PC for electrical engineering studies.

[RizEon]

Need help on deciding a PC config for friend:
his needs:
Budget:20k (max 25k but stay as close to 20 as possible)

1. Usage
-Net surfing, movies, Photoshop,Dreamweaver, Matlab, GNU Octave and microcap (simulation etc) ...(he's studying electrical engineering, and does part time desinging)
-gpu preferred.


2. No OCing or experimetations.

3. OS- Win 7/8, Linux ( all are available for free)

4. HDD - atleasr 500 GB

5. Monitor needed? -YES. 15.6"

6.Planning to buy - ASAP

7.Not built a desktop before but plenty of help available for it. Wont need a separate assembler, just working parts.

8. Living in Kanpur. Not really comfortable with buying online (him, not me) but if needed we can convince him but he'd prefer to buy it locally.

9. If you have a good branded configuration in mind, that's fine too. Just the point 1 and the budget are fulfilled.

Kindly help as soon as possible, as he is currently using my laptop to do his stuff!

 

[nikhilsharma007nikx]

well im nable to fit any thing as low as possible to ur budget soo i think wait for others for reply !!!

 

[Cilus]

Intel G630/G645 @ 3.5K
MSI Intel H61 Mo9therboard @ 2.8K
Corsair Value Ram 4GB X 1 1333 MHz @ 1.2K
WD Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA HDD @ 3.5K
AOC/BenQ 16" LED Display @ 3.9K
Corsair VS450 SMPS @ 2.2K
Logitech MK200 Keyboard & Mouse @ 0.5K
Intex/Frontech Cabinet w/o PSU @ 0.7K
Zebronix/Umax/Frontech 600 VA UPS @ 1.2K

Total: 19.5K.

 

[Naxal]

^^^ take frontek or iball type 700 bucks PSU and save some money there, add that in upgrading the Display to a better one , a 18.5" or 19" 5k~ display

personal opinion only, since every thing here is not that resource hungry

 

[Godoftheforbiddenlight]

Intel G630/G645 @ 3.5K
MSI Intel H61 Mo9therboard @ 2.8K
Corsair Value Ram 4GB X 1 1333 MHz @ 1.2K
WD Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA HDD @ 3.5K
AOC/BenQ 16" LED Display @ 3.9K
Corsair VS450 SMPS @ 2.2K
Logitech MK200 Keyboard & Mouse @ 0.5K
Intex/Frontech Cabinet w/o PSU @ 0.7K
Zebronix/Umax/Frontech 600 VA UPS @ 1.2K

Total: 19.5K.

add a gpu in whatever is left but keep in mind below 4k gpu's are better not to buy

proceesor-AMD 3.2 GHz AM3 Athlon II 260 Processor RS2600
MOTHERBOARD-Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2PT Motherboard RS2500
RAM-CORSAIR VENGEANCE4GB -RS1300
STORAGE-1TB SEAGATE-RS4050
MONITOR-BENQ15.6-RS3900
PSU-CORSAIR VS350-RS1900
CABINET-FRONTECH/INTEX-RS700 GET THE BIG ONE'S
KEYBOARD&MOUSE-LOGITECH-RS500
LOCAL UPS - 1K

TOTAL OF 17950 + 4% VAT = RS 18668

NOW FOR THE GPU IT BASICALLY DEPENDS ON THE EXTRA 5K YOUR FRIEND MIGHT SPEND
IF HE SPENDS IT THEN GO FOR SAPPHIRE 6670 THATS ANOTHER 5K BRINGING THE TOTAL TO RS 24500......BUT WITH THIS CONFIG...............HE WONT BE LET DOWN BY ANY MEANS........REMEMBER THE ATHLON IS ONE OF THE BEST CARDS AMD EVER MADE WHICH GAVE INTEL A RUN FOR THEIR MONEY.......OC'S WILL BE EASY FOR A SHORT WHILE BUT DON'T EXPECT 5GHZ..............WITH THE ADDED GPU HE WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY A LOT OF GAMES MAYBE RECENT GAMES WILL RUN IN LOW MEDIUM BUT MOST IMPORTANT IS THE PC ENVIRONMENT IS PERFECT FOR ENTRY LEVEL DESIGNING....BASICALLY THIS WAS SIMILAR TO MY FIRST RIG AND BEING IN R&D HINDUSTAN MOTORS....I USED A SIMILAR SYSTEM TO GENERATE BLUEPRINTS OF MANY THINGS LIKE GEARS MAINLY....BEST WISHES USING CATIA AUTOCAD....PLAYED GAMES LIKE GTA AND MOST OF THE GAMES AT THAT TIME WITH ALL SAID.....3 HOURS AND SOME MINUTES....AFTER 4 GOLD FLAKES HERE I BID FAREWELL

wait i am back

change the processor with AMD Athlon II X2 270 same price maybe 50 rupees more
and go with a ASUS M5A78L-M LX V2 Motherboard 2500 100 rupee less ......rest same

 

[whitestar_999]

do not buy any amd athlon dual core processor because intel pentium G processor beats any amd dual core hands down.for your usages it is best to get a fast processor & when it comes to core by core performance amd is no match for intel.

