Need advice on motherboard & video card for developer build

DaSilva

Hey guys, I'm planning on building a PC which will be mainly used for software development. That means little need for a powerful graphics card, but I do need dual monitor support.

I've been looking at buying a pre-built from Dell, but get the feeling I'm paying a premium when I could buy the parts and build it myself, so if it really saves money I will order the parts and do a self build.

Rough specs I'm looking at are:
Intel Core i3-2100 (I think this is the lowest end Sandy Bridge, is it actually worth it versus a cheaper AMD? I'm not encoding video, I will be running a single Virtual Machine)
4GB Ram
Regular 1TB disk
Creative Audigy SoundCard (This is kinda old, but I suspect it's still very decent, want a decent card for some DSP projects, but I'm not a doing any mixing or anything)
2x 20" monitor
Any graphics card that supports dual monitor and has Linux drivers

Here's the thing, every time I get to the stage of choosing a motherboard / graphics cards I get lost, there are so many choices now (7 pages on Hardwareversand!) and I have no idea if I'm going to buy something completely inappropriate. The version numbering system the graphics/cpu and motherboard manufacturers use are really confusing.

I'd love to spend sub €800 but if it's not possible that's fine. Not looking for someone to do all the work for me either, but if you had some advice on a motherboard / graphics card or something I should change in my current spec I'd be grateful.

longshotvalue

DaSilva wrote: »

Hey guys, I'm planning on building a PC which will be mainly used for software development. That means little need for a powerful graphics card, but I do need dual monitor support.

I've been looking at buying a pre-built from Dell, but get the feeling I'm paying a premium when I could buy the parts and build it myself, so if it really saves money I will order the parts and do a self build.

Rough specs I'm looking at are:
Intel Core i3-2100 (I think this is the lowest end Sandy Bridge, is it actually worth it versus a cheaper AMD? I'm not encoding video, I will be running a single Virtual Machine)
4GB Ram
Regular 1TB disk
Creative Audigy SoundCard (This is kinda old, but I suspect it's still very decent, want a decent card for some DSP projects, but I'm not a doing any mixing or anything)
2x 20" monitor
Any graphics card that supports dual monitor and has Linux drivers

Here's the thing, every time I get to the stage of choosing a motherboard / graphics cards I get lost, there are so many choices now (7 pages on Hardwareversand!) and I have no idea if I'm going to buy something completely inappropriate. The version numbering system the graphics/cpu and motherboard manufacturers use are really confusing.

I'd love to spend sub €800 but if it's not possible that's fine. Not looking for someone to do all the work for me either, but if you had some advice on a motherboard / graphics card or something I should change in my current spec I'd be grateful.

€800 will easily be enough, but if your running a VM youd be better with a i5 2500k, as the i3 is one dual core

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ScumLord

I wouldn't have thought software development required much power so I'd assume an i3 is fine. The two monitors might mean splashing a bit on a graphics card as I know running 3 monitors requires some pretty expensive GC.

I would say get a good motherboard that will accept much more powerful processors so that you have scope in the future I've gotten well over 5 years out of any motherboard I've bought because I could just put a new CPU in.

Tea_Bag

i stand corrected, but doesnt the K series processors lack something useful in hardware accelerated VMs? i think going for the standard i7-2600 is the option most people take.
you can run 3 monitors off any 5000+ series AMD gpu comfortably if you're not doing gaming.