Desktop Computer Part List (Summer 2018-Pakistan Market)

     At the time of writing, 1 USD = Rs. 121.936. The prices mentioned in this post are based on the local market prices of computer components in Pakistan. Please remember that, prices vary from city-to-city within the country and shop-to-shop within a city. This is the reason why a price range is mentioned.

CPUs

     Intel Core i7-8700 for Rs. 41,500-Rs. 43,500. Top of the line processor from Intel. Always prefer a Core i7 or a Core i9 processor.

     Intel Core i5-8400 Processor Rs. 26,000-Rs. 28,000. Only buy this processor if there is a budget constraint.

Motherboard

     Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 for Rs. 21,200-Rs. 21,500. This motherboard has many USB ports and also comes equipped with a USB type-C port and M.2 slots etc. for future proofing.

Storage

     WD Blue 500GB Solid State Drive - WDS500G1B0A for Rs. 16,500-Rs. 17,500. Please do not buy a hard drive with rotating mechanism, it's 2018! When later in the year the SSD's prices go down, probably around November-December 2018, then buy another ~500 GB SSD. Do not waste money on a legacy hard drive.

Memory

     Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (1x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz Rs. 25,800-Rs. 32,000. Please do not buy two sticks of 8 GB each. Save the remaining memory slots for future upgrading. Memory prices will fall significantly in October-November 2018 once the Chinese memory plants become operational. Don't fall for the shop keepers trickery. A common ploy employed by shopkeepers is that 1x16GB memory modules don't work in single channel mode for the 2400 MHz+ modules. It works perfectly well.

Casing

     Corsair Carbide Series® 100R Mid-Tower Case Rs.6,650-Rs. 7,500. This is the best option, really. Don't waste money on casing, it's just a box.

Power Supply

     Corsair VS550 - 550 Watt Power Supply Rs.5,800 -Rs. 6,000. A 550 Watt power supply for an i7 8700 CPU, 4 sticks of 1x16GB DDR4 memory modules, 1 SSD and up to a GTX 1x70 level graphic cards without any over clocking and 16 hours per day usage will be enough. May be this power supply will even be enough for GTX 1180 graphic card, as the graphic card chips are becoming more and more energy efficient. Yet again, do not fall for the shop keepers ploys.

Graphic Card

     Wait for the graphic new graphic cards from NVidia. The new cards are just around the corner. Local shops in Pakistan are selling 2 year old graphic cards, the GTX 10 series, at much inflated prices as compared to the rest of the world.

Conclusion

     This system will last at least 5 years, in terms of gaming with a GTX 1x70 level graphics card. It will even perform well for 10+ years if you keep upgrading it and take care of it cooling wise. Upgrade to a PCIe-NVMe SSD down the road when the prices drop, add more memory and update the graphic card every 5 years etc. Currently, the system will cost anywhere between Rs. 118,000 -Rs. 128,000, depending on you city and the shop, with an i7 processor.

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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).

 

For suggestions, send an email to fadoobaba@live.com , tweet @fadoobaba, PM at https://www.facebook.com/ThreeDimensionalDesign or https://grabcad.com/fahad.rafi.butt or comment with your contact details and I will contact you!. Thank you for reading!

Do comment and share!

Haswell Powered CPU Build Guide for Hi-End Gaming and CAD; for October 2013 (Pakistan Market Prices and Parts Availability)

 

This build is recommended for those who use CAD software daily and render their models as well at a high resolution. And do PC gaming as well.

CPU

Intel® Core™ i7-4770 Processor (8M Cache, up to 3.90 GHz) ~34,000 PKR, exceptional value for money, excellent render performance, it will stay for 5 years easy! Comes with 8 cores! Do I need say more? :)

Motherboard

Intel® Desktop Board DH87MC ~12,000 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 6 6 GB/s SATA, USB and PCI-e 3.0.

GPU

MSI® NVidia™ GeForce GTX 650 GDDR5 2 GB ~15,000 PKR, great value for money too, will easily run all existing games (50+ fps), and all to be released games at maximum settings at a minimum of ~30 fps for at least 2 more years. And lets face it, AMD is crap! ;)

PSU + Case + Extra Fan

Corsair® VS 500 500 Watt PSU + Casing ~6,000 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 400 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 120 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.

SSD

Kingston® SV300S37A/60G 60 GB ~6,500PKR. This 6GB/s SSD boots Microsoft's® Windows™ 8.1 RTM in 10 seconds ONLY! Get the point I was making earlier? Go for Kingston because warranty issues, again importers do not buy from Intel in case of SSD, but from Corsair and Kingston.

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 89,000 PKR without Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers and a Monitor which most of us pre own and do not change for ~8-10 years. And with 60 GB SSD and 500 GB HD.

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).

 

For suggestions, send an email to fadoobaba@live.com , tweet @fadoobaba, PM at https://www.facebook.com/ThreeDimensionalDesign or https://grabcad.com/fahad.rafi.butt or comment with your contact details and I will contact you!. Thank you for reading!

Do comment and share!