Building/Buying a good desktop

[Izzy]

You should really just do it yourself. It's fun and you'll learn some stuff for doing it in the future and/or upgrading parts.

[noname219]

My dad would disagree with that, he tried to convince me it wasn't a good idea at all. ^^
I'm more tempted to build one myself though.

Some changes :
- Went back with the i7-4770K 3.5 GHz, for 40$ more, it wouldn't hurt
- Blackwidow Keyboard settled in stone
- Added 139$ for Microsoft Office.

[Izzy]

LibreOffice (the new open office) can do anything microsoft office can do and it is free. It can even save as microsoft file types.

[Rebirth0]

The optical drive might be useless, unless you watch movies or rip movies/cd's from your computer. I haven't had an optical drive in my computer for two years and I'm missing out on nothing, but I guess I do download everything I need (torrents), and it is only $20, so that choice is yours.

I would upgrade that hard drive from 1TB to 2TB. $30 more for double the space.... even if you didn't think you needed it, it sounds like a great investment.

Also consider getting a water cooler for your cpu. If you do a lot of rendering/encoding/shit that uses a lot of cpu power, you will want to keep your cpu as cool as possible. With that cooler you'll probably get in the 50s in cpu temperatures. Water cooler (Corsair H60 for example) would make it 10 degrees cooler.

[noname219]

I will eventually need an optical drive for burning CDs for work related stuff. And I prefer one that's integrated instead of one that uses an USB port. And it's only 20$.

I doubt I'll ever reach 2TB (I prefer to stream movies, I don't use torrents), but my photographs takes a lot of space : 20 Mo per dng files, so there's that.

As for CPU cooling, the Corsair H60 seems like a good compromise. The H100i was probably a bit excessive for the build.

edit : as for the monitor, I might fall for something like http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/part/dell-monitor-s2340m

[dragon890x]

I recommend buying a system that's just good enough to get you by until November.

There's no reason to make such a build at current prices. Wait for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and save yourself a potential $500+, or simply use it to get better hardware.

Also, $2,000-3,000 is really shooting high if you want a good setup. Parts are not that expensive, unless you're getting into professional grade server or graphics setups. I'm going to assume that you're not running a business nor developing high definition movies.

[noname219]

I can't wait until December this year. That's not an option for me.

Like I said, money isn't an issue. While my work is mostly centered around photo editing, I do have to edit and process HD movies from time to time.
Just to give an idea, my Mac laptop has an Intel Core i7 2,3 GHz with 8 GB of memory and I had a project last month that required me to edit a pdf file with Illustrator and had to wait a full 1 second after each change. It took me a full afternoon to do something I could have done in 1 hour.

[dragon890x]

You're looking too far into this and I suspect you're being pulled in by price comparisons between desktop and laptop systems.

Look into this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...node,2340.html

Money is always an issue.
If you're going to spend it, purchase the right things. Don't waste it on making other people rich.

[Rebirth0]

I have the 21" version of those monitors, and Izzy has the 23" version. They're great monitors and are a great price. 21" was $120 at Micro Center. I highly recommend them

[noname219]

Originally Posted by dragon890x

You're looking too far into this and I suspect you're being pulled in by price comparisons between desktop and laptop systems.

Look into this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...node,2340.html

Money is always an issue.
If you're going to spend it, purchase the right things. Don't waste it on making other people rich.

I should have said that money wasn't my primary issue.
I haven't made any comparison between laptop and desktop, I'm more influenced by comparisons between building or buying an all-in-one pc.

The link you gave me will be useful when my company decides to render 3d graphics or make a 3d game (we're getting there). I knew it was possible to do this but I didn't know how.

So, I'm reviewing everything today and I'll probably order the parts this week-end. I had the confirmation this morning that the data on my old laptop hard drive is lost - unless I send it to a specialized data recovery company, which I probably will depending on the price…

[dragon890x]

Do not buy an all-in-one PC.

If you need help building a rendering farm, let me know and I'll help you as much as I can.

Also, I took a look at your most current setup and everything looks very well put together.

[choof]

the nice thing about building a rendering farm is that you're also building a mining computer at the same time

[choof]

Originally Posted by noname219

That's good to know.

Meanwhile, I found the same Dell desktop as I mentioned earlier but for 1589$. Here's the stuff :
XPS 8700
Operating System : Windows 8.1 (64Bit) Canda MUI
Processor : 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4770 Processor (8M Cache, 3.4 GHz)
Hard Drive : 2TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive + Intel® SRT 32GB SSD Cache
Video Card : NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 635 1GB DDR3
Memory : 24GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz - 4 DIMMs
Optical Drive : 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW), write to CD/DVD
Monitor : Dell UltraSharp U2412M
Keyboard : Dell KB213 Wired Multimedia Keyboard, canada MUI
Mouse : Dell Laser Mouse
Including Microsoft Office + a bunch of non-interesting stuff

Pros : mostly the same processor than I was looking for, larger hard drive, impressive memory, monitor doesn't look that bad (but quite pricey for 400$!!!), all comes from the same source and all the stuff is already installed and mounted
Cons : SDD is too small, video card is alright, and the keyboard/mouse might be shitty (an assumption), don't know the watts of the power supply, I don't know if I'll break the warranty seal if I change pieces (need to check that)

I'm thinking about buying a few other pieces and upgrading it (a better video card + keyboard + sdd). In the end, it's gonna cost me more or less the same than if I build my own...

ps this computer looks like complete and utter shit lol

[noname219]

I have a hard time trusting Dell anymore. On my laptop, I had the motherboard changed after 2 months of use. It was brand new.

[noname219]

Some news if anybody's (probably no one) wondering :
- Have the confirmation that I can retrieve my data back (yay!), price is in the 3 figure (ouch). There was this one file that I really couldn't lost - a full month of video game development.
- Found an IT guy that builds computer for a living, contacted him, he ordered the parts, received some last week, very professional, would recommend. I could mount everything myself, but he didn't ask a lot for and I tend to fuck things up recently, see previous point.
- Will eventually replace the hard drive on my laptop - was running pretty smoothly before, the, accident.

Some changes :
- Couldn't get the case, sadly, went with CoolerMaster HAF 912 instead, good quality/price. If I want to change someday, I can easily.
- Memory : 16 GB Corsair, better warranty, same specifications.
- 240 GB SSD instead of 120 GB - good decision, my future self will thank me for that
- Video card : MSI instead of EVGA, exact same chipset (GTX 770)
- Was missing a wireless card and a bluetooth usb adapter
- Monitor : different one (Viewsonic 23 inch) but I made sure it was a LED and had IPS (in-plane switching). For the same price of a LCD, a LED monitor with IPS has better color contrast and viewing angles but slower response time. Usually.

Everything else is the same. They had the Razer Blackwidow 2014 in store and damn those keys are loud.

Will provide pics.

[choof]

mechanical keyboards aren't loud, they're the perfect volume

membrane keyboards are too quiet

[noname219]

I'm so used to laptop keyboards.

Can't wait to try it though.