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Thread: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

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    Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    Hi all,
    I've been quoted £1000 for a company to build and send me the following PC, and looking on scan have priced up most of what their quote says for around the same price, but I'd like to hear suggestions on what others would get spec wise for the same cost, I presume I can get better parts than some of these:

    Cooler Master Silencio 450 - £46.14
    Corsair Ultra Low Noise 600W PSU - £59.99
    Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler - £17.63
    Asus Z87-PRO Motherboard - £160.64
    Intel Core i5 4570 Haswell Processor 3.20 GHz - £158.58
    8GB Corsair PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 Memory - £59.76
    3x Asus 1024MB GT 610 Silent - @ £30.73
    120GB Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drive - £78.14
    1000GB 7200RPM Hard Disk 6Gbps - £48.12
    21.5" AOC E2250SWDNK Widescreen LED TFT Monitor - £85.46
    Windows 7 Professional 64 bit - £169.48

    My only constraint is wanting to run 5x Monitors, I already have 4 running off 2 PCs so its a way of condensing it all on to 1 powerful PC. It isn't going to be used for gaming, mainly used for browsing and need to be able to run a few apps at the same time.
    Thanks

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    Can anyone offer any advice please?

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    DDY
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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    If you're thinking of running no more than five monitors you can save a bit of money by getting fewer graphics cards and a cheaper motherboard rather than a premium one with three full length PCIe slots.

    For example:

    Z87 motherboard - £80 (Cheapest one)
    Nvidia GT640 - £60 (Three displays)
    Nvidia GT 610 - £30 (Two displays)

    Or, cheaper yet,

    Z87 motherboard - £80 (Use the onboard graphics for two displays)
    Nvidia GT640 - £60

    Or, cheaper still!

    B85 motherboard - £65
    Nvidia GT640 - £60

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    Thanks for the reply.

    Which 787 motherboard is that then?
    If you plug in an Nvidia GT640 card will it definitely work alongside the motherboard onboard graphics?

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    Scan has the MSI Z87-G41 for £81, I only checked Scan so there may be cheaper boards out there.

    I can't say the combo will work for sure, it's supposed to work but you're at the mercy of the motherboard's BIOS and both the Intel and NV drivers playing nicely.
    Last edited by DDY; 09-08-2013 at 12:43 AM.

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    That's probably why they quoted for 3x graphics cards, either they don't expect the motherboard GPU to be enabled when additional cards have been installed or expect driver issues?! Why aren't things simple!

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    Easiest way to get 5 monitors off one computer - and it will be a *lot* cheaper than the build above - would be to get an AMD A-series APU and a Sapphire Flex 6450. You can use two outputs from the onboard graphics on the APU, and all three from the Flex, which has been specifically designed to run 3 DVI monitors off one card. That means you'll be able to use any motherboard you want, as you'll only need one PCIe slot. EDIT: obviously, you'll be running all AMD graphics, so there shouldn't be any driver problems

    It doesn't sound like you're going to be doing anything particularly processor intensive, just want to run a lot of programs at once, so go for an A8 quad core and 8GB of RAM and it'll be more than powerful enough for your needs, at about half the cost.

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please

    Very interesting scaryjim, yes running similar AMD drivers does make sense, ok I'll see what we can source and go from their.
    Thanks everyone for your replies and help

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    Re: Wanting to purchase a Desktop PC to run 5x Monitors - advice please


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