Advice on buying a sandybridge pc

[Rich108]

I Want to buy a new sandybridge Desktop pc If anybody can help me with the questions I have would be much appreciated. I have read many reviews of systems around the web. I amnt a gamer so dont want to play games on it which seems to be what most of the reviews are judged upon whether the pc can handle the most up to date resource hogging games.

I do a lot of streaming and watching of avi/dvd files and want a system capable of showing two different hq streams or avi/dvd files at the same time on different displays without it causing the pc much problems or be able to show a stream or movie on one screen whilst being able to mess about on the internet on the other without any performance issues. This is mainly what I will be using it for

If I amnt going to play games does the graphics card matter ?

If I am going to plug the pc directly into an amp connected to my hi-fi speakers will onboard sound be sufficent ?

Wld there be any advantage for me getting something that is overclocked or has the potential if I amnt a gamer

One of the systems I have been looking at is the Dell Xps 8300
with i5 2500/8 gb ram/ 1Gb ATI radeon 5670/ and a 1.5 tb hard drive


Would a system like this be sufficent for my needs. I can spend no more than 1000 uk pounds on it ideally less if possible

I have looked at information of building my own rig and can see the advantages and would like to pick better components to set up my own system but I dont think I am confident of pulling it off and dont want to spend a lot of money on something that doesnt provide me with an end product

Any Help would be greatly appreciated

 

[mattius92]

That system doesn't look bad, it has a powerful Sandy Bridge i5, an HD 5670 which is a good card for a non-gamer, and you want it, whether you game or not, having a dedicated video card will make things run smoother. 8GB of RAM is very decent and 1.5TB of HDD space is loads of room. Unless you want to build your own system, that Dell looks good.

 

[muz_j]

...if you're going to do a lot of media work, then consider the 2600 processor's (either the unlock K or the normal locked versions), with hyperthreading, as encoding work and compression are classic areas where hyperthreading DOES offer decent performance gains.

You've clearly stated you aren't interested in games, but I would have a think about how much media encoding work you are going to use the machine for and if that's where most of your interest is, I'd replace the i5 2500 with an i7 2600 series processor.

 

[Rich108]

Thanks for your help by streaming I mean that i watch a lot of streams rather than I actually stream them from the source to others

also is it better to have my 8 gigs of ram as

8192MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [4x2048]

or

8192MB Dual Channel DDR3 1333MHz [2x4096]

?

 

[mattius92]

2 x 4096. since both are dual channel and it will leave you two slots for expansion if needed.