A CPU guide for a programmer

Usman Amjad

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Aug 16, 2014
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Hi folks

I've just passed my bachelor's degree and want to buy a solid PC to install the following programs.
1 . WAMP (for web based work)
2. JAVA with (net beans, eclipse) IDE's
3. Oracle
4. MS Visual Studio full
5. Adobe Photoshop
6. All of the above one's among other utilities and programs on windows 8.1

Not good in building PC's, wondering which CPU, motherboard and graphic card and how much memory I should buy (by the way I'm not a gamer). So when I looked at the web all I found was a how build a gaming or very cheap and basic PC's. Yes I can play game to get my mind divert some times but do not consider myself a gamer. I want a decent PC that stay stable for another few years.

Therefore I would like to have your advise on this, which CPU I should buy
1. Intel (i7 4790K, i5 4690K)
2. AMD (FX 6300, 8320)

Or any other which you may suggest, as I mentioned Photoshop to be installed on my PC means I only use rarely just to fine twin some images for my free lance stuff.

I've bought a QNIX QX2710 already and fractal design define R4 case, but before I buy the whole system I would like your final opinion on this so I build one that fulfill my needs.

Any advise would be highly appreciated.

EDIT: Budget is around £1000 GBP.

Regards
Usman
 
I don't see why you'd need anything but a basic PC but perhaps with two screens. Unless you plan to run VM's in which case 16GB ram and an i5/i7 would do you well. Are you going to be doing any programming that leverages GPU's in which you'll need one, else onboard would work.
 
It'd be always the best to get i7 4790k for developer's needs. MS Visual Studio is the only big program besides Oracle (I'm assuming you're talking about RDBMS here) which'll utilize that CPU to its limits, but the CPU is really worth it for your needs.

Get atleast 16GB RAM to be able to get full juice out of your PC, 8GB bare minimum.

Buying a case before the main components (CPU, GPU, MoBo) is not an ideal way to build a PC.
Get a powerful GPU, like the R9 290/ 780 or the 290X/ 780 Ti if you can afford it. All 4 of them can run your Monitor quite well.

Please specify your budget, even a rough estimate of the upper limit would do so that we can make the best combinations and provide you with a gem build :)
 


I've updated my question with budget limit but may I ask why do i need 780Ti for?
 


Thanks for you response :)
 


For future proofing, if you ever upgrade to 4k or multiple 2k. But if you're not doing it anytime soon, then I might well make you a PC w/o thinking about those aspects, for 1k GBP.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£236.34 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£64.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£100.52 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory (£133.50 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£49.98 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 280X 3GB DirectCU II Video Card (£225.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£65.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/RSBS DVD/CD Writer (£13.40 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£79.44 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1029.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-16 12:36 BST+0100

Best CPU- i7 4790k
16GB 2400MHz/CL10 Trident X RAM - more than for what you do.
Best air cooler around- Noctua D14
Asus R9 280X GPU.
Solid Z97 MoBo with many features for upgrades.
Tier 2 PSU.
120GB SSD + 2TB HDD.
Windows 8.1 OS and DVD Writer.
 
sounds like youll be good with an i5 4690k +8 GB RAM. If you plan on rendering 3D you could benefit from an i7 + 16GB RAM or more.. But for just basic coding, running emulators (like Android app development in Eclipse, for example) will all do really well with 4 strong cores that can be overclocked (consider that a 'future proofing' in itself).

A lot of the programs you mention will benefit most from a Solid State Hard drive, just keep that all in mind and you will be good. Spend whatever is left on what pleases you ( like a GPU if you want to play games)
 
Thanks for you solution that is great. However I would like add one thing to it that I would go for nVidia graphic card and gigabyte motherboard. I want this system to be a dual boot windows 8 and mac OS x, simply to test my work on both major platforms.
 
There you go:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£236.34 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£64.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£101.96 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory (£133.50 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£83.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£49.98 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 760 2GB DirectCU II Video Card (£169.72 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£65.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/RSBS DVD/CD Writer (£13.40 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£79.44 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £998.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-16 14:49 BST+0100

For the dual boot: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110410154738AAuETy0
 
Solution
I've done web stuff, it doesn't require much more than a P4 for most of it, the photoshop will require a bit more oomph. I do a lot of Visual Studio C# work on an i3, it works just fine. Test execution time is a bit high but not horrendous. I see no purpose in getting an i7 level, its not going to add up to enough time savings to make up for itself.

This would be my suggestion since you said you already have a case, i leave the optical drive and OS choosing up to you
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£163.14 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus H97-PRO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£82.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Corsair XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£58.79 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£160.00 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: XFX ProSeries 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£35.09 @ Aria PC)
Total: £499.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-08-16 14:51 BST+0100

Rather than run two hard drives, i opted for a single 500GB 840 Evo, most coding and web projects don't need a ton of space, you can swap it down to a 120/250GB and a 1TB drive if you think you'll need more space but i expect 500GB would be plenty for your purposes. You can change up to 16GB of RAM but very few things will need/benefit from it. You have no need for a discrete GPU so i suggest using an H series board and the IGP in the i5.