Best sub £500 rig for my workplace?

[Chopski]

Ah, but this way you get a great computer *and* you get bonus points with the boss for saving money - it's win win! New spec looks good, btw.

That's a post count reward, bizzarrely Once you've got enough posts (25, I think, but it might be a few more than that) a "thanks" button will appear at the bottom of each post.

A few users have links to the post count rewards in their sigs, or just search the forum for "post count rewards"

Lol, just hit 25 posts and theres the button. Thanks

[arthurleung]

The Mini P180 is a couple quids cheaper on SCAN if you go for the white one (I got it for £48 from SCAN last week )

[floppybootstomp]

Chopski, preferred system for Photoshop would be seperate graphics as onboard graphics usually swipe a chunk of system memory to run, but I use Photoshop Seven with onboard Nvidia 8200 graphics ok.

If I were speccing a work machine within that budget, here's what I'd choose, I've added an optical drive as you haven't listed one.

Antec 200 case - £39.00
Asus P5Q SE2 Intel P45 (Socket 775) DDR2 Motherboard - £68.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.5GHz 4MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - £130.00
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply - £39.00
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel - £82.00
Palit GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £33.00
Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache – OEM x 2 @ £29.00 each - £58.00
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter - £19.00

Total £468.00

Add postage and maybe an extra 120mm fan for the case and it comes to around £500.00


Generally speaking AMD dual and triple core CPU-based machines make good gamers whereas Intel quad core based machines make for good 'Serious' application workhorses.

Exceptions to the rule of course but that's the considered opinion.

[arthurleung]

Chopski, preferred system for Photoshop would be seperate graphics as onboard graphics usually swipe a chunk of system memory to run, but I use Photoshop Seven with onboard Nvidia 8200 graphics ok.

If I were speccing a work machine within that budget, here's what I'd choose, I've added an optical drive as you haven't listed one.

Antec 200 case - £39.00
Asus P5Q SE2 Intel P45 (Socket 775) DDR2 Motherboard - £68.00
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.5GHz 4MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - £130.00
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply - £39.00
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel - £82.00
Palit GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card - £33.00
Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache – OEM x 2 @ £29.00 each - £58.00
Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter - £19.00

Total £468.00

Add postage and maybe an extra 120mm fan for the case and it comes to around £500.00


Generally speaking AMD dual and triple core CPU-based machines make good gamers whereas Intel quad core based machines make for good 'Serious' application workhorses.

Exceptions to the rule of course but that's the considered opinion.

The Q8300 is only marginally better than the X4 630 but is considerably more expensive. (X4 620 @ 2.6Ghz ~ 60% performance of Q9550 @ 3.6Ghz in my case)

For motherboard, £70 for 785G seems a bit overkill, may be a £50 board and put the money towards a Phenom II

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Q8300 is only marginally better than the X4 630 but is considerably more expensive. (X4 620 @ 2.6Ghz ~ 60% performance of Q9550 @ 3.6Ghz in my case)

For motherboard, £70 for 785G seems a bit overkill, may be a £50 board and put the money towards a Phenom II

I was looking a AM3 mATX motherboard on Ebuyer and it was the cheapest one available!!

It seems Scan,Novatech and CCL are also out of stock on the cheap mATX 760G and 785G AM3 motherboards too!!

[DanceswithUnix]

I was looking a AM3 mATX motherboard on Ebuyer and it was the cheapest one available!!

It seems Scan,Novatech and CCL are also out of stock on the cheap mATX 760G and 785G AM3 motherboards too!!

I would have said this choice of motherboard was ideal, I like the 140W CPU support as it leaves plenty of juice to spare with a standard CPU. With the 128MB of sideport video ram on that board, do you need a stand alone graphics card?

Looks like ideally you would want an I5-750 for this but that is going to be out of the price range. A 955BE/965BE would be a nice performance hike over the Athlon X4 here though.

Photoshop benchie from Anandtech

I would take Cat's suggested system, ditch the video card and spend the saving on a Phenom-II X4 CPU upgrade.

[DanceswithUnix]

I notice the original post mentions dual monitor. That 785g motherboard has DVI, HDMI and VGA ports on it, but although the ASUS site says you can do two independent displays I am not clear if it can do HDMI + DVI at the same time.

ASUS linkey...

[Kumagoro]

SSD OS drive, you know you want to.

