First non-gaming PC build

[Mirith]

Hello there!

I would appreciate some help if you have a minute to spare. I decided to look into building a computer and I'm a bit stuck - I have no technical knowledge and I'm finding understanding what's going on a bit tricky. I also have no PC at the minute, so cannot really compare the specs/speed etc to anything - it's all a bit abstract. Below the answers to the questions from your sticky and then a list of parts I've chosen so far. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

1. Purpose: a fast, stable, reliable and quiet - if possible - home workstation, non-gaming. It needs to be good at multitasking - email, calendar, a couple of browser windows with 20-30 tabs open, half a dozen of pdf files, a couple of text editors, LaTeX, a few scripts/applets, odd excel spreadsheet… you get my drift - loads of stuff opened and running constantly. This is just the way I work and I want the PC to support that without freezing up every time I switch between applications.

In addition to that everyday mess I do some drawing and painting (and sometimes photo corrections), so it needs to be able to smoothly run ArtRage/Corel/Photoshop type programs. I don't really play games and I reckon if it can handle my painting it would probably be ok with a simple occasional game, right? None of those run-around-and-shoot-stuff games.

2. I wanted it to be £400-500 (i.e. under $750), but I started researching and it seems like I won't get quite what I want for that price... I want it to be good, worth the money and relatively future-proof. I'd be willing to pay more, but I think £650-700 (i.e. under $1000) is the absolute max (excluding peripherals costs).

3. UK

4. I'm not sure yet, I'll do hunting for deals myself once I have an idea of what I'm looking for, it's the more "technical" help I need.

5. No strong preference really, as I don't own a PC/have no experience.

6. Have none.

7. I've been thinking of OC it slightly - but definitely not to any extremes, as again, never done it before. Don't want to fry my brand new rig.

8. Errr, standard? That's 1920x1080 right? Sorry for the lack of knowledge again, ekhem.

9. Soon, once I know what I'm getting/doing. I'm hearing new CPU Haswell is coming out and I'm thinking that prices of older CPUs might drop a bit? So in 2-3 weeks lets say?

10. I'll go for 64-bit Win 7 I think.

So from my reading I got this far. I am not entirely sure that all those can go together, so if you see something stupid/not quite right please let me know. I want to learn, but the less jargon, the better.

Parts picked so far:

- Case: ??

- Power Supply: between 400-500W?

- CPU: Intel 3rd Generation Core i5-3570K CPU ~£170-180

- Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H £120-130
or
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 £100 (but I've heard its quality is worse than Gigabyte one)

- Cooler: ??

- RAM:
Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600MHz ~£55-60

- Hard Drive:

Primary SSD for OS: Samsung 840 120GB 2.5″ SATA III SSD : ~£70
Secondary HDD for storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200rpm ST500DM002 ~£40

- Graphics Card: do I really need it? what are the integrated cards like?

Nvidia's GTX 650 £90 or Nvidia's GTX 650 Ti ~£110-120 if I have the money.

or alternatively Radeon HD 7770 1GB £90

- Sound: Onboard Sound Card, no extra sound card

- Optical Drive: DVD+RW, no blue-ray

- Internet? Other stuff that I'm missing?

EDIT: Oh, just had a thought, might be tempted by a second monitor at some point in the future (once I dug myself out of the hole this build is going to create). Not sure how much that matters.

Thanks for reading and any info/advice you might have for me!

Mirith

 

[BurnItDwn]

I don't think you need a graphics card since you won't do any gaming. I don't think GPU is stressed by any of the photoshop type things, that's all CPU based calculatons.

It seems like you've done your research.

Get a decent CPU (i5 is fantastic option),
go with SSD for OS and then SATA for data. all good here
Integrated sound, any sort of DVD-RW
Power Supply, 400W would give you flexibilitiy/allow you to purchase a video card at a later date if you want, however, you could get away with a 300W card probably.

RAM, if you truly are going to multitask as heavily as you say, then you may want to consider 16GB or more.

 

[Sleepingforest]

You're going about this the wrong way. You don't need an overclocked i5 for office tasks, even if it's lots of office tasks (unless they are all ACTIVELY calculating something, which is highly unlikely anyway). You need lots of RAM to do that. You can have strong enough graphics for things like Photoshop, 16GB RAM (more than enough for the average user) and an SSD for under 600£ (including an operating system, which will likely run you about 70£.)

