New PC Build -- ~€1900 -- Recommendations

TVMANIAC2

Hi,

Hoping to build a new PC with a budget of about €1900.

Preferably a graphics card supporting 2 monitors & possibly F@H GPU, probably buy the monitors now too. No gaming though! Work based PC

Decent amount of RAM and possibly a SSD drive for OS with maybe 2 x 500GB or 2 X 1TB in RAID 1 for data if thats possible from the motherboard chosen. In my last build a while back, I thought Asus/Gigabyte motherboards were the best, though this might have changed since? If possible, USB 3 would be nice on some or all of the USB ports.

Don't need a flashy case, but something roomy enough all the same. Have a Gigabyte (Mars I think) in my current setup, I like the look of those Antec cases.

Will probably use either XP or Windows 7, so all components should be compatible with these! Should have an unused licence already, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Open to suggestions!

Thanks,
TVManiac

Monotype

Are the monitors included in that budget?

Pretty much any card will support two monitors. How important is the balance of not gaming vs folding?

RAID 1 should be possible using on-board RAID with nearly every modern motherboard.

When you say "work based PC", are there any specific programs that might need certain hardware?

You only really see about 2 ports which are usb 3 on motherboards which feature it at the moment. I haven't seen USB 3 headers on the boards either, so you can't add in more yourself. Some cases feature a cable which runs around to the back to give you USB at the front of the case. The other option is to add in a PCI-E USB 3 card should you need more.

Do you need speakers/keyboard/mouse?

Overheal

Work-Based graphics you're really looking at Geforce Quadro Cards, or ATI's FireGL series: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195055&cm_re=firegl-_-14-195-055-_-Product

Assuming of course your rig demands graphics at all. Otherwise, your budget is frankly way too much for what you actually require.

TVMANIAC2

Overheal wrote: »

Work-Based graphics you're really looking at Geforce Quadro Cards, or ATI's FireGL series: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814195055&cm_re=firegl-_-14-195-055-_-Product

Assuming of course your rig demands graphics at all. Otherwise, your budget is frankly way too much for what you actually require.

Thanks for the feedback Overheal. I'd like a decent graphics card for 2 DVI monitors, which would be included in my budget. Also planning on buying as much RAM as supported by board or budget - whichever is first. Possibly SSD & 2 x 500GB or 1TB hard drives raided. If this can be done for much less, that's great too! Want the machine to last me 5 years minimum!

Thanks again,
TVManiac

Solitaire

We really need to know what you need to do with the rig before we can help all that much If you do need a high-end workstation, an i7-based build immediately springs to mind. And you easily have enough money for a nice Lian-Li case for some non-blingy aluminium class

Overheal

Virtually any modern motherboard with half decent integrated graphics can support dual monitors. But like Solitaire says, it matters if you're trying to Fold Proteins and model Crashtest Simulations, or if you're going to be word processing and brokering stocks. For the latter, a FireGL or Quadro card would be akin to buying an F-350 Super Duty to do the groceries.

Running Dual Monitors for basic 2D Applications requires few hardware resources at all these days. Any $30 graphics card can do that.

Solitaire

Overheal wrote: »

For the latter, a FireGL or Quadro card would be akin to buying an F-350 Super Duty to do the groceries.

I see whut u did thar! :pac:

TVMANIAC2

Solitaire wrote: »

We really need to know what you need to do with the rig before we can help all that much If you do need a high-end workstation, an i7-based build immediately springs to mind. And you easily have enough money for a nice Lian-Li case for some non-blingy aluminium class

Definitely a high end workstation ... It's extremely unlikely I'll be using graphically intensive software (like Photoshop), but it needs to be a good numbers cruncher (Core i7 then I guess, with decent cache), plenty of RAM, fast SSD HD, RAID 1 or 5 for ~2-3 x 'old style' HDs, suitable for programming. I'd like it to be capable of virtualization of Operating Systems also, as this will likely come in handy.

F@H is just a personal hobby of mine, if graphics cards with dual DVI outputs can be got nowadays for next to nothing, but incapable of running F@H, I don't think that's a big deal.

So to start off, can someone recommend me a decent motherboard, for say Core i7 (unless ye think AMD would be better suited?), preferably two or more USB 3 ports, the rest USB 2. Have never used Firewire and unlikely I ever will. Lots of PCIExpress ports, most likely ATX form factor.

If it helps, I was happy with this motherboard, on my last build a few years back: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2104 It's an Asus P5N32 E-sli

I guess one of the reasons I post here, is that my last build using Vista OS ran into a bit of driver trouble with Audio & NICs. If anyone can suggest decent components to suit either xp or windows 7 that would be great!

Thanks

Solitaire

Can anyone see any Dual-DVI cards anywhere for under €100 right now?!?! There's an XFX HD4650 on HWVS right now for €43 but the text and images aren't agreeing with each other. And for some reason HWVS seem to have hidden or removed the manufacturer's SKUs so I can't backtrace the model

TVMANIAC2

Solitaire, out of curiosity, how do you find HWVS? Easy to deal with? Are they accepting Credit card payments or is it still through the bank? I've mainly used komplett and overclockers in the past -- doubt I'll be using komplett again tbh