Recomend me a desktop

longwalks1

gonzo127 wrote: »

how much are you actually looking at spending?

https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/INTEL_I5_SFF_CONFIGURATOR

some reasonable customisation options

or stupidly tiny - http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/Evolve-M80-190p2597.htm - less powerful of course, and limited to max two monitors on mini hdmi and displayport (can get a displayport to hdmi converter) and would need to add windows when customising it

up to maybe £500 for the desktop, am thinking now I will need to upgrade the graphics card to run 2/possibly 3 monitors (in time) so that puts a stop to a smaller unit (The Dell ones I was looking at were SFF models), I guess upgraded graphics cards will only fit in a standard tower unit

RobTang

britishboy wrote: »

up to maybe £500 for the desktop, am thinking now I will need to upgrade the graphics card to run 2/possibly 3 monitors (in time) so that puts a stop to a smaller unit (The Dell ones I was looking at were SFF models), I guess upgraded graphics cards will only fit in a standard tower unit

The Intel integrated graphics have been able to drive multiple monitors for years, I think ever since haswell they have supported 3. The only requirement is the motherboard actually has multiple outputs.


If your dead set on a SFF dell you buy half height cards (although will be lower level cards) some SFF cases use something called a riser board that allows you to mount card parallel with the board allowing a full height card.


If you don't care about 3D or gpu performance you can USB displaylink adaptors they are perfectly fine for desktop work.

longwalks1

RobTang wrote: »

The Intel integrated graphics have been able to drive multiple monitors for years, I think ever since haswell they have supported 3. The only requirement is the motherboard actually has multiple outputs.


If your dead set on a SFF dell you buy half height cards (although will be lower level cards) some SFF cases use something called a riser board that allows you to mount card parallel with the board allowing a full height card.


If you don't care about 3D or gpu performance you can USB displaylink adaptors they are perfectly fine for desktop work.

Many thanks Rob, so if I find a desktop even with integrated graphics card, so long as it has 2 or 3 HDMI ports it will be good enough to support that number of monitors?

Is there anyway to run 3 monitors (in time) from a desktop with 1 or 2 HDMI ports? And does DVI give much lesser better quality image, as it for basic internet use and displaying charts, would you notice a difference?

Fightsback

britishboy wrote: »

Many thanks Rob, so if I find a desktop even with integrated graphics card, so long as it has 2 or 3 HDMI ports it will be good enough to support that number of monitors?

Is there anyway to run 3 monitors (in time) from a desktop with 1 or 2 HDMI ports? And does DVI give much lesser better quality image, as it for basic internet use and displaying charts, would you notice a difference?

If you want 3 monitors with all digital connections (DVI & HDMI) then only a discrete card will really do

I personally would prefer a discrete card over the integrated solution as this does give more options and better performance. Better to over engineer a bridge from the beginning rather than spec it for the traffic of today as traffic always grows.

stockton_2

Fightsback wrote: »

I've two dell 24inch monitors that are connected to a Nvidia GTX 750 ti 2gb graphics card (best card for price) note the two HDMI ports and two DVI ports. So this can actually drive four monitors.

This graphics card: (Nvidia GTX 750 ti 2gb) looks good to me but I can't work out if it is compatible with my Asus M5A 78L-M USB3 Mobod??

Fightsback

stockton wrote: »

This graphics card: (Nvidia GTX 750 ti 2gb) looks good to me but I can't work out if it is compatible with my Asus M5A 78L-M USB3 Mobod??

Yes it is.

stockton_2

Fightsback wrote: »

Yes it is.

Thanks for that. It looks like I am good to go. I have a six pin power plug on the PSU which is rated at over 500 W. The mobod looks roomy enough to accommodate the card. The mobod slot is PCIe 2.0 whereas the card is PCI 3.0 but other users say it runs fine on their older computers. Just need to find some good games now.

GunJack

stockton wrote: »

Thanks for that. It looks like I am good to go. I have a six pin power plug on the PSU which is rated at over 500 W. The mobod looks roomy enough to accommodate the card. The mobod slot is PCIe 2.0 whereas the card is PCI 3.0 but other users say it runs fine on their older computers. Just need to find some good games now.

you shouldn't need the extra power plug for a 750Ti, it should run quite happily from the pci socket it's plugged into on the mobo

Fightsback

stockton wrote: »

The mobod slot is PCIe 2.0 whereas the card is PCI 3.0 but other users say it runs fine on their older computers. Just need to find some good games now.

PCIe 3.0 higher bandwidth makes virtually no difference to frame rates and is backward compatible with PCIe 2.0

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/18/pci_express_20_vs_30_gpu_gaming_performance_review/2

longwalks1

Thanks everyone, have ordered the following:

HP Pavilion 550-153na i5-6400 8GB RAM 2TB hard drive with AMD Radeon R5330 graphics card (Im assuming not great). Already has 2 x HDMI ports which appealed to me too