New PC - what to look for around the £2,000 mark?

[DimPrawn]

Why does that have "blu-ray" in the title but no optical drive?

Here's the ASUS website spec.

https://www.asus.com/uk/Notebooks/AS...pecifications/

Optical Drive
Blue-ray reader

[d000hg]

Just a glitch then, cheers. That's a pretty monster laptop.

[Boo]

What about chipset - Intel I7 or AMD 8-core?

i7, no question.

Boo

[woohoo]

For the monitor, I'm interested in a 34" curved display that'll probably put me back £800 or so.

Have you considered one of these

LED-backlit LCD Display BDM4065UC/00 | Philips

Had one for a while and it's great for software development and gaming (if your graphics card is up for it).

[ChimpMaster]

Have you considered one of these

LED-backlit LCD Display BDM4065UC/00 | Philips

Had one for a while and it's great for software development and gaming (if your graphics card is up for it).

I wanted the ultra wide, I think it'll suit me better and won't be overpowering in my small study.

Got a great Cyber Monday deal : Samsung 34" SE790C Curved Ultra WQHD LED Monitor- Samsung UK

[woohoo]

I wanted the ultra wide, I think it'll suit me better and won't be overpowering in my small study.

Got a great Cyber Monday deal : Samsung 34" SE790C Curved Ultra WQHD LED Monitor- Samsung UK

Looks a nice bit of kit! Would be good to know if the "curve" makes any difference.

[Platypus]

Go for a gaming-spec graphics card so you can drive multiple screens, plus it makes quite a difference with just ordinary screen rendering when browsing.

Make sure you get a modular power supply so that you can plug in extra bits as you need them. 2TB of additional disk isn't very much. I had (recently got rid of) 3 x 3TB disks whereby I backed everything up to disk (1) (simple file copy) plus did image backups which I also stored on disk (1) then I cascaded (copied) disk (1) to disks (2) and (3). Might seem overkill but it saved my arse a few times.

I just switched to Apple, but before I did I had:

1 x 256GB SSD to boot
1 x 1TB HDD for data storage
3 x 3TB HDD as above
2 x nVidea top end graphics cards
Intel i7 3GHz (I found that overclocking it made the system unstable)
16GB RAM (make sure you don't skimp on the quality here)
a chuffin' big case to keep all this in and keep it cool
a PSU to cope
a nice Asus sound card which I barely used apart from listening to music occasionally and windows squarks and beeps
many many USB ports
the motherboard had built-in RAID capability which I never used, but it could support 6 x SATA drives which I did use.
oh and a DVD burner. I don't go much for this new fangled blu-ray nonsense :-/

It was mucho quicko but it could be a bit noisy so I put in in a cupboard and added very long screen (DVI) and keyboard cables. Don't skimp on the quality opf the DVI cables. In fact if you go down this route I still have mine and can cut you a deal :-)

Hope this helps.

My replacement Mac Mini is 1/40th the size and much quieter! But nowhere near as much graphics umph of course, but then again I don't play games so it doesn't matter. And it only drives 2 screens (I had become used to using 3).

[ChimpMaster]

Wow Plat thanks for the post, there are some good ideas in there that I'll definitely use.

I'm thinking of configuring a high spec from a place where they'll build it.

[TheFaQQer]

Wow Plat thanks for the post, there are some good ideas in there that I'll definitely use.

I'm thinking of configuring a high spec from a place where they'll build it.

I used pcspecialist.co.uk for mine.

[woohoo]

Wow Plat thanks for the post, there are some good ideas in there that I'll definitely use.

I'm thinking of configuring a high spec from a place where they'll build it.

I used these guys below to build a PC.
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

I think I built my PC about a year ago, so current specs may have improved but I went for

32gb RAM - good quality, paid a fair bit.
i7-5930K @ 3.5GHz
GeForce GTX 770 (not really a gamer), but powers 4k monitor.
GeForce GT 730 - use this for 2nd monitor, did have 3 running but too much info at once.
plextor px-ag512m6e hard drive.
2TB Harddrive - nothing special.

I also bought a decent pc tower case, it's huge and the fan makes a bit of noise but you can click on a button to reduce the fan speed.

Cyberpowerpc are quite good, they upgraded a couple of things because they didn't have the model I wanted in stock. Though I went for a newer graphics card and they "upgraded" to the older 770, which in their tests was faster. I let it go but I think the one I ordered would have driven a 4k monitor and another 24" monitor without the need for a second graphics card.

Overall, very stable and fast PC.

You mentioned about having a small study...well I hadn't had a PC for years just laptops, so I was surprised how big this PC tower is, huge. Just something to bear in mind if limited for space.