Decent multimedia PC

hubb

I have an antique Medion PC running a very slooooow XP when handling music, video or photo editing. As it's my media business I feel I need a more professional set up. I don't want to go mad but I would like advice on buying a new PC that will for a long time handle photo, video and music editing. I already have a very good Dell pro monitor.

As I am familiar with XP I will stick with that but if there is better out there I will have to change (except I am used to Outlook Express and keep all my business emails archived) so I hope that is still catered for.

Would Dino PC be a good place to start ?

Thanks.

Elliott_Fox

What is your budget? I know you like Xp but you will have nothing but problems trying to run Xp on new hardware. Windows 7 is very similar and is much faster and more secure.

I am a massive fan of the cheap zoostorm pc's. They use quality components like gigabyte motherboards and intel processors.

I think this would be a great future proof pc for you:

http://www.ebuyer.com/443461-zoostorm-pro-sff-desktop-pc-7873-0357

Elliott_Fox

Overclockers also do some cheap custom builds where you can choose an os.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2477

gonzo127

as above a budget would be helpful,

also you do know that support for XP finishes in 1 year so it really isnt worth keeping going with it and you will be hard pushed to find anyone to sell it you (the medion copy will be OEM so not legal to transfer over to a new system)

as to DinoPC, they have a generally acceptable reputation and are one of the cheaper places, as with any retailer check out reviews and find the commen patterns of problems they have and decide if you could 'cope' if that happened to you, in general Dino seem to have problems with their delivery estimate from the last time i looked

hubb

Sorry, I forgot to say up to £450 (including Windows)

The thing that puts me off Dino PC now is their waiting list. I think I need a system that will run Adobe Lightroom 4 comfortably as I know it eats Ram.

Now Windows 8 is out, would it be better to get that or will 7 be supported for long enough ? I can't keep up with all these Windows changes. Why don't they make it universal so all platforms are supported.

Thanks.

photodgm

Widows 8 is very different from XP if you use it 'out of the box', it is possible to alter settings to make it behave more like Windows 7 but unless you are working on a touch screen I wouldn't be buying it at the moment. I have a Dino PC and I don't remember any delivery problems, although it was a while back. Ram is cheap but I wouldn't have thought you would need more than 16Gb.

Cisco001

I suggest you buy component and put together by yourself.
With £450, you could probably get FX4100 + 8GB RAM + GTX 650
Custom build look a bit expensive...

gonzo127

Cisco001 wrote: »

I suggest you buy component and put together by yourself.
With £450, you could probably get FX4100 + 8GB RAM + GTX 650
Custom build look a bit expensive...

i would say slight overkill with GPU (price wise) and underkill with CPU, i think a better combination would be either a i5 and a AMD GPU as Lightroom uses OpenCL which tends to favour AMD over nVidia, and the FX4100 really does lag behind the i5 in most things, and even comes behind some of the i3's in Lightroom 4

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/fx-8350-8320-6300-4300_7.html

http://clbenchmark.com/result.jsp for the OpenCL info for example the
~£100 GTX 650 scores 39k points, yet the ~£100 AMD 7770 scores roughly 100k points so over double the and the ~£70 7750 scores 80k

Elliott_Fox

I wouldn't recommend building a cheap pc at all. I build by own £1000+ gaming rigs because i can save hundreds doing it myself. For the sake of less than a £100 extra you get that pre built zoostorm system with Os installed and a warranty.

Don't get windows 8, it is terrible.

hubb

So you recommend the Zoostorm system (posted above) from Ebuyer ?

Elliott_Fox

Yes i would, i5 processor, 16gb ram, Intel graphics and a PCI-e x 16 Slot for future upgrades and windows 7.