A guide to buying a high-end PC

The average shop-bought computer is more than good enough for most people who use it to browse social networking sites, write the odd word processor document and view videos through an online catchup service. However, for a small segment of the population, only high performance and custom graphics workstation computers will be sufficient. This guide provides a guide to buying a high-end PC.

Assess your needs

Before you make the decision to spend extra money on a high-end PC, it is important to properly assess your needs and workout, if you really need a top of the line system. The first stage of this process is to sit down with the boxes or specification sheets of all of your pieces of software and look at the recommended computer specifications for each program. Take into special consideration, the amount of RAM, VRAM and processor speed that is required. Next, compare this to some lower priced PCs in an electrical retailers and you may pleasantly be surprised by the relatively high specifications that modern budget PCs now offer. If however, you need to run CAD or video rendering for any reason, then you will need a much more powerful PC configuration.

Choosing the right high-end PC

The type of high-end computer that you need depends entirely on the application that you will be using it for. If you are undertaking video rendering applications, especially when working with HD video, your focus should be on having a powerful processor and plenty of RAM. Video rendering uses a lot of system resources and disk space. Think carefully about how you will store all of your video files and consider investing in a RAID array to complement your new system. Computer aided graphics users will not only need a powerful processor to handle finte element modelling tasks, but also plenty of VRAM to render 3D models on the fly. This is essential for unigraphics and professional engineer users whose productivity can be severely hampered by slow graphics cards. Upgrades like wireless internet which are taken for granted on lower end models are often excluded on some top end models, as it is assumed that they are to be part of a render farm or large office network. If you need to use your high-end PC as a standard consumer device as well, it is wise to check that you have all the necessary inputs, outputs and connections which you need for day-to-day operation.