Project Reality Forums

As some of you may know i've been "stuck" with an iMac for 2 years now.

As my production needs get bigger the machine simply cannot contain the workload, so i am looking to build a new PC rather than buying the latest ?2,000 Mac. I can build a more powerful PC for ?700 than my current "powerful iMac".

It will be used for video and music production, as well as modeling etc. Not to mention games

If anyone can point me to a great UK website for building custom desktops i would be forever grateful!

But this is what I had in mind so far, considering i havent really built a PC in 8 years I have no idea what is good or bad anymore (Macs are incredibly boring).

Cooler Master Elite 431 Mid-Tower Gaming Case w/ Front USB 3.0 & X-Dock HDD Hot Swap
750W High Efficiency G7 Extreme Modular Super Silent Power Supply
MSI 990XA-GD55 AMD FX ATX Motherboard - CrossFireX?/SLI? Ready
AMD PILEDRIVER FX 8320 Black Edition, 8 Core, 3.5GHz/4.0GHz, 16MB Cache
16GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory (2x8GB) Kit
1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 - 384 Cores,DVI,mHDMI - 3D Vision Ready
120GB SSD - OCZ Agility 3 Solid State Drive
2TB SATA III 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms Hard Drive
24x DVD Writer (read/write CD & DVD)
Memory Card Reader - (Internal 80 in 1)
Integrated 7.1 High Definition 8-channel Audio
High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Microsoft Windows? 7 Home Premium 64 bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence

This is currently 8x more powerful than my iMac, and for ?210 saving!

Is it any good? Graphic card recommendations?

I don't know what music production you use, but you may want to consider some advanced sound card for more inputs , although I can assume you have some kind of board that handles that?

Also I found Scan good for sending parts and customer service, and they have a PC building arm "3XS", so yeah : Custom PCs built by the award winning team - Scan 3xs Systems (relatively good prices too!)

If want to put the money, suggest a little more powerful GPU, like a 660ti or an AMD 7870.

You need to do more research into the GTX 600 series of cards,
I'm not sure what type of video work you do, there is some controversy over the different CUDA cores in the 600 series, compared to the GTX 570 and 580.

The GTX 650 is going to drive you nuts if you do heavy rendering or whatever, save money longer to at least get the 660 or 570.

MPE Gain - PPBM5

Unless you have a server, NAS or SCSI blade or something, I'd suggest getting a full tower case now, so you can add in terabyte drive RAID 10, down the road.

Pedz wrote:I don't know what music production you use, but you may want to consider some advanced sound card for more inputs , although I can assume you have some kind of board that handles that?

Also I found Scan good for sending parts and customer service, and they have a PC building arm "3XS", so yeah : Custom PCs built by the award winning team - Scan 3xs Systems (relatively good prices too!)

I compose music for Film and Animation, generally use Reason, Ableton and Logic Pro (on mac) - Thanks for the link, will check it out

mangeface wrote:If want to put the money, suggest a little more powerful GPU, like a 660ti or an AMD 7870.

I was considering intel at first, but decided to try AMD for once, thanks for the recommendation

'[R-COM wrote:LITOralis.nMd;1872917']You need to do more research into the GTX 600 series of cards,
I'm not sure what type of video work you do, there is some controversy over the different CUDA cores in the 600 series, compared to the GTX 570 and 580.

The GTX 650 is going to drive you nuts if you do heavy rendering or whatever, save money longer to at least get the 660 or 570.

MPE Gain - PPBM5

Unless you have a server, NAS or SCSI blade or something, I'd suggest getting a full tower case now, so you can add in terabyte drive RAID 10, down the road.

Mainly video editing and video effects + after effects. RAID is one of the options i was looking to get from the start!

Thanks for the advice, i will post updates + pictures of the build in April

Looking forward to rejoining the PC master race