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Reply 1
Original post by TOSCS
I have a budget of around £2000 - 2200 including peripherals and software

Thanks


The most important thing is you set up your PC for dual boot Windows and Linux and personally I'd get two drives rather than bother with partitioning a single drive. You'll need home use of both these operating systems throughout your computer science degree.

The details of spec is really down to you though, with that kind of budget you're PC will easily cope with anything you need to do during your degree, so it's all down to personal preference really (and whether you intend to use the PC for other things like gaming).

I'd recommend a nice big screen though, it's easier to multi-task (and especially useful for your third year dissertation :smile:).
(edited 13 years ago)
Well, pretty obvious thing but you gotta go for multi screen.

I got a 20" screen and 22" screen. It's be better to get 2 the same size though.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/241849 A Nice budget 23" samsung moniter. If you're willing to spend more you can go 24" but there's not much difference...

Something like 2 of them would be good. I'll let the others sort out the actual computer etc.
Reply 3
Buy the same sort of PC anyone else would have, and spend the remaining £1500 on beer. £2000 is a lot, you could get a complete beast of a machine with that which would be entirely unncessary for your course. Spend it on a monster PC if you want, but don't think you need to because you're doing computer science.
Reply 4
You don't need that much money for a comp. for a what you need. All you want is a good processor eg i7
Reply 5
Please could I have recommendations for a MOBO, processor and graphics card? Thanks :smile:
Reply 6
Actually it is roughly the same, sometimes cheaper, to buy pre-built. Now if this was the U.S, that would be different...
Reply 7
Original post by ma2k5
Actually it is roughly the same, sometimes cheaper, to buy pre-built. Now if this was the U.S, that would be different...


I haven't looked into it recently, but I get the impression pre-built is generally cheaper if you just want a basic machine. If you want something that's good for gaming or something else that requires high performance then buying separate parts will probably work out cheaper for the performance you get.
Reply 8
Original post by Psyk
I haven't looked into it recently, but I get the impression pre-built is generally cheaper if you just want a basic machine. If you want something that's good for gaming or something else that requires high performance then buying separate parts will probably work out cheaper for the performance you get.


Even performance systems, do become cheaper if pre-built (if you go to the right places), simply because the individual costs are pretty high. Just have a look at the total costs of pre-built and then try make that exact system individually like from cyberpowersystems.co.uk.
Reply 9
dont do this
I'd suggest two in raid 1 for data, an SSD for the main OS/applications, and a final mechanical drive for any VMs, secondary OSs (you'll probably want linux as well as windows, at the very least) and general messing around without risking destroying your main installation. And an external for backups.
Reply 11
Please tell me you meant RAID1.


OP, you know you don't need anything more powerful than a low-end netbook to do the majority of stuff on your CompSci course, right? If you just want a powerhouse PC then fair enough, but don't justify it by saying you need it for your course.
Reply 12
I was curious on the question whether it was cheaper to build or buy pre-built, so I had a check. For a Dell Studio XPS 8100 with nothing changed it was £959. The same parts from Ebuyer came to £812 with a 'good' PSU, case, fan and the most expensive motherboard for that socket. So that is a saving of £147 with more than could be saved if you chose some cheaper parts. I will probably be told Dell is shit though (it probably is).
(edited 13 years ago)
Reply 13
Original post by Matty919
I was curious on the question whether it was cheaper to build or buy pre-built, so I had a check. For a Dell Studio XPS 8100 with nothing changed it was £959. The same parts from Ebuyer came to £812 with a 'good' PSU, case, fan and the most expensive motherboard for that socket. So that is a saving of £147 with more than could be saved if you chose some cheaper parts. I will probably be told Dell is shit though (it probably is).


I wouldn't say they're shit - in terms of hardware, I've found them to be fairly reliable. Also, as the XPS range is one of Dell's better lines, I would expect it to have some decent hardware inside it. It's just if something DOES go wrong their customer service has much to be desired.

Many people prefer to buy a pre-built computer due to the warranty - however, the individual parts you purchase come with a warranty which is usually far longer than the one you get with a pre-built machine - for example, some RAM sticks have a lifetime warranty. Most (decent) PSUs I've seen have at least a 3 year warranty, and I think mine has a 5 year one. I believe Intel's retail CPUs have a warranty of 3 years (maybe it's 2) as well. So as long as you don't destroy everything while putting the machine together, you have a huge advantage over buying a pre-built machine as you have quite a long combined warranty.
(edited 13 years ago)
Reply 14
If I was you i'd get a macbook pro 15 inch i7 2.8ghz processor with 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm.

Reason - good processor , good size for portability, can run osx, windows and linux which all have their advantages plus you get educational discount from apple and a better machine in terms of security.

Also, Apple have better programs for creativity and as someone who does web design in my spare time I prefer OSX massively to any other OS.

You can then get an external hardrive and install linux and windows on them so you have a lot of storage for each OS.

This is what im doing for uni anyway but with a lower spec macbook due to costs.

For that machine with Applecare for 3 years it would cost you

£1,758.98

Plus you also have the security of a osx whereas Windows is extremely vulnerable. osx does have viruses but nowhere near as much as windows.
Reply 15
Original post by jb9191
Plus you also have the security of a osx whereas Windows is extremely vulnerable. osx does have viruses but nowhere near as much as windows.


I live in the hope that a CS student practises good computer security and knows how to avoid viruses.
Reply 16
Original post by TOSCS
I have a budget of around £2000 - 2200 including peripherals and software

Thanks


Buy/build a PC that suits your needs, not because you are 'doing a CompSci course'. I'm in 3rd year of CS and tbh you can easily get by with a perfectly ordinary PC, spending no more than half of your budget. Depending on your uni facilities, you don't absolutely need to dual boot either, like someone suggested. The most important thing for a CS degree is a brain. I would advise spending under £1k on a pc, then use the rest to buy food, alcohol, books...
Original post by tkhaz44
Buy/build a PC that suits your needs, not because you are 'doing a CompSci course'. I'm in 3rd year of CS and tbh you can easily get by with a perfectly ordinary PC, spending no more than half of your budget. Depending on your uni facilities, you don't absolutely need to dual boot either, like someone suggested. The most important thing for a CS degree is a brain. I would advise spending under £1k on a pc, then use the rest to buy food, alcohol, books...


Agreed... there's no need to spend more than £500 on a PC for studies. I would dual boot though- as something that can cost from nothing to the price of a hard drive, it's pretty convenient. There's always the VM option though, which any modern PC should handle with ease.
Reply 18
Original post by lareneg
I live in the hope that a CS student practises good computer security and knows how to avoid viruses.


yeah fair enough but sometimes its easier to just buy the more secure system.

Keeping a system secure is easy. I have done it with my PC for years - the fact is, there could easily be a virus that comes along on PC that cripples your whole system, meaning you lose loads of work in the process.

There are even viruses that can cripple your backups.
Reply 19
Don't use raid0 (striping). If one disk fails you loose all your data. Raid0 is only good if you want fast performance and don't care about your data at all.

Better to use raid1 (mirroring) or if you've for more than two disks raid5 (parity disk) or raid10 (mirror and strip)

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