Haswell Powered CPU Build Guide for Medium Gaming and Entry Level CAD; for October 2013 (Pakistan Market Prices and Parts Availability)

 

This build is recommended for regular CAD users, rendering at very high resolutionwill take lot of time on this build. and casual gamers (which most of us are).

CPU

Intel® Core™ i5-4670 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) ~22,000 PKR, exceptional value for money, average rendering performance, it will stay for 4 years easy! It has 4 cores and no HT technology, but will perform everyday gaming and CAD tasks like charm!

Motherboard

Intel® Desktop Board DB85FL ~11,000 PKR, using 3rd party mother boards is not recommended in Pakistan because of no-warranty issues. Most of the importers buy from Intel and they come with warranty, others simply don't. This board supports 4 6 GB/s SATA, USB and PCI-e 3.0.

GPU

MSI® NVidia™ GeForce GT 640 GDDR3 2 GB ~10,000 PKR, great value for money too, will easily run all existing games (~30 fps), and all to be released games at low-medium settings at a minimum of ~30 fps for at least 2 more years.

PSU + Case + Extra Fan

Corsair® VS 450 400 Watt PSU + Casing ~5,000 PKR (after the price for built-in PSU is subtracted). In Rendering, the CPU goes to full power and beyond (Intel® Turbo Boost) so power consumption increases, same applies to GPU when gaming, you will probably use 300 Watt maximum, but as PSU gets older (after 3-4 years minimum) the output wattage decrease, so to make up for that, initially buy a slightly larger wattage PSU. Also due to large time spent gaming and/or rendering, the system heats up pretty bad, so be SURE to buy and add an extra 90 mm fan.

RAM

Kingston® KVR16N11/8 8 GB DDR 3 1600 MHz, ~8,000PKR  x1, as RAM is expensive these days, was at around half the price last year, so go for 1 DIMM 8 GB memory. I don't recommend buying 2x DIMM of 4GB capacity, because if you want to upgrade to full capacity later (and most of you will, that's why one buys a Desktop and not a Craptop), (capacity of the recommended motherboard is 8GBx4 = 32 GB maximum) it will not use up extra DIMM slot.

HD

Seagate® Barracuda™ 7200 rpm 32 MB Cache 500 GB ~6,500 PKR. I don't recommend buying a hard disk anymore because it will slow your system down, buy a 180 GB SSD instead. Believe me, 180 GB is enough space, most of us pre own Portable HD anyway, so use that for back up. If you want a HD buy the smallest/cheapest capacity/price available.

Optical Drive

Yeah, it was something too, something dinosaurs used! NOT recommended. Just wastage of money! We use USB ports to install any of the current OS, obviously.

WIFI

TP Link® WN722N ~1,000 PKR, it is a must as most of us have WIFI routers these days, so to get internet to your desktop, you will have to use this or a ~2,500 PKR 50+ meter LAN cable. The choice is yours! This isn't even a hard one!

This all adds up to 70,000 PKR without SSD, Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers and a Monitor which most of us pre own and do not change for ~8-10 years.

If you are buying everything from start, add ~2,500 PKR for keyboard and mouse, and ~12,000 for 900p monitor (Dell® or HP® only because of warranty issues).

 

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