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Semi-budget Haswell workstation build

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Kosmic

Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2002
Location
Washington State
Hey guys,

I've been out of the game for a while now, so I need some advice. For the last 5 years I've been running a 'core 2' quad core, 4gig machine with no overclock. I don't game any more, but I do a little audio and video processing that really bogs the machine down.

When not rendering, I do a lot of memory hungry work, and usually have firefox alone taking up around a gig of ram along with photoshop, multiple word & excel windows, dreamweaver, etc.

I want to go haswell just to be "current" but I also plan on running this rig for another 5 years if possible. Budget is a concern, and I am especially interested in motherboard suggestions in the ~$130 range.

I won't overclock it...very much. :) But I would like to take it to a stable OC with the stock HSF. Even if that's only 3.8ghz, it'll be good enough. (Seriously, I DON'T game any more). System stability is more important to me than CPU clock.

4670k haswell
ASUS Z87M-PLUS
Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
No video card for now (crazy, I know...)
Barracuda 1tb hd
PC P&C 500w Silencer PSU
Cooler Master N200 $40 case
$15 card reader
and a dvd drive from my box-o-parts

Let me know what you think, especially on the MOBO. I am tempted to go with 2x8gig ram, but I think 8gig will handle my needs with some headroom and if not, then I can go 4x4gig later.

Thanks,
Kos
 
your current list looks good to me, however, in consideration of you mentioning a few things: a) you're on a budget, b) you're not a gamer, c) you do photo/video editing...

I'd whole-heartedly recommend you step that ram up. Since you're not a gamer at all, you can go with the fastest RAM your motherboard supports (and your budget allows), without needing to worry about latency.

I do very heavy video editing, and encoding/transcoding speeds were significantly better with faster RAM.
 
G.Skill is great for semi-budget RAM, and your selection would be fine. Regarding the GPU; ABSOLUTELY. If you're able to pick up a video card, more current NLE's can take advantage of a dedicated cards VRAM and processing. Hell, Adobe Bridge is able to take advantage of a good graphics card (scrolling through an ***-ton of preview files with butter-like smoothness is amazing).

edit: I know you're on a budget, but if you're perhaps, able to afford +$40/$50 on a video card, I tend to favor this for what you want to do MSI N640GT-MD1GD3 GeForce GT 640, but ofcourse, if you do more research, you may find something that you prefer.
 
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Thanks for that. I'll go with the MSI card. Going to also get a decent CPU heatsink, too. Poor little budget keeps getting stretched...
 
I decided to expand my budget so that I wouldn't have to worry much about upgrading down the road. Here's what I went with:

4670k haswell
ASUS Z87-WS (The one Joe reviewed and sold in the classifieds. He gave me a good price. Thanks Joe :) )
G.SKILL Ares 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) (Two of those for 16GB in 4x4GB)
MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB GDDR5 (768 cuda cores)
Seagate 1tb
Corsair CX600 psu
CORSAIR H50 CPU Cooler

I may even get an SSD. <edit>I actually went ahead and got a 120gb Samsung SSD.</edit>

I know 2x8GB for ram is preferred over 4x4GB, but I got those sticks for a good price and they are decently high speed.

I went with the h50 mainly for silence and because it was only a few dollars more than the $50 hsf I was thinking of going with. I might overclock the cpu a tiny bit, but not much.

I found a good antec case in my boneyard that has an optical drive, a card reader and a 120mm fan in it, so I saved some cash there to spend on the build. I came in right around $800 for everything, which is pretty good considering the motherboard and that I'm running with 16GB ram. <edit>It's up to a little over $900 now that I bought an SSD</edit>

It should render video much faster than my current rig. (Understatement)

Thanks for your help, Soyo boy. The pc market changed a lot in the last 5-6 years while I wasn't watching.
 
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I decided to expand my budget so that I wouldn't have to worry much about upgrading down the road. Here's what I went with:

4670k haswell
ASUS Z87-WS (The one Joe reviewed and sold in the classifieds. He gave me a good price. Thanks Joe :) )
G.SKILL Ares 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) (Two of those for 16GB in 4x4GB)
MSI GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB GDDR5 (768 cuda cores)
Seagate 1tb
Corsair CX600 psu
CORSAIR H50 CPU Cooler

I may even get an SSD. <edit>I actually went ahead and got a 120gb Samsung SSD.</edit>

I know 2x8GB for ram is preferred over 4x4GB, but I got those sticks for a good price and they are decently high speed.

I went with the h50 mainly for silence and because it was only a few dollars more than the $50 hsf I was thinking of going with. I might overclock the cpu a tiny bit, but not much.

I found a good antec case in my boneyard that has an optical drive, a card reader and a 120mm fan in it, so I saved some cash there to spend on the build. I came in right around $800 for everything, which is pretty good considering the motherboard and that I'm running with 16GB ram. <edit>It's up to a little over $900 now that I bought an SSD</edit>

It should render video much faster than my current rig. (Understatement)

Thanks for your help, Soyo boy. The pc market changed a lot in the last 5-6 years while I wasn't watching.

That's a very decent build my friend. That SSD is really going to work wonder for you when you're scrubbing footage in your NLE, it's amazing actually! And no problem, it's why we're here ^__^
 
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