Gaming; coding & photo editing / 800$ for core components

[Enamex]

Hello!
The following form should make everything clear and easy. I've been away from the market for like 5 years and that's close to coming from the dark ages! so I really need experienced help here.

Budget: 500~850 USD
Date of order: February/April, 2012
Most demanding uses: Gaming; Photo editing; Folding@Home.
Gaming: No multi-player. - Crysis2; Mass Effect2; etc...
Most frequent uses: Watching Blu-ray's; Photo editing (Photoshop); Vector editing (Inkscape); WPF design in Blend and coding in MS Visual Studio.
Operating systems: Windows 8 (Big chance yet not confirmed); Ubuntu 12 .04/.10 ...
Monitor: 21" LCD @ 1920* / A Wacom tablet that is TBD.
Internet Connection: 2 MiB/s ADSL; 512 Kib/s USB DSN.
Country: Egypt ---> Average temp.: 16~38 deg. C
Purchasing country: USA (California); Germany (Berlin); Egypt (Cairo).
Assembly: Manual; LCD and other peripherals already available for reuse.
CrossFire/SLI: Possibly
Overclocking: Yes
Parts preferences: I'd like it to be as future proof as possible; see next...

Additional Information:

- I live in Egypt but I have several friends in countries already mentioned. Given the current state in my homeland, purchasing from here may not be wise, or cheap. Since parts will come as luggage from abroad, they need to be reasonably light-weight.
- I've only got 850$ at most to spend. I already have a case, a monitor, a keyboard, etc... The Operating system (Windows not Ubuntu) is not included in the budget.
- I'm getting a bit more serious in Photo editing and Coding since, apparently, I don't have many work choices here and working in tech would allow me wider work options.
- As such, the PC need to live for about 4~6 years and retain good performance when working with Photshop and Visual Studio. I'll get the components checked before they're shipped and will take all precautions I could make while using the PC here, therefore, initial and long-term quality is more important than warranty.
- I understand that there's no such thing as future proof (especially in politics, AKA revolutions). But although every now and then a tech-revolution would come from no corner, there're better systems that could handle it. While I prefer Intel, their policies since Nehalem have been shocking and unacceptable. I do like (and have more experience) with AMD (ATi) so stick with that for GPU's and advise on the CPU. The Motherboard should be able to put up with all this for more than 6 years, both in its work and in its upgrade path.
- I'll be running x64 Win8 and x86 Ubuntu.
- Due to several recent accidents, I'm also considering a UPS unit but I have no idea what's out there in that world; never read any reviews about them.

Thanks you all for your efforts and good day/night!

MN

[Pob255]

Well straight off I can see one issue, "Since parts will come as luggage from abroad, they need to reasonably light-weight."
Most high grade kit is heavy, PCB's are denser and use thicker copper traces, components tend to be larger and higher density to cope with greater loads
A UPS is never light weight but does have some major benefits esp if your electricity supply is uncertain and/or dirty (high levels of noise)
Be warned that overclocking makes your pc far more sensitive to electrical noise and fluctuation.
Standard ATX specifications are not that tight in terms of noise, current and voltage fluctuations which will give you more leeway at stock settings.

Personally I don't think there's much of an issue building a pc that can last for 6 years, gaming is however one area where this is going to be slightly problematic, games constantly push gpu demands up, playing games that are old on a old system isn't a problem, but playing new games on an old system is.

we've got quite a few core2duo systems at work which must be 5 years old now and they are still going strong. (for internet&office type work)
Heck we've got a bunch of old pentium4's setup for photoshop that still work, they're not the fastest of things to work on and a big image with a lot of layers will bring then to their knees but they still work.

Pricing in the US and import duties are going to be tricky, you may well know more about that side of things than we do.

[Enamex]

@Pob255
First, thank you for your reply and sorry for the following long re-replay!
I got the impression that Hexus is for UK's only; is it so or am I missing something?