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£91.27 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£52.35 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£60.95 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£73.36 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£50.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 1GB Video Card (£87.12 @ Amazon UK)
Case: BitFenix Shinobi ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.90 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply (£38.66 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer (£11.47 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £516.05
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-29 00:06 BST+0100)

 

[mfenn]

SF makes a good point, but you can indeed have an i5 for about the same price as the build he posted:

Swap FX-6300 for i5 3470 +£59
Swap 970 mobo for ASRock H77 Pro4-M +£11
Drop GPU -£87

That works out to £17 less. The i5 system will have less (much less) 3D graphics power, but has more outright CPU performance.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I knew there would be a roughly equal price Intel option if you dropped the graphics, but I figure that with a small budget and some amount of Photoshop going on, the cheap AMD hex-core is a bit of a better option (and it allows for a GPU which actually maxes out what little Photoshop needs).

 

[Mirith]

Thank you, that's really helpful! And yeah, I might be going about it the wrong way, that's why I'm asking for some help here - seeing as I have no practical knowledge and I think that you can't really know everything from a few reviews. Always better to ask the pros

I'll have a look at the components you mentioned, read up and come back (most likely). I'll definitely get more RAM too after what you said, and probably will go for the G Skill seeing the massive price difference (I'm assuming it's still a good brand since you recommend it). The AMD FX-6300 looks interesting too - am I right in thinking that I could benefit from the extra cores while multitasking?

 

[nageov3t]

honestly, for your needs, I'd seriously price out a prebuilt machine (Dell, or whatever) with as much RAM as you can throw inside it (though I'd probably buy the RAM myself, given that manufacturers tend to jack up prices on extras/addons)

 

[lehtv]

The FX-6300 makes no sense for an office build that doesn't need much graphics processing power. I agree with mfenn's suggestion, the integrated graphics in i5-3470 is fast enough for you. And the CPU itself is much faster per core than FX-6300, and consumes less power: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=702

Extra threads can indeed help when multitasking, but that really only applies when using heavily multithreaded software, and as you can see in the above benchmarks, the four cores of i5-3470 are as fast as the six cores of FX-6300. So, there is no benefit to the FX, even with heavily multithreaded software, and I don't think any of your applications are heavily multithreaded.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I'll have a look at the components you mentioned, read up and come back (most likely). I'll definitely get more RAM too after what you said, and probably will go for the G Skill seeing the massive price difference (I'm assuming it's still a good brand since you recommend it). The AMD FX-6300 looks interesting too - am I right in thinking that I could benefit from the extra cores while multitasking?

Short answer: No, I put in the hexcore CPU for photoediting purposes.

Long answer: Sort of. Here's the thing: most of the time, web pages, excel worksheets, and word processors are idle; that is to say, the CPU does not have to do any work. For example, most of a web browser's background tabs are just passively sitting and not doing anything, and you physically cannot operate a word document and an excel sheet simultaneously (as in, input stuff into both at the exact same time). That means the CPU is mostly idle except for one task. Even if you have, for example, a Youtube video in one tab and music playing from something else, the CPU does not have to actively do stuff for both contantly--the content is buffered so the CPU can get back to idle as quickly as possible. Since these tasks are typically very simple for a CPU, there is a method CPUs use call "context-switching" in which they can rapidly go from one software process to another after the smallest executable segment is completed--the switch is so fast that it is unnoticeable.

Thus more cores does not instantly translate to better multitasking. Typically, more cores means the computer is better at highly parallelized tasks (like photo editing).

Extra threads can indeed help when multitasking, but that really only applies when using heavily multithreaded software, and as you can see in the above benchmarks, the four cores of i5-3470 are as fast as the six cores of FX-6300. So, there is no benefit to the FX, even with heavily multithreaded software, and I don't think any of your applications are heavily multithreaded.

He is running Photoshop/Artrage/Corel daily, which is pretty much the definition of heavily threaded (and can actually use the GPU a little). Otherwise, I'd agree with you 100%.

 

[Torn Mind]

Web browsers are limited by hard disk access times(I pay attention and always notice the HDD makes their access noise whenever I go to a new website) and RAM.

PDF viewing, after a certain point where the CPU is fast enough(think E4500), becomes won't be slowed down until your RAM is "full" and you're using the page fileq.

 

[lehtv]

He is running Photoshop/Artrage/Corel daily, which is pretty much the definition of heavily threaded (and can actually use the GPU a little). Otherwise, I'd agree with you 100%.

Not all of Photoshop's functions are multithreaded beyond 4 threads.

Based on what I've googled, Artrage isn't multithreaded, but I'm not sure if that's changed with a recent version.

Dunno about Corel.

 

[Mirith]

Hello and thanks for further responses. I'm learning all sorts of things, which is great. I'm going to read of about multithreading and try to check which programs it applies to in my case.

Torn Mind, how do I check those? Do you think it would be fine with the disks selected so far etc?

At the minute I'm leaning towards AMD FX-6300 over i5-3470 - that AMD is a lot cheaper, i5-3470 is nearly the price of i5 3570K which I originally picked. If I went for i5-3470, might as well go straight to i5 3570K. I also think that either way I'd like a GPU, just in case, so I wouldn't be really saving by dropping it if I picked i5 3470.

