Time for a new PC...

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m3z

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and I will be upgrading from a P4 3GHz, 1GB Ram, 6600GT GFX Card, the average 2004 AGP system :o


I need some advice guys...

What do I buy and where?

I've got a budget of about 5 to 6 grand. I require:

- Chasis (with room for lots of hard drives)

- Motherboard (with lots of Sata ports)

- RAM (4 Gigs)

- CPU (never owned an AMD system yet...)

- Power Supply



I'm not gonna use this PC for gaming, just need a fast machine for Encoding, HD Movies, Photoshop, CPU intensive tasks etc.



Please advise me of what to buy and where I can get it for a great price.


Thank you :)
 
www.zones.co.za

Core i7, upgrade ram & hd, R7300. Get a courier company to collect. Buy a ATI HD4890 online for about R2300.

Would help if you specified your budget...
 
Amd socket AM3 Phenom2 x4, Quad-core 945 (3.0Ghz) R2684.97

BIOSTAR TA790GX 128M V5.x T-Series Motherboard R1163.14

Sapphire HD4670 512MB GDDR4 PCI-E (HDMI On-board) R804.45

Western Digital CAViAR AV-GP WD3200AVVS 320gb, S-ata2 R504.24


Transcend® JetRam™ High-Performance 2GB DDR2-800 R 271.62

Transcend® JetRam™ High-Performance 2GB DDR2-800 R 271.62

Coolermaster RP-550-PCAR eXtreme power 550w, ATX 12V V2.01 R642.00

R 6342.04

Using Prophecy.co.za pricing.

That board has 6sata ports and the pc will still be able to handle the odd game with ease.

If we drop to 2gigs of ram and make the power supply a 460watt instead you will be able to get a quad.


Amd socket AM3 Phenom2 x4, Quad-core 945 (3.0Ghz) R2670.68

This system will give very close to i7 performance for much less.
 
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I think you can kill off the HD4670 @ R804.45 as that 790GX board already has a graphic card on it and it does do HD decoding.

As m3z already seems to have enough drives and hasn't requested any, another R504.24 can come off as he can re-use his current drives for the time being.

That should then get it to R5033.35 on retail pricing from prophecy and have 4G of RAM. Useless ofcourse if he is running 32-bit OS.

Going for the 460W should then bring it down even a bit further and still be decent.

There's money left then for a chassis which no-one seems to have included, but others here can recommend 'cos I have a tendency of dropping R2K on a case @ a time.
 
Thanks for the prompt response guys!

I just need the parts as specified above. I've got all my older hard drives and optical drives that I will be using in the new system.

Thanks for the quotes guys. I had some members PM me with quotes for Intel Core 2 Quad systems, and the above quote is for an AMD Phenom2 X4.


Like I said, I've never owned an AMD system before, is it time to jump ship?


I will be using the new system with Windows 7.
 
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The Intel Q9550 beats the AMD P2 955 at encoding. I'm pretty sure it beats the 945 at most things, too. With Intel's price drop on the Q9550 to the same price as the 945, I'd recommend Intel if encoding is the priority.

Seems like the Q9550's competition is actually the AMD P2 955, which is quite a bit pricier than the Q9550... :eek:
 
chassis, motherboard, ram, cpu, psu

Ok let's see... why not get a 785g chipset board:

http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=26316 = R1550

That has 4xxx graphics so HDMI video is built into the board itself.

http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?products_id=20715 Chassis = R360

I don't really know AMD processors so well but maybe a tri-core something or other? Like maybe R1,5-2k or thereabouts.

Then memory - well I guess R500 for 4gb: http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?cPath=30_291&products_id=14658

Power supply R560: http://www.sybaritic.co.za/store/product_info.php?cPath=73_269&products_id=19261

All that rounds up to R4700 - enough to budget a real graphics card if you're so inclined, or perhaps upgrade the chassis or get DDR3 memory.
 
I'm still curious as to how the 790G chipset stacks up to a 785G, but no-one seems to know and just punting them.
 
The 790GX is still the fastest integrated graphics chip out there, however the 785G adds DX10.1 and some other features.
 
Thanks. :) I finally found a few reviews, etc, out there that didn't quite compare them but gave some indication of what can be done.

I added some info to the other 785 thread.
 
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