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Advice for a build for a 14 year old.

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iSnappy

iSnappy

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Mar 1, 2011
Hey guys, I need some build advice for a 14 year old. He is pretty knowledgeable with computers and likes some nice hardware. One problem he is on and extremely tight budget. Around 500-800 Australian dollars. Games a little minecraft and other simple games and he also uses the CS5 suite, Photoshop and In Design. I was thinking Sandy Bridge would be good but I Would love some help!

Oh and a good website where I think I will buy from is www.pccasegear.com
 
uh sandybridge for minecraft? lol

Wow. Next thing you know WoW will need quadSLI

Would not be a popular game if you need the most x86 inclined CPU at this time to play it.
 
I would suggest a cheap quad of the AMD variety along with a sub $200 gpu (460 or 6770).
 
iSnappy said:
I know lol, but he uses the CS5 Suite. :p
Click to expand...

get him a decent GPU then :)

AMD or nVidia although I think adobe prefers nVidia (much as I hate to say it)

(CS5 has hardware acceleration...)

I ran CS5 on a sempron 140 (unlocked) and a sandybridge 2600 and with a 6850GPU could not tell the differnce, but I am not a gfx artist manipulating 20MP stills. or 1080P videos.
 
What about a Black Edition AMD Processor. Or should I wait for bulldozer?
 
Since the budget is tight, and he wants to work with gaming and graphics, you want to NOT get the latest and greatest cpu. Instead, get a second tier cpu, and put the extra money you saved by doing that, into a good (not necessarily top of the line, but good), graphics card.

My suggestions would mirror those of Knufire, above. What do you think?
 
Remember that CS5 can speak CUDA, so you ideally want to grab an NVIDIA card. IMO you should get a 955BE on a (cheap-er) 9 series AMD chipset so you can always go to Bulldozer later if you want to, along with 8GB of cheaper 1333Mhz RAM and a large HDD.
Maybe an Nvidia GTX460 or something along those lines. You really don't need anything more.
 
So, go with a AMD build and with the money I saved with the CPU I should by a nVidia card?
 
Don't need to drop down to AMD. You can fit a 550Ti and 8GB of RAM fine in that budget.
 

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Awesome build. 550Ti is very poor performance though. GTX460 can edge it out for less money.

iSnappy, its up to you what you want to do. Obviously the $220ish 2500K is a superior CPU to the $115 955BE. Depends how much you want to spend.

Personally, I'd do the 955, but that's just me if I were building this and it was my money. I recently.. well not recently, in January, put something together for a friend who uses it professionally to do website authoring and graphic design. It's a 2500K on a Gigabyte P67UD3P with 8GB of 1600Mhz cas 9 and a 560Ti and Corsair CX600 PSU. Very very very adequate for the job. He also enjoys it for watching Blurays on his professional IPS panel (which you might want to grab at some point for this kid, maybe xmas? :)) while on 'lunch'.
 
Theocnoob said:
^
Awesome build. 550Ti is very poor performance though. GTX460 can edge it out for less money.

iSnappy, its up to you what you want to do. Obviously the $220ish 2500K is a superior CPU to the $115 955BE. Depends how much you want to spend.

Personally, I'd do the 955, but that's just me if I were building this and it was my money. I recently.. well not recently, in January, put something together for a friend who uses it professionally to do website authoring and graphic design. It's a 2500K on a Gigabyte P67UD3P with 8GB of 1600Mhz cas 9 and a 560Ti and Corsair CX600 PSU. Very very very adequate for the job. He also enjoys it for watching Blurays on his professional IPS panel (which you might want to grab at some point for this kid, maybe xmas? :)) while on 'lunch'.
Click to expand...

+1

I use CS5 quite a lot, and on a daily basis, don't see a huge difference between an AMD955BE@4GHz and an Intel 2600K@5GHz...
Use the money on a 6950 ref and unlock!
 
If you do that build change the PSU to a Corsair TX650. Bout same price. Better unit.
I'd also go for 2x4GB corsair XMS3 over that stuff RAM wise for the same price. Heatspreaders. I've had better experience with Corsair RAM.
Also get a Coolermaster Hyper212+ CPU cooler. And make sure you get the 768MB version of the GTX460. Not the SE version.
 
I agree with the 955 BE still.. And spend the extra money on a GTX 560 Ti. And go a Corsair CX600 V2. Basically everything ocnoob has said.. Though PC Case Gear does NOT stock the 460 non-SE version. The only 460 card on there is an SE model. Do NOT buy that model!! Lol.
 
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