photoshop/illustrator stuff, and not terribly intensive. Only CPU heavy work is occasional proteomics (eg mass-spec datasets) and bioinformatics (multithreading friendly stuff). I do not need anything tailored towards work related tasks.
Are you buying a monitor: Yes.
Parts to Upgrade: Completely new build
Do you need to buy OS: Yes, Windows 7 preferred though I could be convinced to go to 8.1.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg and amazon preferred if I can keep the number of shipments down, but will order from any number of places if the purchase and/or shipping makes it worthwhile.
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Parts Preferences: Beyond assuming an i5 would a good starting point, I have no preferences. Even that is just guesswork from browsing these forums.
Overclocking: Nope
SLI or Crossfire: Not now, and not likely ever.
Your Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080 preferred.
Additional Comments: Case will be hidden from view (not from good air circulation) and can be plain as anything. I prefer a black case, but that is hardly a strong preference. Seems very common now anyways.
[optional] I would welcome any suggestion on a mechanical keyboard (brown switches I'm thinking) included in the build.
My gaming habits may not require the $1000 budget I arbitrarily came up with. Skyrim might be the most demanding game I've played recently (and I'd certainly reinstall to see it at high detail). Starbound runs pretty poorly for me (core2duo, gtx260), though some of that might be the state of the game's development. I chose the number with the hope of being a bit futureproofed. Between the monitor, OS and keyboard purchase I didn't want to put out too slow a cap. Happy to save a little money if the price seems like a waste.
And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Using a machine I built from gradual purchases around mid 2008. Sporadic problem for several months now has been the monitor going to a single giant pixel (ie a uniform display of a single color, often black, but can be anything). Entire system locks up and must be restarted. May not happen for days, and then happens 2-3 times. Usually occurs shortly after loading windows. With the age of the machine I'm hesitant to start swapping parts. If not for my fear of an impending blown capacitor or the graphics issue being exacerbated I'd likely continue to stall on this build. Time to enter this decade of hardware!
Thanks for your suggestions
Budget Range: $800-1000 including shipping (have Amazon Prime), after rebates
System Usage from Most to Least Important: gaming and work. Most work is manuscript writing and figure prep. This is purely photoshop/illustrator stuff, and not terribly intensive. Only CPU heavy work is occasional proteomics (eg mass-spec datasets) and bioinformatics (multithreading friendly stuff). I do not need anything tailored towards work related tasks.
Are you buying a monitor: Yes.
Parts to Upgrade: Completely new build
Do you need to buy OS: Yes, Windows 7 preferred though I could be convinced to go to 8.1.
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg and amazon preferred if I can keep the number of shipments down, but will order from any number of places if the purchase and/or shipping makes it worthwhile.
Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA
Parts Preferences: Beyond assuming an i5 would a good starting point, I have no preferences. Even that is just guesswork from browsing these forums.
Overclocking: Nope
SLI or Crossfire: Not now, and not likely ever.
Your Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080 preferred.
Additional Comments: Case will be hidden from view (not from good air circulation) and can be plain as anything. I prefer a black case, but that is hardly a strong preference. Seems very common now anyways.
[optional] I would welcome any suggestion on a mechanical keyboard (brown switches I'm thinking) included in the build.
My gaming habits may not require the $1000 budget I arbitrarily came up with. Skyrim might be the most demanding game I've played recently (and I'd certainly reinstall to see it at high detail). Starbound runs pretty poorly for me (core2duo, gtx260), though some of that might be the state of the game's development. I chose the number with the hope of being a bit futureproofed. Between the monitor, OS and keyboard purchase I didn't want to put out too slow a cap. Happy to save a little money if the price seems like a waste.
And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Using a machine I built from gradual purchases around mid 2008. Sporadic problem for several months now has been the monitor going to a single giant pixel (ie a uniform display of a single color, often black, but can be anything). Entire system locks up and must be restarted. May not happen for days, and then happens 2-3 times. Usually occurs shortly after loading windows. With the age of the machine I'm hesitant to start swapping parts. If not for my fear of an impending blown capacitor or the graphics issue being exacerbated I'd likely continue to stall on this build. Time to enter this decade of hardware!
Thanks for your suggestions
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