Build advice required!

[Giqles]

Hi there,

I've been meaning to upgrade my PC for a while, and after looking around scan seems to have the right balance of good service/quality and reasonable prices to boot. So, given a budget of roughly £1200-£1400 I was hoping for some advice on a new build,

What I actually plan to use it for:

-General internet/Word processing/ etc

-Gaming: Nothing incredibly intense, but being able to play say wow with 60 fps with a browser open and some music on would be ideal. (I have 2 screens atm, and can't use one due to my old old graphics card- the screen I do use is fairly big, 2048x1152, and I'm considering getting another, to replace the other screen I currently don't use when I have my new pc so I'd have 2 2048x1152 screens)

-Mathematica/Matlab etc. I'm soon to be a PhD student, (hopefully) and my research involves moderately intense numerical stuff. I'm not an expert on the inner workings of these programs however, and I'm not sure how the speed of components interact with one another when running a program: put it like this, in the simple versions of programs I have been running, on a 4Gb DDR2 800 mhz ram, Q6600 processor the ram use spikes up to something like 3.5 Gb and the computer becomes unusable for about 30 minutes. Now, I want to be able to run finer programs, and get on with other stuff at the same time, with this in mind is it worth focusing on a faster processor? (wasn't at full load although mathematica is weird with multicore machines it seems) or just throw more (or faster) ram at it? or even an SSD?

Very grateful for any help!

Giqles

(final point, I'm not keen on overclocking, it just worries me! although for the last purpose I suppose it might make sense- as I understand it I just switch the profile in the BIOS to the OC one and switch it back when I don't want the OC?)

[tomferry25]

Are you willing to get your hands dirty and build it yourself and if so, is there anything you would take over from your old build such as case, PSU, hard drive with O/S already on, etc? Or are you wanting a system all custom-built by scan themselves with all the peripherals?

[Giqles]

I'm looking for something built by scan, a friend is buying my old tower I think, so not going to be using parts from that.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would ask this question in the hardware section as you will get more responses IMHO.

[tomferry25]

I've got some links to a couple of systems which I think would be good for your needs, I'm assuming you don't have a problem with not spending the full £1400?

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ConfigureSystem.asp?SystemID=1109 - it's a new processor but old architecture but it should still see you good for a few years, you can spend an extra £100 adding another 4gb memory and another £40 or £150 upgrading the graphics to a 5770 or a 5850 bringing it close to £1200

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ConfigureSystem.asp?SystemID=1046 - this is the highest-end system your budget would get you and will serve you well, the graphics card is a bit overkill for what you'd need (plus the nvidia's aren't representing great value for money ATM IMHO)so you could downgrade it to a 5770 to knock a little off the price

To be honest though, you have a pretty good setup as it is, the q6600 is a legendary chip and if you feel brave I'm sure you can eek a bit more power out of it, adding another 4gb ram could well help.

Hope my opinion's been of some use to you

[Mossy]

Hi there,

I've been meaning to upgrade my PC for a while, and after looking around scan seems to have the right balance of good service/quality and reasonable prices to boot. So, given a budget of roughly £1200-£1400 I was hoping for some advice on a new build,

What I actually plan to use it for:

-General internet/Word processing/ etc

-Gaming: Nothing incredibly intense, but being able to play say wow with 60 fps with a browser open and some music on would be ideal. (I have 2 screens atm, and can't use one due to my old old graphics card- the screen I do use is fairly big, 2048x1152, and I'm considering getting another, to replace the other screen I currently don't use when I have my new pc so I'd have 2 2048x1152 screens)

-Mathematica/Matlab etc. I'm soon to be a PhD student, (hopefully) and my research involves moderately intense numerical stuff. I'm not an expert on the inner workings of these programs however, and I'm not sure how the speed of components interact with one another when running a program: put it like this, in the simple versions of programs I have been running, on a 4Gb DDR2 800 mhz ram, Q6600 processor the ram use spikes up to something like 3.5 Gb and the computer becomes unusable for about 30 minutes. Now, I want to be able to run finer programs, and get on with other stuff at the same time, with this in mind is it worth focusing on a faster processor? (wasn't at full load although mathematica is weird with multicore machines it seems) or just throw more (or faster) ram at it? or even an SSD?

Very grateful for any help!

Giqles

(final point, I'm not keen on overclocking, it just worries me! although for the last purpose I suppose it might make sense- as I understand it I just switch the profile in the BIOS to the OC one and switch it back when I don't want the OC?)

Thank you for your enquiry I will try to answer your questions the best I can.

Looking at your budget it is healthy enough to include some high end components, I notice you mention you have a Q6600 which struggles with some of the calculations and renders your PC unusable for 30 minutes, there are many reasons your PC can not handle this. Going over to the i5 may not satisfy your requirements later on dependant on the software you are using, If you wanted to future proof yourself as much as possible I would recommend going for an i7 based computer which will allow you to utilise tripple channel memory and if the software you are using can takes advantage of Multi Threading you will see an advantage here. In regards to gaming a GTS250 would be borderline but i would say judging the resolutions you are running a GTX 465 would be the better option. SSD would be a good idea maybe a smaller one for the OS running a larger 3.5" drive for storage but there are differnet setups dependant on the size of software you are running.

We can usually set Bios profiles for overclocking, one for standard clocks and the other for overclocked settings this is also useful if you decide to add more memory in the future as by adding more memory this will create more stress for the controller and standard clocks may have to be reverted to.

I hope this infomation helps please feel free to ask to speak to myself if you require anymore help.

Regards