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

[ChimpMaster]

Hi all

Quite a generic question here but I need to upgrade my home desktop computer but somewhat out of touch with what's new on the hardware front. So I'd appreciate a little guidance from those in the hardware knowhow.

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

For the PC itself:

I'd like a SSD to boot from and a secondary 2Tb data disk.
O/S = Windows.
Gaming capable though TBH it won't be used much for that - just that I'd rather have the option. So I don't need top-end graphics cards etc.
Future proof i.e. sufficient RAM etc that I won't want to upgrade for 5 years.

For cost, I'm hoping to keep the PC plus the monitor coming in at £2,000 tops (or just over because I'm not VAT flat rated and of course I'll be using this for work related activities mainly).

For example : http://www.amazon.co.uk/PC-Customise...gb+ssd+i7+16gb

Any help appreciated!

[DimPrawn]

Can recommend https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/category/intel_pc

Have a look through the Intel range and configure as you need.

For development work I like lots of RAM so go 32GB as a minimum, they have systems which can take 128GB RAM if you have deeper pockets. The more CPU cores the better too.

[d000hg]

For the monitor, I'm interested in a 34" curved display

Is that code for "I want a curved TV I can pass off as part of my PC purchase?" I'd go for dual monitors if spending this kind of money.

I think £2k is quite a lot really, you'd be adding stuff to reach that price point potentially though you do mention gaming so it's easy to push up the price with a fancy dual-GPU rig and the associated PSU+case.

But note the potential power/noise issues of using a big-ass gaming PC for every-day work.

32Gb RAM is not that expensive these days so you might as well, on such a decent spec, though personally I don't find even 16 to be a limiting factor. Going to SSD is the single biggest thing you can do IMO.

[ChimpMaster]

Nah it's the ultra-wide monitor for computer use for sure, not a TV!

Like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...A3IRU7Q642HWMA


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

[d000hg]

I haven't seen those before; very nice!

Unless your normal use-cases can really benefit from 8 proper cores my instinct would be an i7, but I haven't looked at the most recent AMD CPUs in detail.

[DimPrawn]

Nah it's the ultra-wide monitor for computer use for sure, not a TV!

Like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...A3IRU7Q642HWMA


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

You want decent computing power, so not AMD, power hungry and slooooow.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

[DimPrawn]

If you prefer a laptop, can recommend this.

G751JY-T7303H | ASUS ROG Core i7-4870HQ 32GB 1TB + 512GB SSD NVidea GTX980 4GB BLU-RAY 17.3 Inch G - Laptops Direct

[d000hg]

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

[Bluespider]

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

It's BLU-RAY Ready...

Subtle difference

[d000hg]

I guess it's 1.44Mb - ready too.