New Workstation for me!

[Mr.Ben]

I have £500 to spend in my budget this year for a nice new desk machine. Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should spend it on?

[plexer]

Well I'm guessing you mean a PC, a workstation would be something like an HP Z400 which are lovely

 

Ben

[plexer]

Lenovo ThinkStation E20 - Misco.co.uk

 

Something like that?

 

Ben

[Mr.Ben]

TBH I think the budget means that it will sit somewhere between a Workstation and Desktop (Although the definitions of the two are now quite blurry). The only thing I really need is dual DVI outputs (to my monitors).

 

That Lenovo looks lovely, but I'll have to stick to my budget to set an example - plus no other PC on site is more than £300!

[Stevenw]

i got my self a intel i5 with 6gb ram 500gb HDD Zoostorm for around that price

[rad]

i5 Processor, 4 GB RAM (min) all depends on who your supplier is, large hard drive is good for storing random stuff.

[steveg]

Hp have some great education discounts on at the moment. - For example (from misco) Hp 8100 Elite, Core i5 660, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, dvd writer and win 7 pro with 3 year warranty is £477 ex vat for education customers, normal website price is £679.99 ex vat, Don't think that model has the graphics outputs you want, but worth looking at the hp range, and don't go by the website prices!

 

Steve

[cpjitservices]

how about - Dell Studio XPS 7100 Desktop | Dell

[glennda]

Custom Build - probably cheaper and get a better spec

[north-ict]

Does your budget include software etc or is it solely just the machine?

[SYNACK]

The hp 6100 Elites are good, we have them in all over the place as clients and if you get the i7 you can get the upgraded GPU package that has a dual DVI out which takes a splitter (comes with dual VGA but can get dual DVI). There is no additional room inside though so you can't really do stuff like add additional HDs. Probably outside the budget though. You could always custom build it, i7-260, 8GB RAM P67 chipset etc.

[john]

Hp have some great education discounts on at the moment. - For example (from misco) Hp 8100 Elite, Core i5 660, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, dvd writer and win 7 pro with 3 year warranty is £477 ex vat for education customers, normal website price is £679.99 ex vat, Don't think that model has the graphics outputs you want, but worth looking at the hp range, and don't go by the website prices!

 

Steve

 

I can agree on that machine, its end of line though hence the major price reduction to shift what stock is lef, and I paid less from Insight for it However one niggle is the PSU is VERY custom to HP It doesn't even use a standard ATX connector for the motherboard its a custom job through and through But very expandable and well built

[jamesfed]

Mines a custom built -

Zotac Zbox AMD E-350 APU - £158

OCZ Vertex 3 120Gb SSD - £205

4Gb DDR3 1066mhz RAM - £45

Any Windows OS of your choice (I just got a OEM copy of Windows 7 and then invoked our Schools Agreement (at least I think I can still work it that way!)) - £££

 

This machine does fly and its all thanks to the SSD working at 6Gb/s and the AMD Fusion APU easily handles anything (expecily if the application can use the GPU) including Photoshop, Movie Maker and a million RDP/IE9 sessions.

 

It also sits on the back of my monitor with a VESA mount and I do DVD burning through a USB drive (but to be honist I haven't had to touch a DVD since I first got this wonderful machine).

[john]

I just feel the need to put on here that the PC I have just got (IE mentioned above Jamesfed's post) I have not actually paid for the PC as the Insurance company has paid for it as it was the replacement after I had to make an insurance claim the other week as I am fairly broke in this years budget! Thus I am not in the market for any new PCs at present as all my regular suppliers have been told and the cold callers have been told as well