Help choosing a new home Desktop PC please

[craiginuk]

Hi all,

I hope you can help me please. I am looking at replacing my home desktop. This is the main family PC and I use it for editing family video footage with Sony vegas studio (now HD which existing PC won't manage), storing and viewing photos with Picasa. Also general use of word and Excel.

We have a budget of £500 for tower only and can get Win7 OS from software for students about £40 leaving about £460 for the actual hardware.
So far I've looked at these:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/iflamepro.html - looks good but am just worried the onboard graphics may battle with editing HD video

or this:
http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/deltav2.html - this one also looks good but I have read the AMD bulldozer processor is a bit of a let down. Not sure if that is just geeky review type techies giving it a hard time or if it is actually lacking?

Not too fussed about only 500GB HDD as I will move my existing 1TB (d: drive) from my existing machine and carry on using that for data storage. Only the OS and software installations will go on the new HDD (c: drive)

Not really a gamer but just want it to be able to handle HD video editing and streaming later. Might also move up to photoshop at some point.

Will either of these be ok? Can anyone suggest something better at the £460 hardware mark please?

Thanks and regards

Craig

 

[shadowboxer]

The first is the better build. Bulldozer was a massive let down. They perform well behind Sandy Bridge i5 CPUs and even behind AMDs older Phenom processors whilst consuming more power. Not sure about video editing with onboard GPU but you could always add in a cheapish graphics card.

 

[craiginuk]

Thanks Shadowboxer - that's confirmed my gut feeling about the 2nd one. Can you suggest a Graphics card? Also could do with a firewire port as I have some old Video to capture. Would a firewire port be on the graphics card?

Sorry about the stupid questions but not too clued up on all this

 

[EndlessWaves]

Can you suggest a Graphics card? Also could do with a firewire port as I have some old Video to capture. Would a firewire port be on the graphics card?

Sorry about the stupid questions but not too clued up on all this

Looking at the system requirements for the lastest version of Vegas Movie Studio HD I see no mention of a graphics card, suggesting that it makes no use of one. This is reinforced by the fact that Vegas Pro does specifically have it listed.

A graphics card won't have a firewire port, but you should have no problem getting hold of a dedicated firewire card for not much money (£10-20 I'd guess).

 

[craiginuk]

Thanks all. Am I right in assuming I can add a graphics card later if I fInd the system lacking? What do I need to look out for in system spec to make this possible?

 

[spyder viewer]

You will need a spare pci-e X16 slot.

 

[EndlessWaves]

And ideally a power supply with sufficient spare power for the sort of graphics card you're likely to add. If it's like the vegas pro link then they're fairly high end cards and 150-200W would be a good margin, say a good quality 500-600W power supply. Package systems are very unlikely to have this, so you'd either have to accept the cost of replacing it later (£50 or so for the PSU, fitting isn't difficult) or go for a system where you can customise the components.

Make sure it's either a good brand or that it's rated for continous power (not peak power) and can deliver at least 40A combined on the +12v rail(s). If you can't find those two facts out skip or accept you may need to replace it when upgrading.