I'm looking for a decent bench machine that can handle 3 monitors without issue. This machine will not be for gaming, but will do heavy multi-tasking. Am I chasing the right build here or am I off course? Really only have experience building for gaming, usually buy stock machines for this in the past.
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Thanks for looking it over!
Posted Nov 27, 2014, 4:41 AM UTC
What kind of heavy multitasking? You have a rather slow CPU in there, and way more GPU than you would need if you aren't gaming.
yeah the gpu in this instance is nothing more than a glorified set of monitor ports, put that money into the cpu
Usually have outlook, excel, Photoshop, illustrator, FileZilla, 8-10 browser tabs(a few with dynamic content), FileMaker, Lynx, Skype, sublime text, and a vm or two for testing in virtual box with minimal resources.
I've had issues in the past when using multiple displays and figured it was due to a weak graphics processor.
Should I be aiming for a mid tier i7 with 8gb of ram? What's a good base graphics card to push one 27" and two 24"s?
Thanks for feedback!
A nice i5 or i7 would do it pretty well. The integrated graphics can handle multiple displays and have plenty of power for non-gaming use. Now, you could also get a Xeon, which depending on the model is just an i7 without the integrated graphics. That's quite a bit cheaper than the i7 and you could get a $50-60 discrete card to pair with it. That would be the most power and compatibility overall.
looks good, 3 monitor, good on ya. The video card you can get a cheaper one since you are not gaming. If your HDD has crucial (irreplaceable) data on it (pictures, docs, work) that are uncloudable (too big), or downtime is unacceptable (Can't wait 2 weeks to send HDD back and get another one and then restore from backup) then get another identical hard drive and Mirror (Raid 1) it. (Make sure your motherboard supports it) They say there are 2 types of people, those that have lost data, and those that haven't lost data yet, you don't know WHEN your hard drive will fail, but it will. If the data is unimportant, or you have an external, then no worries. You're good. There is always whiners that say it's not a proper backup, but the chances a meteor will hit your computer, someone will steal a full sized PC, or you'll download a virus, is almost zero but the probability hard drives will eventually fail is 100%, and you don't know when. . . it's about downtime not just instant worry free peace of mind backup.