Little dilemma

[luc83]

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum. Many times I ended up here while googling for advices about computers but I never posted before. So here it is my first post, looking for some advices

I have a macbook pro 13'' early 2011 (8GB ram) and I am quite happy with it.
Few days ago a friend gave me a cpu (AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE) , 8 GB worth of ram (Corsair Dominator DDR3 1600 2x (2x2gb) ), two video-cards, one Sapphire HD4870 512 MB and one Asus 8600GT Silent and a good CPU Noctua cooler.

I have just started a master's in complex systems and I think I will be required to do a lot of scientific programming and simulations, Matlab and Python, and to run Mathematica.

I am concerned that having the macbook running all day long doing that kind of work is gonna melt it down so I was thinking to build a PC with the missing parts (mobo, hard drive, good psu and maybe a new case) and to use that machine to do the heavy work.

Given that my budget is quite limited I am divided between investing my money in buying a good screen to go with the macbook or completing the PC and be content with an old 19'' benq FP91G+.
What do you think it is the best way to go? Any advice is really welcome!
Thanks a lot and have a nice day.

Luc

 

[sheepsnowadays]

Throw your mac out and build a PC

 

[Wolfshadw]

Not familiar with Apple products, so I cannot advise there. I know you're on a limited budget, but if you could provide us with that budget, we might be able to better guide you.

-Wolf sends

 

[luc83]

Hey Wolfshadw, the budget can be stretched but I would like to keep it under 300 euros.
An estimated calculation I made for completing the PC summed up to around 200 euros:

- mobo: MSI 9707-G46 SLI
- psu: corsair Gaming series 600w
- hard drive: seagate barracuda 500 GB, 16 MB cache, 6 GB/s (or maybe a corsair ssd force 3 120 gb..)
- case: cooler master elite 430

I have no clue for the screen. I was reading that for programming it is nice to have a 23''-24'' screen with high resolution but besides that I know very little ...