- Aug 1, 2014
- 14
- 0
- 10,510
Hi everyone!
My name is Steph and I've come to this great forum in the hope of getting some advice. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.
I've been working with laptops and iMacs for the last five years. Before that, I did my work on a custom build PC that my cousin put together for me. In short, all of the information I currently possess about computer components literally comes from scrounging around on the internet the past few days. I've formulated a setup, but I'm still on the fence about certain parts. (And if you're going, "Why would you do that?!", about any of the parts I had already more or less decided on, please, don't hesitate to say so.)
The budget:
€ 1500 (give or take)
The purpose:
Gaming, sculpting, modeling, digital painting, texturing, rendering, coding, web design, etc. In terms of software: almost everything from the Adobe Suite (except for Premiere), ZBrush, 3DS Max (and possibly other Autodesk programs), Cinema4D (maybe), Visual Studio, Unity and UDK (this one always gave me the most trouble on my laptop). I'm not the kind of guy who wants to play Battlefield 4 on 1080p at 60 fps, but I would like to mess around with a few hundreds of thousands of polygons in Max - and upwards of a few million pixols in Zbrush.
The content:
I need the case and everything in it. The keyboard, mouse, screen, HDMI cable and speakers have already been accounted for. (Also, I still have some thermal compound left from repairing my YLOD PS3 a few weeks ago.)
-> Stuff I've more or less decided on. (€ 845 allocated)
CPU
i7 4790K - € 305
Quad core, hyper-threading, Haswell architecture, etc. I've been reading a lot these past few days. About cores and hyper-threading. About how you can't judge a CPU by its clock rate anymore. About Sandy Bridges and Ivy Bridges and Haswell microarchitectures. In the end, I just picked this one because the price is acceptable and I read some good things about it. (And I guess the specs are alright, but I'm not sure if I'm qualified to make that call.)
GPU
NVIDIA GTX 770 - € 310
I want an NVIDIA card (Cuda cores). I also want it to be reasonably strong, but I don't feel like paying € 500 or more for one component. I also want a card with at least 2GB of VRAM, because I've noticed more and more software is using the RAM off of the GPU.
RAM
Corsair 16GB RAM 1600Mhz (2x8) - €150
Two times 8GB, that way I can upgrade to 32GB when/if necessary.
HDD
Western Digital 1TB - € 60
Yes, I could go for 2TB, but I've had my iMac for five years now and I still haven't filled up the 1TB HDD (any and all excess data ends up deleted or on an external HDD anyway).
Optical drive
Random DVD writer/reader - € 20
I probably won't really need this, but you never know. I'll just get the cheapest one just in case.
-> Stuff I haven't decided on. (€ 655 left)
Processor cooling system
???
I've heard some bad things about liquid cooling and how it isn't worth the price, so I'm just looking for a classic fan that isn't too noisy, but can still keep the processor from overheating.
Motherboard
??? (I guess a Z97 variant?)
Motherboards, talk about an overkill in choice. I need something with a 1150 socket for my CPU, 4 memory slots and a minimum memory capacity of 32GB. I also need one HDMI port and at least one other (VGA, DVI or displayport) for my Cintiq, but I've noticed pretty much all motherboards have this. I would also like at least two PCI slots, one for a network card (I'll be forced to use wi-fi for the time being, I can recycle the card from my old PC for now) and one in case I ever feel like getting a dedicated sound card. Any suggestions? Personal experiences?
SSD
??? (What size do you really need for a boot drive? You can get 120GB for € 75 it seems.)
This is what most people do, right? An SSD as boot drive and an HDD for the bulk?
Power supply
??? (What kind of wattage should I go for?)
I already used one of those Power Supply Calculator websites, but it's hard to get an accurate result if you still haven't decided on all the parts (I had a 380W minimum, 430W recommended, but that's without overclocking). So maybe keep this one for last?
Case
??? (I'm kind of considering the Corsair Graphite 760T.)
Three things I would like my case to do: get all of the above mentioned components inside, keep said components from overheating, and stay relatively quiet while doing so. Also, I don't care about looks, aesthetic is not a deciding factor here.
I guess I'll also need to buy a Windows license, but first I'm gonna do some research if I can't just de-activate the one on my laptop and then re-activate it on my desktop. So, consider the Windows license not a part of the budget.
