mcrabb

All the reviews are saying that SATA 3 has become a bottleneck, I'd be curious to see if anyone on here has a PCI-e SSD and their experiences with it.

Agree the GTX760 is the best bang for buck card out there at the moment, but the minimum power output Nvidia recommend for one is 500w.

What is the power output for your PSU? Could be a bottleneck for the more power-hungry cards.

The majority of Haswell boards I've seen can support multiple displays without the need for a dedicated GPU, I've never given it a go though so not sure how the onboard graphics will handle them. Maybe someone else on here has?

+1 The only time you'll pass 8GB is video or graphics editing. If you're only browsing the web plus a bit of multimedia the on board CPU graphics should be fine, and the only time you'll see a noteable performance increase from i7 over i5 is with programs that make heavy use of multithreading.

It's all a bit tribal and about personal preference really. I think the common opinion is pretty much what you have said, AMD = Good for those on a budget, Intel = Better performance, but at a cost. Really depends on what you plan on doing with the computer in question. I find CPUBoss useful if you have two chips in mind and want to do a comparison.

In terms of graphics card the really important thing to know is what resolution you are planning running. I'm guessing 1920x1080 since your monitor is 24"? In that case the GTX 760 will handle pretty much anything you throw at it, the GTX 750ti is still a strong card if you aren't planning on playing AAA titles on Ultra. In terms of cooling/temps, it's more about the vendor you go with as they normally build their cooling from the ground up that are much better then the reference models. It really is worth spending a little bit more now for the same card from a brand with a good reputation (ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI etc). Also check the stock clocks, some cards run slightly faster out the box then others.

I've used a K65 since the start of the year and it's a solid bit of kit, if you're not using extra keys it's definitely worth the price saving over the K70 (the keys are full size by the way). Coming from a membrane you'll really notice the noise, you'll get used to it in no time but could be annoying for people trying to work or sleep nearby. Also I Razer just released their own orange and green switches aimed at gamers if you're into that kind of thing.

Lenovo just announced a convertible laptop for education use that sounds like what you're looking for, but no word on detailed spec or UK pricing/availability yet. Student-Focused Lenovo ThinkPad 11e Series