Need a new workhorse?

[Ashimema]

Hi All,

Need some advice on a starting point for specing a system.

I need a system for around £600 (exc VAT... it's a home office computer). I don't currently need a monitor with it (or Windows for that matter as I'll probably throw Ubuntu or Fedora on there).

It needs to cope with a large amount of multitasking, compiling code, and probably the odd VM for testing.

I'm mainly wondering where to splash the cash.. whether to got the AMD route with either an A8 or Phenom, and spend the difference on and SSD and higher speed RAM.. or to go the i7 route and risk breaking the bank?

Any advice.. or a spec recontamination would be great?

[Corfate]

Bloody lurkers the lot of ya'!

I'm not good with speccing up a machine, but from lurking in other posts, i can say that you'd need a large amount of RAM, so you'd be best with 8GB, maybe 16GB for future proofing, and depending on how intense your usage is. I'd also probably go for an AMD machine, due to it being very good bang for your buck! A Quad Core would probably be best too, futureproofs it, aswell as giving you good multitasking capabilities

Just a few things for you to go on there, im sure somebody will add more

[Petchi b]

Here's something to have a look at. A good case, a strong quad core CPU and loads of RAM for your multitasking, also includes a decent enough GPU for your needs. If you wanted to add a small 60GB SSD you would be looking at around £100 over your budget. I hope I'm right as in you wanted a system for £600 excluding VAT..

COOLERMASTER HAF 912 PLUS MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD PHENOM II X4 970 (3.50GHz/8MB CACHE/AM3) - BLACK EDITION
Motherboard
ASUS® M5A99X EVO:USB 3.0, SATA 6.0Gb/s, Quad CrossFireX™/SLI™
Memory (RAM)
16GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 550 Ti - DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£72)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £605 exc VAT.

£726 including VAT & delivery.

[Wozza365]

i think what he needs doesnt really require a GPU like that, drop that and replace with SSD

[Frenchy]

All depends hos intense your compiling is, and what it is your specifically doing.

To give you an example, im currently working on a few different projects with the spec in my signature, this is an 8 threaded cpu. One of the projects, written in Java with the gwt libraries cross compiles Java to optimized Javascript, this process is normally pretty slow as it has to first compile then create 6 permutations for the 6 main browser types. This process still will take 30 - 40 seconds on the large project I have (around 400 Java files).

I think if your going to be working with larger projects then something like an i5 or an i7 is the way to go.

Graphics depends if your going to be taking advantage of any CUDA processing. If you plan on being able to use CUDA technology to speed up your calculations, or just experuimenting with it in general, then you will need an Nvidia card, id suggest a 550ti, obviously though if you plan on gaming too and budget was to cope then 560ti woudl be better, but both will be good for CUDA parallel processing.

For reference:

Number of CUDA Cores
GTX 550 Ti = 192
GTX 560 Ti = 384
GTX 570 = 480
GTX 580 = 512
GTX 590 = 1024 (two 580s on one board)

Obviously the higher the number the more parallel processing can be done.