New build with a laptop.

mickmac76

Hi
hoping you can help me with a new pc and laptop. My six year old dell pc has just died completely and as its so old its just not worth repairing. I'm currently using a laptop which is also pretty old ( about 3.5 years old ) so really I need both a new pc and a new laptop. I've got quite a good budget but I'm not sure how to divide it up between the 2 new computers but the desktop will be the main computer and I need the laptop to be quite portable as my current one is a real brick.

1. What is your budget? €1700 for both desktop and laptop.

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Video editing, internet use, films. Also starting a degree by distance education this year so I'll be using the pc a great deal for assignments, computer programming and researching topics on the web etc.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Have a wireless keyboard and mouse from dell that I might continue to use but I find the mouse quite heavy so wolud perfer something new.

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes

5a. If yes, what size do you need. At least 22 inch as I'll be using the pc a lot I'd like a good quality monitor.

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future?

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Wireless Card and Card Reader and Speakers. Also a blue ray dvd player, a large internal hard drive (2gb if possible) and hopefully a ssd drive.Also a tv card would be handy.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes. Never done it before but I'm quite willing to try.

8. How can you pay? Any.

9. When are you purchasing? I need the laptop as soon as possible but the desktop will have to wait around 3 weeks or so as I'm going abroad on 11 of August for 2 weeks. Ideally I'd have the new laptop by then.

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Kildare. Never built a complete pc before but I have some experiance putting in new hard drives, cards and ram so I should be ok.

Procrastastudy

I know I'll get lynched for saying this but I consider laptops a commodity - unless you need a specific gaming/video editing lappy of course. Personally I'd just get one form PC world. You can see my rig in my sig - total epeen but I just use a little tablet thing for college. Really portable - so lets knock €500 off for the laptop and build you a freakin' monster!

Firstly screen - at this budget buy yourself a Yamakasi - look for the owners club thread here. Basically the same panel in an 27" Apple Cinema display without the premium paid to look like a hipster. That leaves €900 which I will convert into a build - you will probably want to wait for the 660ti which I will budget €250 for.

BRB - let me know if any of the assumptions are incorrect so far.

Here it is as Brian just posted in it and shot it to the top

Item|Price
BitFenix Merc Beta|€33.20
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€37.24
Seagate Pipeline 5900.2 2TB SATA|€112.82
Samsung SSD 830 128GB SATA 6GB's Paper Box|€102.51
HIS HD 7850 GDDR5 2048MB DVI/HDMI/2xMini DP|€228.88
Samsung SH-222BB schwarz|€16.80
ASRock Z77 Pro3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€93.44
Intel Core i5-2500K Tray, LGA1155|€180.00
Thermalright HR-02 Macho|€33.89
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€42.18
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€899.95

Could probably do with a better case - that's down to taste. Wait for the 660Ti to come out and see what that does to GPU prices. OS would be another €55. 2TB HDD included but also salvage the ones out the Dell if you can. I included a DVD-RW in case you need one for burning movies too. Mine lives in my draw 99% of the time.

mickmac76

Thanks for the quick reply. You're right about getting a cheap laptop for around 500 and spending the rest on the desktop. Looking at your suggested set up i'll change the dvd drive you recommend for a blu ray one as i have a lot of blu rays i may wish to watch on the pc and putting all of them on hard disk would take an awful amount of disk space. The internal hard drives on the dell are burnt out beyond repair but i do have an external 1tb drive that i can use.
Just on the monitor you recommend, the 27 inch Yamakasi. I've never used larger than a 21 inch monitor and I was wondering how you find such a large monitor for things like web browsing, reading e books and word processing. I'm concerned that the monitor might be too large for doing these tasks in comfort.

mick.

Procrastastudy

mickmac76 wrote: »

Just on the monitor you recommend, the 27 inch Yamakasi. I've never used larger than a 21 inch monitor and I was wondering how you find such a large monitor for things like web browsing, reading e books and word processing. I'm concerned that the monitor might be too large for doing these tasks in comfort.

I have to admit to a little eye strain when I first got it. There are some excellent 23/24" models around with 1080p res (you'll need for blu-ray) which are significantly cheaper and will come with European warranty support.

These are reputed to be the dogs naughty parts.

mickmac76

OK
So I'll be ordering my parts tomorrow from hardwareversand. I like the look of the build put together by Procrastastudywith 2 changes. First I like the look of the following case.

Fractal design R4 in white.

And change the motherboard to the following

ASUS P8Z77-V LE for better overclocking options.

I'll also be getting the dell 24 inch monitor as I had a look at the 27 inch yamakasi and its just too big for me. Just wondering would everything in this build work together. i'm also concerned about weather the heat sink will fit into the case as there doesn't seem to be any way to tell except buy and see.

Mick.