PJSkiboy
07-28-10, 10:10 AM
Background
I have not built a rig from the ground up in honestly 10 years or more. I've been married for 14 years and the money has honestly not been there, nor the need for a desktop in quite some time. (My work has provided me with a take home laptop for the past several years. New job does not; no biggie.) I've been wanting to build a new computer for quite some time, just never had the proper motivation until now. I'm looking to spend in the neighborhood of $1000, excluding monitor and peripherals. Somewhere around there, but if the right build runs a couple hundred over that, not the end of the world.
Purpose of the computer
Let me start off by saying I am in no way, going to use this computer for gaming. I'm a console gamer and I honestly have no interest in using my PC for gaming. Therein lies the rub, so to speak. All of the other threads I've been going through, trying to educate myself before making a post revolves around the rig being built as a gaming rig. I'd rather invest the money typically spent on high-end video cards and RAM in other areas. My main focus of concern with this build is I want it to run like a top at all times.
Operating System
Windows 7 64-bit PC.
Programs Installed
1. Microsoft Office 2010
2. Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3
3. Trillian Astra
4. FTP client
5. iTunes - wish i didn't have to have it, but i own an iPhone.
6. Other smaller utilities that aren't worth mentioning I don't think.
Notes
1. Would like to be able to set it up to dual boot between Windows 7 and Ubuntu.
2. Was thinking along the lines of installing OS and PaintShop Pro on a Solid State Drive, just because I want to mess with an SSD. Seems interesting enough to mess with for some performance improvements.
3. Was thinking of having the OS and PaintShop loaded on the SSD and then buy either a 1 or 2 TB Sata Drive for data storage.
4. Would like to run Aero with all the bells and whistles turned on. Would I need a higher end video card to make Aero run any smoother than with a run of the mill video card? I would obviously like to not have to spend a couple hundred bucks on a video card if I'm not going to be using it for gaming being my main question of concern here. I'm also going to be doing some graphics work with web design on this computer.
5. Tieing into that previous question, now that I think about it, I am going to want to run this with dual monitors. So I suppose I'll need a video card capable of doing that. Any suggestions?
6. I have always been happy with Intel chipsets. I have been reading up on the Intel i5 and i7 chipsets. Trying to figure out a happy balance between performance and price. Looks like some of the i5 chipsets can do a pretty good job and in some aspects, actually out perform i7 chipsets in some situations. Right now I'm thinking the higher end i5's might be the way for me to go.
7. RAM - I know I need to be careful to buy RAM that takes advantage of the chipset I go with, but in terms of number of gigabytes of the stuff, based on what I'm going to be using this computer for is 4 gig enough? Should I go with 6 gig just to be safe?
Closing Comments
I'm sure I've neglected to mention something, surely, but that's all I can think of for now.
I know you guys answer these exact same kinds of posts seemingly everyday and for that I apologize. But with the fact that this rig is not intended for gaming at all, I thought I should probably just lay it all out there.
Any help would definitely be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
I have not built a rig from the ground up in honestly 10 years or more. I've been married for 14 years and the money has honestly not been there, nor the need for a desktop in quite some time. (My work has provided me with a take home laptop for the past several years. New job does not; no biggie.) I've been wanting to build a new computer for quite some time, just never had the proper motivation until now. I'm looking to spend in the neighborhood of $1000, excluding monitor and peripherals. Somewhere around there, but if the right build runs a couple hundred over that, not the end of the world.
Purpose of the computer
Let me start off by saying I am in no way, going to use this computer for gaming. I'm a console gamer and I honestly have no interest in using my PC for gaming. Therein lies the rub, so to speak. All of the other threads I've been going through, trying to educate myself before making a post revolves around the rig being built as a gaming rig. I'd rather invest the money typically spent on high-end video cards and RAM in other areas. My main focus of concern with this build is I want it to run like a top at all times.
Operating System
Windows 7 64-bit PC.
Programs Installed
1. Microsoft Office 2010
2. Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3
3. Trillian Astra
4. FTP client
5. iTunes - wish i didn't have to have it, but i own an iPhone.
6. Other smaller utilities that aren't worth mentioning I don't think.
Notes
1. Would like to be able to set it up to dual boot between Windows 7 and Ubuntu.
2. Was thinking along the lines of installing OS and PaintShop Pro on a Solid State Drive, just because I want to mess with an SSD. Seems interesting enough to mess with for some performance improvements.
3. Was thinking of having the OS and PaintShop loaded on the SSD and then buy either a 1 or 2 TB Sata Drive for data storage.
4. Would like to run Aero with all the bells and whistles turned on. Would I need a higher end video card to make Aero run any smoother than with a run of the mill video card? I would obviously like to not have to spend a couple hundred bucks on a video card if I'm not going to be using it for gaming being my main question of concern here. I'm also going to be doing some graphics work with web design on this computer.
5. Tieing into that previous question, now that I think about it, I am going to want to run this with dual monitors. So I suppose I'll need a video card capable of doing that. Any suggestions?
6. I have always been happy with Intel chipsets. I have been reading up on the Intel i5 and i7 chipsets. Trying to figure out a happy balance between performance and price. Looks like some of the i5 chipsets can do a pretty good job and in some aspects, actually out perform i7 chipsets in some situations. Right now I'm thinking the higher end i5's might be the way for me to go.
7. RAM - I know I need to be careful to buy RAM that takes advantage of the chipset I go with, but in terms of number of gigabytes of the stuff, based on what I'm going to be using this computer for is 4 gig enough? Should I go with 6 gig just to be safe?
Closing Comments
I'm sure I've neglected to mention something, surely, but that's all I can think of for now.
I know you guys answer these exact same kinds of posts seemingly everyday and for that I apologize. But with the fact that this rig is not intended for gaming at all, I thought I should probably just lay it all out there.
Any help would definitely be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.