$1500 Budget Computer Programmer PC

[ScienceSkillz]

Hi experts,

Below is a post I made in another computer forum and was hoping to get a second opinion and see what you all thought.


I'm a freelance computer programmer and my laptop is on its last leg. I desperately need a new Desktop PC and my budget is $1500.00. I'm not really familiar with "building" a pc from parts but perhaps this is a good time to learn how to if it will be considerably cheaper.

I am not a gamer, I don't need this pc to play awesome video, sound, or anything related to entertainment. Just average performance in those areas. What I do want is the following:

1. Fast CPU (dual core? single core? i don't know but it needs to be fast)
2. Alot of RAM ( i use big programs like adobe suite CS4, Matlab, Mathematica, Visual Studio, Apache Server etc) mainly computer programming software packages...I don't like waiting for ever for these programs to run or load...
3. Dual Monitor setup (i don't need top of the line monitors just decent)
4. Fast and Big Hard drive (to store software programs and temporary files)
5. External Hard drive configuration to backup/store my past and future work
6. Resonalbly quiet...
7. CDRW/DVDRW

What do you guys think? Please let me know if you can help me out here as I need this ASAP...


Response:
Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115202

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128375

SAPPHIRE 100259L Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102810

G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8TU-6GBPI - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231247

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148373

LITE-ON 22X DVD Burner Black SATA Model iHAS322-08 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106286

Antec Performance One P180 Silver cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129154

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit for System Builders - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116488

2 x ASUS VW192T+ 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236056
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139006

Total $1475

 

[aevm]

The HD 4870 is overkill since you're not a gamer. You can downgrade to HD 4670. You can also downgrade the PSU to 650TX.

Don't buy 19" monitors. Buy 22" or even 24" if possible. You will be more productive with larger monitors.

That Seagate hdd has a horrible number of reviewers at Newegg who hate it. The reason is that there's a firmware bug that tends to kill those drives. Get a WD 640GB Black or 1TB Black instead.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

The rest looks good.

If you can't afford the two 22" or 24" monitors, you could cut the i7 920/x58/DDR3 6GB to a Q9550/GA-EP45-UD3R/DDR 8GB setup.

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 on a Q6700. I haven't seen the CPU used at 100% yet - the limiting factor is always the hard drive. That is, a Q9550 or i7 920 would give you exactly the same performance because neither would be used at 100%.

 

[bmuell]

Echo what aevm said.

Since you mentioned some sort of external backup, consider a Raid setup with mirroring. Two or three WD Caviar Blacks in Raid 1/5 for data storage would be great.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I agree with the others. The 4870 is overkill if you're not gaming. I was looking more towards the HD4650 for $105 less than the 4870.

If you drop the graphics card down, you certainly won't need a monster PSU either. I'm not saying go cheap, but the Corsair 550vx should be more than sufficient.

Finally, I've never seen the need for spending more than $60 on a case. There are plenty of good/solid cases out there for far less than $130.

With the almost $200 shaved off the offered listing, you should be able to pick up a decent external hard drive (missing from the original listing).

-Wolf sends

 

[xthekidx]

+1 for all those suggestions. You should be able to get 2 22" monitors if you make those changes.
I'd get two of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009145

 

[Nik_I]

i'm thinking maybe getting a bit more ram. my reason for this is that since you're a programmer, it might be useful to test the application under multiple operating systems; virtual machines. these would run smoother with a lot of ram. not entirely necessary and i don't know if this is an actual need for you, just a thought i had

 

[ScienceSkillz]

Wow you guys are awsome! I will use this forum from now on! thanks

 

[ScienceSkillz]

There is also a special going on for the i7 at newegg that includes a 160GB SSD. What do you think ? I heard they are faster and quieter?

Maybe I get that an a large external to store my files and use the SSD to load all my big programs on?