 

[Cilus]

^^Agreed. Pentium G630 and G645 offer far better performanc than Athlon II X2 Dual Core Processors and only AThlon II X3 processors can match their performance which is sadly not available anywhere. Since Processor is not a component you're gonna change frequently, better spend some extra to get a good CPU.
And I have suggested VS450, considering the fact that OP might add a powerful GPU like HD 7770 in future.

 

[vkl]

Pentium g645+dGPU is fine.Alternatively OP can opt for i3 3220+b75 board and add a graphic card later.i3 3220 with hd2500 would be quite good in Photoshop CS6.
i3 3220 is more powerful and b75 chipset mobo would provide usb3.0 ports.

 

[Cilus]

Actually OP's budget is very limited and with it, i3 3220 can't be accommodated, even without the Gfx card.

 

[vkl]

^^He can stretch to max 25k.In your config if we swap the processor and motherboard with i3 3220 and Gigabyte GA-b75m-d3h,it would be under 25k.

 

[Godoftheforbiddenlight]

i think he should buy a gpu....also i have noticed that some softwares like catia...respond highly with amd chips...thus the suggestion...moreover i don't think there will be noticeable difference at all

 

[Cilus]

I think OP can add a HD 7750 GPU with his configuration. Most of the apps he has mentioned do support GPU acceleration.

 

[vkl]

HD7750 would be considerably faster for GPGPU compute.Photoshop CS6 supports GPU acceleration in many functions.
MATLAB supports GPU acceleration in some functions and maths operations like linear algebra.
MATLAB as a whole is not much GPU dependent as some CAD softwares.Many of the MATLAB functions and operations are multi-threaded as well.
Either of the 2 set-ups is fine.Only thing with the i3 3220 set up is that it is more feature-rich and can be considered if OP is willing to buy GPU later as i3 3220 with its IGP is can also handle things like Photoshop.

 

[Cilus]

Vkl, just one thing here. The kind of applications OP is going to use are very highly multi-threaded and can use as many CPU cores as you can throw. Now almost at the same price of i3 3220 (7.1K), AMD FX 6100 is available he can pair it with Gigabyte
GA-78LMT-S2PT Motherboard which offers HD 3200 DirectX 10 capable IGP. So what do you think?

 

[saswat23]

Well if OP plans to add a discrete GPU later, i3 will be a better option.
Till then HD 2500 will do the work.

 

[Cilus]

But FX-6100 does above better Multi-threaded performance. Op doesn't want a hard core gaming system and wants his rig mainly for Productivity purpose.

 

[vkl]

Cilus,I think it all depends upon usage.

The Micro-CAP Analog/Digital electronic circuit simulator is predominantly a single-threaded operation.It is not optimised for multi-threading.
GNU-Octave is primarily single-threaded itself.
ATLAS is optimized for multi-threading and can be used with Octave,MATLAB and some others.ATLAS is much faster than BLAS and LAPACK Math libraries.
Ubuntu is no more providing pre-built ATLAS libraries when one downloads Octave.Fedora is providing it though.
ATLAS determines the number of threads to be used at compile time and it would use lower than that if no speed is gained.
Photoshop,we know if we apply 4-5 resource hungry filters fx6100 would be ahead of i3 3220.Simple editing i3 3220 would be better.
Also i3 with hd2500 can provide OpenCL acceleration and in one test it was ahead of a10-5800k in OpenCL accelerated function in Photoshop CS6.

Either of i3 3220 or fx6100 would be fine depending upon usage.
If it would have been fx6300 it would have been much more recommendable.Fx6300 is much better overall choice than i3 3220 in such cases.
But with fx6100 unless the usage is heavily multithreaded or requires more cores i3 3220 is better choice.

 

[Nerevarine]

why not the amd a10 ? it has a good gpu as well as provides respectable cpu performance

 

[vkl]

^^Yeah it is also a good alternative as well but a10-5800k with a motherboard with SATAIII and usb3.0 would exceed the budget.

 

[Cilus]

Since OP doesn't want all those features and opting for H61 motherboard, he can opt for a A55 based FM2 socket board.