Desktop PC

GrandOldTeam · February 28, 2014

My last one seems to have died, so I need a new one.

Anyone recommend any?... Or even decent places to get one?

Needs to be a PC too - so swerve the Mac shouts.

bluebud · February 28, 2014

Got mine on eBay(New) a couple of years ago, decent spec gaming machine for £550, can't remember the name of the co selling but can find out, my mate got one as well, no probs with either

Bungle · February 28, 2014

@GrandOldTeam

Before I respond, if the site I recommended happened to somehow link to a badger and an otter having sex (copyright @chicoazul ), would I be banned?

Obviously that's not my intention, but sometimes my computer does some strange things.

SerenityNigh · February 28, 2014

I've never used a non-Mac for work, so all I can offer is the Mac Pro. I guess that the downside of grant-funded research--you just buy whatever. I'm out of that now but use the MacBook Pro for work. If you don't want to splash for that, I'd take up @Bungle's badger-sex option.

Garrick · February 28, 2014

If you're building, I highly recommend pcpartpicker.com.

Here's what I built a month or so ago (minus an SSD that I already had). It's gaming oriented, obviously. If you're doing like video editing or anything else like that I'd probably suggest 16 gigs of RAM and a 4770(K)

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/CmndrFish/saved/2VQ0

mythbuster · February 28, 2014

I'd never buy a complete PC. Always, always custom build much better value for money if you're prepared to trawl ebay for parts and a case (i'd only buy new parts though.)

dholliday · February 28, 2014

GrandOldTeam said:
My last one seems to have died, so I need a new one.

Anyone recommend any?... Or even decent places to get one?

Needs to be a PC too - so swerve the Mac shouts.

My advice would be just to make sure the graphics card is from the newer Kepler generation. This means improved processing capabilities with high-resolution video, and also great features like using multiple screens. Especially if you're busy with multi-tasking, then these new cards are pretty future-proof.

Otherwise, the processor should be one of the i5 or i7's, I like the quadcore i7's, again for multi-tasking reasons. You don't need to watch out too much for which one, as the performance-differences are minimal. I use the laptop-based processor i7-2670qm.

Get a good SSD as your OS-drive, and a couple of TB-capacity HDD's for storage and perhaps a back-up OS.

This site is good to ensure what you're getting is near the high-end of performance:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

dholliday · February 28, 2014

dholliday said:
My advice would be just to make sure the graphics card is from the newer Kepler generation. This means improved processing capabilities with high-resolution video, and also great features like using multiple screens. Especially if you're busy with multi-tasking, then these new cards are pretty future-proof.

Also, there is an even newer NVidia architecture called Maxwell...but it doesn't seem to offer the features/performance jump that Kepler did over Fermi (the previous architecture). So I reckon any NVidia GPU with Kepler or Maxwell is fine. Don't recommend ATI as its drivers are sometimes unstable (tho' this view might be outdated now).

Garrick · February 28, 2014

dholliday said:
Also, there is an ever newer NVidia architecture called Maxwell...but it doesn't seem to offer the features/performance jump that Kepler did over Fermi (the previous architecture). So I reckon any NVidia GPU with Kepler or Maxwell is fine. Don't recommend ATI as its drivers are sometimes unstable (tho' this view might be outdated now).

AMD/ATi's drivers are perfectly fine nowadays, but their cards are currently in short supply and/or priced insanely high because of the litecoin and other cryptocurrency mining craze. Unless you're getting a low-end ~$100ish card, the AMD options have some pretty bad price inflation on them.

I used to use AMD cards and was planning on getting an R9 290 because it's bang for buck (or should I say, MSRP for buck) can't be beat, but when it's the same price as the GTX 780... The 780 is a much better deal.