 

[arcle]

Yo, I seem to be in the same position you are... a freelance web developer/designer that has a laptop that isnt cutting it any longer. Paid down some loans and im now in the market for a similar desktop setup. Check out microcenter.com if you have one in your area, they are selling i7 920s for $229 (pick_up only). As for the asus 19inch i just bought one from egg that im using on a linux desktop used only for browsing the internet, so i dont know how it would be for developing with a bunch of windows open on the screen but its a nice screen especially for the price. I think if i added one more for a dual monitor setup it would be perfect, for my needs at least. let us know how the build goes.

by the way can someone explain all this hard drive stuff i.e. raid, ssd... i have never had more than one internal disk and an external for backup/transportation. thanks

 

[ScienceSkillz]

yea i'll let you know how the build goes.. with CS4 now being 64 bit complaint my laptop just isn't cutting it anymore 🙁 thanks for the tip on the monitor.. and yes dual setup is definitely more productive for many windows open during development... my friend has this setup and its perfect for programmers..

 

[Siggy19]

Don't bother with SSD... if you must have more speed, RAID 0 two 300GB Velociraptors... That will give you extremely fast access comparable to all but the very fastest SSDs but with 600GB. Then use a nice big drive for data and automated backups from the velociraptors.

A decent online backup option will then provide offsite security for anything you cannot afford to lose if your house gets hit by the toiletseat from the space station.

 

[cjmcgee]

My experience with moderately large visual studio 2008 projects (10 to 20 minute full build time) is this:
- GHz matter more than multiple cores
- Hard drive speed is not the limiting factor

We were testing to see how to upgrade our dev machines, so I tested out build on two boxes:

Box 1: 2x Xeon 2.33 GHz quad core (8 total cores), 1333 MHz bus speed, 8 GB of quad channel DDR-II 667, 4x 15k RPM SAS drives in a RAID 0

Box 2: 1x core 2 duo (2 core total) 3.16 GHz, 1333 MHz bus speed, 8 GB of dual channer DDR-II 1066, 1x SATA 7200 RPM drive

The build times were surprisingly close for the various builds. A couple of them were faster on box 2!. The one thing that box 1 excelled at was anything database related. Database upgrades and queries were much faster (like 10 minutes vs. 40 minutes).

So my recommendation ended up being that we want the fastest dual core we can get with reasonably fast memory. 7200 RPM SATA drives are fine.

For backups we ended up using norton ghost. Raid 1 mirroring kept giving us false positives and when things did fail it was a nightmare to get it back up and working. Unlike norton ghost which has been a breeze to use when things fail. So our dev machines have two drives in them, with one ghosting to the other. You will still want you have your source control on a seperate machine, backed up to offsite or at least to media rotated through a fire safe.

 

[kubes]

I'm a developer as well (java world however). I would highly reccomend trying to sneak in the duel monitor setup into your budget. It'll help you quite a bit. I like to code on one window and use the other monitor for quick refferences.

Like other noted I'd say your vidoe card is overkill. Drop it to one of the ones noted above or if you want you can pick up a nvidia 9600.

I'd also switch out that hard drive for the WD 640 black. WD Black 640 gb This will give you around 500 gigs to play with after format. If you need more than this, then move up to the 1tb verison.

I know in the java world (and i'm assuming similar to most developers worlds) the amount of ram is huge. Might want to consider picking up another set of sticks to make it up to 12 gbs. You however probally don't need 1600mhz ram. Maybe consider getting 1333mhz ram to offset the cost.

I also agree that your psu is overkill. Pick up the 550 corsair noted above.

 

[Tech-Boy]

You really need to get a minimum of two 22in lcd's. With 1920x1080 resolution, I have the 22in acer h213h, which I bought for $180 off of newegg during the holidays, and it is a great monitor.

As others have suggested don't get the 4870, as it as way to much power for what you are doing.

In your case the screens are more important than the cpu, so if you don't have enough for two 22in lcd's when going with the i7 build, just get the q9550 instead with 4gb to 6gb of ddr2 on a p45 motherboard.

For the hard drive go with a couple of western digital blacks or a large western digital and a velociraptor or two and run them in raid 0. I do not recommend ssd drives, yet.

Just my recommendations

 

[clydemoreno]

Hi,
I am a developer who codes in windows everyday using Visual Studio.

I use a 15 inch macbook pro 2.4 Ghz with 6GB of memory and 250GB. I have a virtual box that has xp, windows 7 and linux installed to do codin. Since I like to work everywhere, I really need to bring work with me with a laptop. I am really happy with the versatility, stability, portability, and enjoyability of this platform. Just a thought.