11 replies to this topic

[antblues]

What I need is a filming/special effects making PC, using adobe after effects.

I have just tried buying a PC but I have been told its crap and just looked at some stuff on ebay but dont have a clue what I am buying, am so out of touch, so I wondered if anyone could help me build one? All I really need I think is motherboard a processor and a great graphics card all for good wholesale price.

Budget £250

Many thanks

Ant

[bbcentral]

I've just started looking for parts for a PC for someone, they're doing mostly gaming. All up the cost was around $3000AUD, or £1700GBP. But that includes a £300 monitor and a whole bunch of other accessories.

For CPU's, the Intels are very good at the moment. Either look at a Core i7 or a Core i5. The Core i7 is more powerful, but the Core i5 is cheaper. And then it's just a matter of getting a motherboard to go along with it.

Of course, I was working off a pricelist with Australian prices, so our prices are probably completely different (even taking into account exchange rates, Europeans tend to be charged more for technology as far as I know).

I got most of my info from an online TV show called Tekzilla, here are the 3 segments I found useful:
Revision3 > Tekzilla > Episode 106 > Intel Core i5, AMD Eyefinity, DX 11, IDF Preview!
Revision3 > Tekzilla > Episode 103 > Video Card FAQ
Revision3 > Tekzilla > Episode 108 > $800 Gaming PC, Better $500 PC CPU, Radeon 5870 Review:...
(it should hopefully go direct to the right part of each episode)

[antblues]

cool thanks for that, can i buy a motherboard and cpu from other countries though would power differ in anyway?

Also would this grapghics card be ok? 1GB 1 GB ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro AGP Video Graphics Card

many thanks

[bbcentral]

antblues said:

cool thanks for that, can i buy a motherboard and cpu from other countries though would power differ in anyway?

Also would this grapghics card be ok?
1GB ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro AGP Video Graphics Card

many thanks

I think the motherboard and CPU is identical, it's the power supply on the back of the case which is different (mine has a switch on the back to change between 110V and 220V, but some might only be for one country).

I really don't know much about graphics cards. 1GB is a good amount of memory to have in it, I know that. But I don't know how that particular one compares. You might want to try looking for some reviews of it, like this one:
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, 2600 Pro, and 2400 XT - TrustedReviews - TrustedReviews
(It's 11 pages long!)

I hope that helps


Oh, and if you're using AfterEffects you should watch a TV show called "Film Riot", they show you how to do all kinds of special effects:
http://revision3.com/filmriot
They also teach you how to do lighting, sound, make your own camera dolly, steadycam, set people on fire, make someone's head explode, make lightsabers...
(Plus the show is funny as hell!)

[antblues]

Ah thanks thats fantastic Thanks so much, Keyboard is broke now, u dont want to know how i did it!!

[mad-wolfie]

if you want to do things a bit cheaper.. don't buy from the big shops, always buy from the smaller back-street type shops 1) bits are cheaper 2) the after sales is a lot better because the staff do know what they are on about.

Also keep an eye out for any computer fairs. I bought everything i needed for a 2.4ghz system for around £60 a couple of years back - including the tower, but minus a CD/DVD writer!!

[antblues]

WOW that is cheap!! Computer fair I think there is one in London somewhere will check it out As long as they have people there who can tell me what bits to get if i pick them.

[mad-wolfie]

sometimes at computer fairs you get a lot of "IT recycler" type stalls basically what they do is buy up all the old machines from offices or businesses that have gone bust or recently upgraded & sell them on for peanuts. Ok the machines may not be the latest spec as they will be be a year old & you may have to take some parts from your current PC (many business comps don't have CD drives fitted & have ISDN cards instead of network cards or the fitted HDD may be low in capacity), but they usually always come with everything ready to go & usually have a fresh copy of Windows installed. Ideal option if you are looking to upgrade.

[Rickna]

I run a Windows 2003 domain with XP Pro clients in my home. My job is a network administrator, so my home is my lab. My 3 servers and 4 clients are all white boxes. They run smoothly and I have built them exactly the way I want them-nothing unnecessary. My oldest server is a dual P3 with 1 TB of storage in a RAID configuration-YES A P3! It's been running strong since 2001. I don't plan on replacing it util it dies-if it does. At my job they were using Dell exclusively-but you get what you pay for. Recently we have started to replce the Dell clients with Lenovo's. The servers are being replaced with Compaq/HP's.

If I had to recommend a name brand it would be Lenovo (Formerly IBM).

[mad-wolfie]

i used to work for a company that had a sub-contract for building dell as well as HP & Compaq (essentially the same just "Compaq" branded stuff seems to be all the crap HP make), funnily enough we also made Sun Ultrasparc's for which i was a diag engineer. Despite the fact if anyone in the factory/building needed a server for any reason & the Unix system that the Ultrasparc's used wasn't much cop & it needed to be a Windows / ASP based server, they would usually order in a few IBM's to do the job!

Can't fault P3's i still have a couple at home & they get used regularly for web browsing, documents & playing games on the odd games emulator as well as machines for the kids to spend all day on Facebook & Bebo - Along with another of P3 towers i've couple stuck up in the loft gathering dust & being stored for spare parts. As PC's go they are perfectly useable & although fairly old, worthless & slow compared to the newer machines they run fast enough for anything i throw at them such as letter writing, email, web browsing, playing MP3's, burning CD's etc etc with Win2k or XP on them.

Ok you can't play recent games or do video editing, watch DVD's on them etc (well you can to a limit) but i have a couple of machines here that i can use if i need to do that. Believe it or not my old 800mhz P3 system with 256mb of ram seems to run a lot faster than my 1.6gb Celeron (yes i know it's a Celeron, but it was a bargain) laptop with 256 of ram as well. IMHO the P3 was probably the best of the none dual-core bunch of CPU's & always seemed to of performed the most effeciently. If ever anyone i know is ever chucking an old P3 system, it usually ends up here or put to use doing a menial job somewhere such as running powerpoints at my dad's workshop, as a typewriter or for an Uncle to do his bookeeping with.

[itsallblack]

My next door neighbour was brill at stuff like that.He's turned gay,try to avoid him now.

[shanebrown05]

Hi Ant,

You want to try local newspapers and free papers such as the friday ad if you still looking, i built my PC what i did is mixture of shopping around looking at online sites such as Online Computer Shop - Buy Computers Laptops Monitor Hard Drives CPU Memory Graphic Card, like others have said look at local back street shops as sometimes you can get a bargin, a mate of mine says computers fairs can be good dependant on what you want.

Need any help just message back.