Thanks in advance for any advice given!
My name is Steph and I've come to this great forum in the hope of getting some advice. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.
I've been working with laptops and iMacs for the last five years. Before that, I did my work on a custom build PC that my cousin put together for me. In short, all of the information I currently possess about computer components literally comes from scrounging around on the internet the past few days. I've formulated a setup, but I'm still on the fence about certain parts. (And if you're going, "Why would you do that?!", about any of the parts I had already more or less decided on, please, don't hesitate to say so.)
The budget:
€ 1500 (give or take)
The purpose:
Gaming, sculpting, modeling, digital painting, texturing, rendering, coding, web design, etc. In terms of software: almost everything from the Adobe Suite (except for Premiere), ZBrush, 3DS Max (and possibly other Autodesk programs), Cinema4D (maybe), Visual Studio, Unity and UDK (this one always gave me the most trouble on my laptop). I'm not the kind of guy who wants to play Battlefield 4 on 1080p at 60 fps, but I would like to mess around with a few hundreds of thousands of polygons in Max - and upwards of a few million pixols in Zbrush.
The content:
I need the case and everything in it. The keyboard, mouse, screen, HDMI cable and speakers have already been accounted for. (Also, I still have some thermal compound left from repairing my YLOD PS3 a few weeks ago.)
-> Stuff I've more or less decided on. (€ 845 allocated)
CPU
i7 4790K - € 305
Quad core, hyper-threading, Haswell architecture, etc. I've been reading a lot these past few days. About cores and hyper-threading. About how you can't judge a CPU by its clock rate anymore. About Sandy Bridges and Ivy Bridges and Haswell microarchitectures. In the end, I just picked this one because the price is acceptable and I read some good things about it. (And I guess the specs are alright, but I'm not sure if I'm qualified to make that call.)
GPU
NVIDIA GTX 770 - € 310
I want an NVIDIA card (Cuda cores). I also want it to be reasonably strong, but I don't feel like paying € 500 or more for one component. I also want a card with at least 2GB of VRAM, because I've noticed more and more software is using the RAM off of the GPU.
RAM
Corsair 16GB RAM 1600Mhz (2x8) - €150
Two times 8GB, that way I can upgrade to 32GB when/if necessary.
HDD
Western Digital 1TB - € 60
Yes, I could go for 2TB, but I've had my iMac for five years now and I still haven't filled up the 1TB HDD (any and all excess data ends up deleted or on an external HDD anyway).
Optical drive
Random DVD writer/reader - € 20
I probably won't really need this, but you never know. I'll just get the cheapest one just in case.
-> Stuff I haven't decided on. (€ 655 left)
Processor cooling system
???
I've heard some bad things about liquid cooling and how it isn't worth the price, so I'm just looking for a classic fan that isn't too noisy, but can still keep the processor from overheating.
Motherboard
??? (I guess a Z97 variant?)
Motherboards, talk about an overkill in choice. I need something with a 1150 socket for my CPU, 4 memory slots and a minimum memory capacity of 32GB. I also need one HDMI port and at least one other (VGA, DVI or displayport) for my Cintiq, but I've noticed pretty much all motherboards have this. I would also like at least two PCI slots, one for a network card (I'll be forced to use wi-fi for the time being, I can recycle the card from my old PC for now) and one in case I ever feel like getting a dedicated sound card. Any suggestions? Personal experiences?
SSD
??? (What size do you really need for a boot drive? You can get 120GB for € 75 it seems.)
This is what most people do, right? An SSD as boot drive and an HDD for the bulk?
Power supply
??? (What kind of wattage should I go for?)
I already used one of those Power Supply Calculator websites, but it's hard to get an accurate result if you still haven't decided on all the parts (I had a 380W minimum, 430W recommended, but that's without overclocking). So maybe keep this one for last?
Case
??? (I'm kind of considering the Corsair Graphite 760T.)
Three things I would like my case to do: get all of the above mentioned components inside, keep said components from overheating, and stay relatively quiet while doing so. Also, I don't care about looks, aesthetic is not a deciding factor here.
I guess I'll also need to buy a Windows license, but first I'm gonna do some research if I can't just de-activate the one on my laptop and then re-activate it on my desktop. So, consider the Windows license not a part of the budget.
Thanks in advance for any advice given!
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