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...snv125-s2/40gb

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The only reason I added a graphics card to the build is because I go the impression the OP may want to try CUDA acceleration of certain Photoshop features. Of course they would need CS4 at least AFAIK.

The Phenom 955 is 20% faster in CS4 than an X4 630:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=88&p2=89

The 785G can support two monitors although one will have to be VGA.

[scaryjim]

With the 128MB of sideport video ram on that board, do you need a stand alone graphics card?

I have the 785M-EVO, and can conclusively confirm that the answer to that question is NO!

You can set up in BIOS for the IGP to use sideport memory only, leaving the full whack of system ram available to the system. Of course, you're then running your graphics on 128MB DDR3 over a 32bit bus, but as long as you're not doing significant 3D work that shouldn't be an issue - mine's certainly fine for general web and office tasks and watching DVDs / iplayer.

[Pob255]

Chopski, preferred system for Photoshop would be seperate graphics as onboard graphics usually swipe a chunk of system memory to run, but I use Photoshop Seven with onboard Nvidia 8200 graphics ok.

I can beat that, my otherhalf is still happly working on A3 comic pages in photoshop (version 8? it was the last one before CS) with my OLD fx5200.

Untill CUDA came along and some of the newer versions of photoshop, the gpu had nothing to do with it.
I would look at ether the gt220 or gt240 for the cuda (that's also probably what will go into her pc when we get around to upgradeing it)

4gb ram minimum

2 hard drive in raid0 for extra speed, or a couple more drives (4) in RAID5 for redunency

As good a cpu as you can get.

PS no graphics tablet?

[floppybootstomp]

I'm going to hold my hand up here and confess I was unaware of CUDA.

Have been happily using my Photo Shop 7 for years and it does everything I need it to do, really.

As does GIMP (free) come to think of it.

Had I not been ignorant of CUDA I may have revised my recommendations.

Still, my final list wasn't too far off the mark with a 220.

When I made a list, I was very budget concious and although the Intel Core 2 Duos may be more expensive than their AMD counterparts, I still hold by the view that Intel CPU's from Core 2 onwards are better suited for serious (as opposed to Gaming) applications.

And this from a person who, pre-2006, was distinctly biased in favour of AMD.

[Pob255]

CUDA doesn't come into it untill CS2 I believe so the eairly versions like 7 get nothing out of it.

The original Phenom 1 and athlon 1 where much weaker, however the phenom II's hold there own.
Looking at that CS4 benchmark the C2Q do a very good job and do hold there own, the Q8400 is only just behind the phenom II x4 965
The intel cpu's do very well with photoshop

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

CUDA doesn't come into it untill CS2 I believe so the eairly versions like 7 get nothing out of it.

The original Phenom 1 and athlon 1 where much weaker, however the phenom II's hold there own.
Looking at that CS4 benchmark the C2Q do a very good job and do hold there own, the Q8400 is only just behind the phenom II x4 965
The intel cpu's do very well with photoshop

The problem is that a Q8400 is more expensive than an X4 955BE and both have the same performance in Photoshop CS4:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=88&p2=89

[Pob255]

The problem is that a Q8400 is more expensive than an X4 955BE and both have the same performance in Photoshop CS4:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=88&p2=89

Yes I did look at that, I also looked at the prices

Q8400 £129
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164520

Phenom II x4 965 BE £139
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186428

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yes I did look at that, I also looked at the prices

Q8400 £129
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164520

Phenom II x4 965 BE £139
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/186428

Phenom II X4 955BE ~ £122

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...he-125W-Retail

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164047

The X4 955BE has exactly the same performance as a Q8400 in Photoshop CS4 and is £7 cheaper!

That is at least 10 Mars bars!!

See,the X4 955BE is better value for money and you can have chocolate too!!

TBH,the X4 630 is 20% slower than either the Q8400 or Phenom II X4 955BE in Photoshop CS4 but is at least 30% cheaper than either.

I did have a look at a Core i3 530 and an H55 motherboard on Scan but the combination would cost around £10 to £11 more on Scan and even more on Ebuyer for only a very slight performance increase in Photoshop CS4:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3704&p=8

The Moose does prefer Intel and AMD!!

If the H55 motherboards start dropping in price though it maybe worth recommending the Core i3 530 for some budget gaming builds!

AMD needs to get the rumoured Phenom II X3 740 into shops soon IMHO!

There seems to be very few Phenom II X3 720BE processors around and they have gone up in price too!!