Looking for desktop suggestions for around £780 (digital art and gaming)

[JohnMalcolm1970]

Hello all,

I stumbled across PCSpecialist via a Google search, and think I'll be ordering a desktop within the week. £780 might seem strange number, but I like to put any money I earn through digital illustration straight back into stuff that will help me do more.... or simply gadgets (wacom tablets, 3D mice and other toys)

At the moment I have a HP Pavilion desktop with an AMD Phenom 9600 quad core 2.30Ghz, 8GB RAM, Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit with an NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT. It's lasted me well, but is starting to show it's age now. This is the perfect opportunity for me to get something better, and the old machine will then go to my parents (the computer they have at the moment is really dire... makes me want to smash it with a hammer everytime I go near it).

The computer will be used for digital art (Painter 12 in the main, backed up by Photoshop CS5. I tend to have to work on A4 or A3 images at 300dpi with plenty of layers), 3D modelling (just discovered Blender recently and loving it), and gaming (currently Skyrim which has sucked almost 100 hours out of my free time inbetween illustration commissions).

I love all the choice offered by PCSpecialist, but it's been years since I've looked into CPUs or GPUs and I'm not up to date with what's what.

Cheers in advance

John

 

[Phoenix]

This comes just under £780.00 and would perform really well:


Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
1GB AMD RADEON™ HD6870 - 2 DVI,HDMI,2 mDP - DX® 11, Eyefinity 4 Capable
Memory - 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1[SUP]st[/SUP] DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling
INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
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
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Limited functionality Word & Excel)
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
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: £767.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-sandy-bridge-pc/

 

[Teaz]

Phoenix just popped you a solid spec to consider. If your budget is comfortable to extend, you could consider popping in a good quality PSU along with a nicer CPU cooler to keep cpu temps chilled.

 

[JohnMalcolm1970]

Thanks Phoenix and Teaz. What modifications to that suggestion would you have if I were needing to stay with an Nvidia videocard? Blender has a new rendering engine these days which can either use the GPU and CUDA or the CPU. Using the GPU makes a huge difference, even on my present machine.

 

[Phoenix]

Oh well if you can use CUDA then get the NVIDIA GTX 560 instead, there isn't really much else to change though if you want to stay below £780.

 

[JohnMalcolm1970]

Thanks Phoenix. I'll use that as a base and tweak stuff like HDDs sizes and other bits and bobs. I'm sure if it creeps up over £780 then I can persuade my parents to cough up. They are getting a free PC out of this at the moment

 

[Corfate]

You could get a higher end case, to aid with the cooling if you could get the parents to cough up a few more quid It's not a necessity, as the 310 Elite is a great case for cooling, just food for thought

 

[MadMan]

or you could go with an amd setup. This enables you have a corsair power supply, better cpu cooler and a gtx 560ti which is a great card

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD BULLDOZER QUAD CORE FX-4100 (3.60GHz/6MB CACHE/AM3)
Free Item
FREE DIRT3 GAME with any AMD FX Processor!
Motherboard
ASUS® M5A97: AM3+ PLATFORM, DUAL DDR3, SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 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
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX650 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE (£69)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE AMD CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
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
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
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: £774.00 including VAT and delivery.

Configure Here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/amd-bulldozer-top-spec-pc/

 

[JohnMalcolm1970]

Thanks guys. I went ahead and ordered just now. I stuck with the i5-2500 option with the GTX560, and spent a bit over budget by getting 8GB Kingston instead of Samsung RAM and slightly better cooling and PSU than absolutely required. I'm fairly happy that this setup will suit my needs over the next couple of years, and I know I can buy another 8GB or RAM when my next freelance cheque comes in. I can't wait to see how Blender and Painter 12 benefit from a new system.

My brother is now interested in getting a desktop from PC Specialist. To show him an example I got him to go to PC World's site and look at the specs and price of their most expensive gaming PC. Then I showed him the cost of a similar system from here (actually better with 16GB of RAM instead of 12GB). The difference was about £600 iirc

 

[MadMan]

Thanks guys. I went ahead and ordered just now. I stuck with the i5-2500 option with the GTX560, and spent a bit over budget by getting 8GB Kingston instead of Samsung RAM and slightly better cooling and PSU than absolutely required. I'm fairly happy that this setup will suit my needs over the next couple of years, and I know I can buy another 8GB or RAM when my next freelance cheque comes in. I can't wait to see how Blender and Painter 12 benefit from a new system.

My brother is now interested in getting a desktop from PC Specialist. To show him an example I got him to go to PC World's site and look at the specs and price of their most expensive gaming PC. Then I showed him the cost of a similar system from here (actually better with 16GB of RAM instead of 12GB). The difference was about £600 iirc

pc world is a rip off.

 

[Phoenix]

pc world is a rip off.

The thing that annoys me about them is that they lie about the hardware capabilities of the computers that they sell in-store. For example they'll do things like call a HD6670 the latest high end graphics technology available from AMD or say that a GT545 is a high end graphics card with blistering performance in games when this card would struggle to run modern games at 1920x1080 (resolution of monitors shown next to the PC's) with medium settings.

 

[JohnMalcolm1970]

This is the spec I finally ordered, and the 4 amendments I made. It was torture waiting for it to move out of pre-production, but it's finally been built and is awaiting testing, configuration and quality control.

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Amended to InWin CENTINAL BUC BLACK GAMING CASE (Looks like it has a bit more room inside as well as some nice features relating to drive management and cable management)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8Z68-V LX: USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, ATI®CrossFireX
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT)
Amended to 16GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 4GB) (Won't be overclocking, but I work in numerous digital painting apps at once on large files and even if one app can't take advantage of this amount of RAM it will help when running many at one time.)
Graphics Card
1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Amended to 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 Ti - 2 DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready (I liked the spec of the 560ti. I considered the 448 CUDA core model, but I researched what would be best for CUDA using 3D apps like Blender's Cycles renderer and GPU memory is important as well as CUDA cores. If image maps used in the 3D scene can't fit into the GPU's memory then it's a no go. Large image maps like 4k and 8k (4096 pixels square and 8192 pixels square) take up 64mb and 256mb for example.
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
Amended to 2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) (I was just checking for any possible improvement amendments and notice the price difference between 1TB and 2TB was fairly small)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£59)
Processor Cooling
SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE INTEL CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
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
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
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

[edit] Oh... my original order was £822, £42 over budget. The changes added £23 for the case, £61 for the video card, £24 for the memory and £19 for the HDD.

 

[JohnMalcolm1970]

Processed Date 03-02-2012
Pre-Production Date 07-02-2012
Build Date 22-02-2012
Test Date 28-02-2012
QC Date 28-02-2012
Awaiting Dispatch Date 29-02-2012
Dispatch Date 29-02-2012

I'm starting to get excited now. Photos, review and comparisons coming soon (I hope)

 

[Rakk]

Awaiting Dispatch Date 29-02-2012
Dispatch Date 29-02-2012

I'm starting to get excited now. Photos, review and comparisons coming soon (I hope)

Should be with you tomorrow
And we're all looking forward to the pics