One thing with the AMD I'm not sure about is the MSI mobo. I'm reading quite a few negative reviews about the brand, DOA etc. On PC partpicker there are a few other mobos not much more expensive than this MSI, for example Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 (has a heatsink too)? I've heard better things about Gigabyte. AsRock seems like they might be good, but the build quality seems a bit flimsy to me. I don't want Asus, a few friends had them failing a lot (I realise that's probably not a representative sample though). I will have a look at mobos/mobo forum section after work, but if anyone has any comments go for it :]

EDIT: Seems like G Skill is the same price as Corsair for 16GB i.e. around £100... Bit pricey for RAM really. Will need to think about it.

 

[Zap]

I knew there would be a roughly equal price Intel option if you dropped the graphics, but I figure that with a small budget and some amount of Photoshop going on, the cheap AMD hex-core is a bit of a better option (and it allows for a GPU which actually maxes out what little Photoshop needs).

A few things...
1) Photoshop CS6 uses OpenCL and OpenGL. It does not use CUDA. Thus, it does not need an Nvidia card.
2) Everything can be done in CPU. Only certain tasks can be done in GPU. I would personally max out CPU before GPU.
3) Even Intel integrated graphics (latest HD 3000, HD 4000, etc) is supported for acceleration.
4) Faster cards do perform faster, but may only be noticeable in huge (talking 10000x10000 pixels) images. With smaller images (typical consumer level phones/cameras) there may not be much noticeable difference between slower and faster GPUs.

That said, the AMD stuff will probably run things just fine if budget needs trimming. The integrated GPU will be fine (whether AMD or Intel) so no need for discrete GPU. Wattage will probably never go above 200W ever (maybe half that with an Intel CPU) so just get something low wattage, decent quality, cheap and efficient. Mild overclocking doesn't really add much, so you can spend more on the CPU and less on the motherboard to break even. I'd suggest no bigger than mATX, as ATX would just be a big empty box.

 

[mfenn]

4) Faster cards do perform faster, but may only be noticeable in huge (talking 10000x10000 pixels) images. With smaller images (typical consumer level phones/cameras) there may not be much noticeable difference between slower and faster GPUs.

Agree on all points, but I will elaborate here some more. Yes, many task in Photoshop are multithreaded. No, it does not matter unless you are using huge images or images with many many layers. The gains from multithreading diminish (both absolutely and relatively) as image complexity decreases.

And we haven't even gotten into the whole integer versus floating point can of worms yet. Most image and video manipulation algorithms use floating point (decimal) numbers instead of integers. The AMD may have 6 integer cores, but it only has 3 floating point units. The Intel has 4 full integer and floating point cores.

 

[Mirith]

Now I'm getting confused again :biggrin: This is like some weird rollercoaster. Tempted to go back to i5 and drop GPU... I really wish I were more decisive!

Found some Corsair 8GB RAM for £37. Might go for that (x2).

 

[Torn Mind]

Torn Mind, how do I check those? Do you think it would be fine with the disks selected so far etc?

Well, with a standard hard disk, I just listen to the disk making noise. But apparently, there is a utility called DiskMon to check hard drive activity. I've never used it or known about it before, but you could give it a try.

For RAM, I use Task Manager. Go to the performance tab, and look at the under "Physical Memory" .

 

[Topweasel]

Now I'm getting confused again :biggrin: This is like some weird rollercoaster. Tempted to go back to i5 and drop GPU... I really wish I were more decisive!

Found some Corsair 8GB RAM for £37. Might go for that (x2).

The problem here is primarily because of Photoshop because it A.) Is Multithreaded. B.) It can also use the video card as an extra CPU (which in theory can actually be faster than a CPU even on a rediciously cheap one). C.) It can be as gentle as paint, or as mean as a task you might send to a super computer. The fourth impact is D.) System responsiveness, more cores means more work before your system trips over itself.

The real key to figure out CPU and GPU requirements to photoshop is your use case. What kind of files and sizes of them, filters, and so on do you deal with. What kind of task do you find yourself waiting for if any, and how long.

The crux and why I think both of them are right is that dependent on how and what you do in photoshop, it could use multiple cores which is in the 6k's favor, but it could be doing mostly FPU work which would put it in the i5's favor, but that work could in theory depending on the job be offloaded to the GPU which if this is the case make almost any discrete Radeon faster than either CPU, which puts the favor back on the 6k (being cheaper and easier to fit a GPU into the budget). The 6k does have the benefit of being a 6 core CPU so in theory it can take a bigger workload before affecting responsiveness when it comes to normal windows tasks. But you are probably going to find 1 task that will max out both before you find enough side tasks to kill one but not the other with Windows 7 and Window 8 and their task scheduler.