I understand the issues with weight but although hi-perf kits would weigh tons, 800$ won't get me a hi-perf kit per-se... I'm rather looking for something strong and fast enough yet not considered bleeding edge that the companies already found ways to make in lighter, etc... a la ATI HD3850 vs HD5750
I think I could get the UPS local or pay a little more and ship via Amazon or something, maybe I could get it from a quality etailer from UAE or something. But still I know nothing about their brands or models :/
I won't OC it that far but enough to get a bit more from it; as far as it remains perfectly stable.
I currently have an Inspiron 9400 laptop that I've used for 6 years now. It's still working but hardware-wise, it's falling down. I think the temperatures here has something to do with it but I didn't have much experience when I first got it. So, assuming I could take extra care with it once it's here, I'm more interested in how I could build a rig that'd be upgradable in 6 years; that's way I'm afraid of Intel and what they've been doing lately.
TBH, even on my CoreDuo 1.73 GHz and 2 GB 533 ram, Photoshop CS5 still works. Slow but it still works; almost as fast as CS2 did so I imagine maintaining a system for PS and VS wouldn't be hard. As for games, if it could play a game like MW4 (around 2016) at say 1680* then it'd be brilliant! Just if it could and if I could upgrade its C/GPU if I need.
I think 800 usd would make about 500 gbp? I could order them from the UK (since it's closer) but I have no one there and they say its market is a bit slow and overpriced. I forgot to say that customs aren't included in the budget.

[Pob255]

Well it's not so much UK only, it's just a UK site and the majority of us are in the UK so we know the UK market best.
It's not just exchange rate and tax you have to take into consideration, the pricing market is more aggressive in the US, prices get slashed to counter competition from other newly released products more aggressively, also stock levels differ which affects the final prices and some products and companies are easy/hard to find in the different markets. (eg Mushkin, Geil and Patriot ram is far more common in the US and fairly uncommon/rare here in the UK)

You cannot say that HD3850 vs HD5750 is a lighter card, they are very different, yes some times you get something similar, 9800gtx to gts250 is a better example as they are basically the same gpu chip G92 vs G92b (which is a lower power die shrunk version) but the original 9800gtx was a very long and heavy card and the final gts250's where far shorter and lighter (less power and heat meant smaller coolers and less powerful VRM circuit was needed)
There's also the issue of quality, it's not just high end kit that's heavy high quality kit also tends to weigh more and quality is important if you want to look at longevity. (PSU's esp here)

Check newegg and talk to the people you know in the US for a better idea of what's best on the US market.

In general I'd say i5 2500k, a z68 motherboard (mid range, the low end tend to have weaker VRM's so long term overclocking is probably going to be more of an issue) 8gb (2x4) of ddr3 1600mhz cas9 ram. a 6870 and a quality 500w psu would be a good starting point for a solid system.

Although the price of the AMD FX 8120 has come down quite a bit so that's worth looking at esp as you can team it up with something like the ASUS M5A97 motherboard, which is a good chunk cheaper than a midranged intel based motherboard.

[Enamex]

I saw an article on Wikipedia (link deleted) yet I read somewhere else that IvyBridge is actually weaker than SandyBridge or rather is aimed at low-end pieces. Wikipedia shouldn't be a source here but if all it says is true then the 75w IvyBridge should do better than the 95w i5 2500, yes? So, is IvyBridge worth waiting for?

HD5750 is around the performance of HD3850 yet lighter, smaller, cooler and cheaper at release. That's what I meant; if the 6850 is that good, should I wait for a refined 7850/770?

I'm afraid from Intel's rapid release cycle but I'm not sure (ha?) about AMD's opposite. I read that due to AMD's vastly different new architecture, software as deep as the OS didn't know how to handle it correctly. So is AMD falling or just struggling before their new shining era? Bulldozer looked really promising and AMD is really calm these days so I can't help but feel they've got something up their sleeves other than GPU's yet I can't rely on a feeling so everything is pretty messed up for me right now. Unlike 1366, is LGA 1155 going to live for some time yet or is it doomed once Haswell arrives?

I know the preceding talk was all jumbled but that's the best I could write right now so excuse the disorder.