Building 6 PCs - $8,850 budget

#1

My school is giving me (well, not giving me, but you get the point) $8,850 to build 6 brand new PCs from scratch, which equals out to precisely $1,475 per computer. I must find the best quality parts and stay inside the budget. Each part needs to be the best as possible so it performs well, lasts a long time, and very reliable. I will be giving the school board a presentation which will have the following information about each part:

  1. Reliability rating & source
  2. Warranty
  3. Product description
  4. Product specification relevant to the decision process
  5. Why I chose each part

Here’s the part where I need you. I need to find appropriate parts for these builds. These machines will be going into the school’s Digital Media classroom, and will need to run many Adobe programs etc. This is why the parts need to be reliable. Anywho, this is the list of parts needed:

Power Supply

Monitor

Keyboard & Mouse

Case

Motherboard

Graphics Card

RAM

CPU

Optical Drive (CD/DvD)

HDD or SSD (leaning towards a SSD, what are your opinions? Note: mostly all the data is stored on the network. Huge amounts of disk space is not needed, and is considered overkill.)

Operating system
(Already made this choice. Sticking with Windows 7 64 bit business)

So, if you don’t know what I need help on, it’s finding the right parts for these builds. All I need is the best part for each part, while staying inside the budget. Also, when showing me a part, please tell me the reason why you choose that part. I’m not asking you to do this entire job for me, just give me some hints and tips for parts. Any questions? Ask.

Also, if you want more info about the digital media classroom, They model, make websites, make videos, make images, etc. The requirements they gave me are:

-able to run Microsoft office
-3DS max
-adobe illustrator
-adobe premiere
-adobe after effects
-adobe photoshop
-adobe fireworks
-adobe dreamweaver

and must be able to

-import videos with a digital camera
-and use scanners

All these things need to be done as fast as possible with no delay or crashing etc.

#2

For $1400 you could build one bad ass PC… I’d max’er out. Nvidia GeForce GTX (maybe a 560) graphics cards, intel i5 or i7 processors, 750w power supply, etc etc. Shit’s not that expensive, for $1400 you can more then exceed their expectations. Google hardware. You have the list of what you need and the skills to put it together, read some reviews and get on it bro. You can’t rely on other people to do all the work for you lol.

There’s nothing wrong with cheaping out on certain things, but things like processors and graphics cards can’t be cheaped out on.

A windows operating system will cost you major coin though, I saw Windows 7 at office max the other day and the professional was nearly $200 lol

#3

http://i.imgur.com/sn24Y.png is everything I got so far. Any recommendations?

I can’t cheap out on the OS, they absolutely need W7 professional.

(EDIT: After uploading that picture, I decided to get more RAM.)

#4

i work in a school in the ICT department so i know all about this, the key to buying these is WARRANTY. trust me, grab something pre-made from dell or HP that comes with a 5 year onsite warranty. you should be able to get something that fits your needs with that budget.

#5

^This. You shouldn’t be custom building PCs for businesses/schools its just too much hassle. For one or two R&D PCs perhaps but otherwise just look at the high spec dells and you can get next day part replacement if anything ever goes wrong. They aren’t too badly priced and it saves you getting called for every minor problem. (Plus if you can’t spec a PC yourself I’d be wary of trusting you to build and maintain 6 of them :expressionless: )

Remember you may want to look at Nvidia Quadro cards if they’re doing graphical stuff. I’m not really all very clued up on it though but iirc they’re meant for graphic design and will perform far better than gaming cards.

#6

I would probably look into a factory made PC, but the request was to build custom ones from scratch. I think I got all the parts finalized, so I’m pretty much done now. Thanks guys.

#7

should’ve got iMac with educational discount if you had that much

#8

I didn’t see the screenshot of the newegg basket before, why full tower ATX? They are going to be bloody huge. I’m sorry but I have to say it - it looks to me like you built gaming computers, you said this was for digital media/CAD? For that budget you could have done Quadro/FirePro and professional IPS displays (or at least multiple displays per computer). I hope whoever gave you the budget is clueless about PC hardware because I would not be happy with this.

EDIT:

(EDIT: After uploading that picture, I decided to get more RAM.)
Why? Are they going to be running VMs too?
#9

[quote=“Greeny, post:8, topic:475189”]I’m sorry but I have to say it - it looks to me like you built gaming computers,

…

I hope whoever gave you the budget is clueless about PC hardware because I would not be happy with this.[/quote]

Couldn’t have put it better myself

#10

Guys what if he’s building these computers using media class as a excuse to allow for epic school-time lan matches1!!!111!1

#11

doenst need quadro for fkn photoshop guys

#12

Well he mentioned 3DS Max and quite a few adobe products - although as I’ve never used them I don’t really know what the hardware requirements are like, I just thought those cards were built for those uses. Why not get the proper hardware if you can afford it :stuck_out_tongue:

#13

this and why

[quote=“Greeny, post:8, topic:475189”]I didn’t see the screenshot of the newegg basket before, why full tower ATX? They are going to be bloody huge. I’m sorry but I have to say it - it looks to me like you built gaming computers, you said this was for digital media/CAD? For that budget you could have done Quadro/FirePro and professional IPS displays (or at least multiple displays per computer). I hope whoever gave you the budget is clueless about PC hardware because I would not be happy with this.

EDIT:

Why? Are they going to be running VMs too?[/quote]
Quadro? They easily go over the price budget for a decent Quadro,
The only different between those cards is that the Quadro video card is that it’s performance is ment for 3D design and so, the low end cards or about $2000 or less is useless awhile the upper price is much better… Get GTX 660TI than the Quadro…
You can buy a laptop from lenovo with mobile quadro 1000 but they perform much worse than the desktop version
In this case, I would just try to get a educational discount for a mac pro or imac, preferably you might enjoy graphic design experience on the mac os than the windows.
Get the dell or prebuilt if you are going for a gaming experience
The cheapest prebuilts I found were
cyberpowerpc
ibuypower
and Lenovo

#14

you can run max, photoshop c4d etc all only an $80 gfx card like I did for 6 years

#15

and have bad render times :o

#16

30m-1hr not too bad

#17

Considering these computers are gonna be used for more media-related stuff, use an i7 processor to really help speed up video editing

#18

It isn’t all about the processor, high end i5’s are just as good as high end i7s
you have to be specific, what do you mean? Some i7s are dual cores
some are quad cores. I Think a DEDICATED graphic card would matter more when it comes to graphical performance.