I think in this case the 6k and a GPU would give you a better rounded system without delving to tightly into specific use cases of a one specific application. But in the end you would be giving up a pretty decent amount of single thread performance just to balance out the system for the one use case.

 

[Cerb]

Basically:

Core i5: faster 90% of the time, but may choke if you ever need the GPU for more than Youtube (hyperbole). You can always add a $50-70 video card, later.

FX-6300/6350: slower, 90% of the time, but more balanced.

Multitasking will benefit from more cores, but those returns are diminishing. Past 2 cores, more cores are mostly good for individual programs that can use them (also, since the OS takes up CPU and memory as part of your tasks, a program that can peg 2 cores might still be faster with 3+), more than for multitasking.

 

[cbk]

If you are looking for a great PSU, go for the Corsair CX600M, It's a great PSU, the modular design really is helpful for cable management. (and your sanity!) I don't think you will need any more than 600W for this build.

For a video card, I think the 650 is a good choice, but I would go for the 650 Ti Boost, which is a great upgrade for only a little more cash. If you are willing to spend about $40 more than the Ti Boost, go for the 660, which is even better than the Boost. IMO, think you'll be fine with something in the 650 series.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Both SF and Mfenn's builds look great, and frankly both would work well for you. Most of the qualitative feeling of "fastness" or "snappiness" that you describe that you want during your extensive multitasking actually comes from having lots of RAM, and a good SSD rather than a super-powered CPU.

Expanding on what Mfenn said, part of the design philosophy of the FX chips is that float point operations should be gpu accelerated, while integer operations should be done on the CPU. Each FX core is an independent integer processor, but it shares float-point processing with its neighbor. For multi-threaded int ops, the FX is a hexcore, but for threaded float ops, the FX is effectively a tri-core. By contrast, the i5 remains a quadcore in sufficiently threaded integer and float point operations.

If it were me, I'd go with the i5 and see if I could use the savings to get a slightly larger (250 rather than 120 GB) SSD. The igpu will be able to accelerate in photoshop, and it should give you reasonable performance in low-key gaming. If you're unsatisfied with the GPU acceleration, you can always consider adding a mid-range dgpu later.

 

[Mirith]

I guess I'll have to make a decision and just go for it - seems like it should be ok either way really. I will have another look at the prices and probably start buying stuff soon. I thought that maybe prices of i5 might drop slightly once Haswell is released, but I'm hearing that's most likely not going to happen. So might as well go for it then. I will need to have a look at the monitors too, I'm hoping to get a relatively cheap IPS one... Although it has been suggested to me to go for two - a small IPS and a big TN...

Thank you for all your help so far, I really appreciate it. I know newbies can be very annoying and I'm positively surprised by how informative and friendly have you all been :]

 

[mfenn]

No worries, you are a very friendly newbie! :awe: Let us know what decision you come to or if you have any other questions.

 

[Mirith]

I think I will go for i5 and drop GPU. It looks like i5 will give me more power in general and I think it will be easier to add a GPU later if need be, to round up the system a little bit more, while it would be harder and more expensive to upgrade the CPU.

One more question I have is about the DDR3 RAM - I was going for 16GB, following your advice that I need more than 8GB, but if it's DDR3 do I need 3 sticks? If I only had 2x8GB would it work in dual channel not taking full advantage of DDR3? Or does it depend on the motherboard/something else? Or is dual/triple channel completely independent of DDR2/DDR3 and I can run 2 sticks of DDR3 in dual channel without losing anything?

EDIT: If I go with i5 I'd be using Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H mobo.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

One more question I have is about the DDR3 RAM - I was going for 16GB, following your advice that I need more than 8GB, but if it's DDR3 do I need 3 sticks? If I only had 2x8GB would it work in dual channel not taking full advantage of DDR3? Or does it depend on the motherboard/something else? Or is dual/triple channel completely independent of DDR2/DDR3 and I can run 2 sticks of DDR3 in dual channel without losing anything?

You only need two (or four) DIMMs for dual channel operation. You can run three, but that would cause the remaining capacity on the largest channel to only be mapped for single channel operation. This is called Intel Flex Memory Access. But the only thing that's really affected by dual channel operation is the IGP, so its not that important when you're not using the IGP.

Xbitlabs has a good primer on choosing RAM for Ivy bridge based CPUs by the way:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/ivy-bridge-ddr3.html

 

[Mirith]

Cool, thank you.

Seems like prices have been going up for everything... Are there any trends to price fluctuations when it comes to components? E.g. a lot of things are cheaper after Christmas, is it worth waiting now for a bit (week or so, not till after Christmas), as for example the price of RAM went from £37 to £48.