Hi guys! My computer has officially died, so I'm in need for a new one. My budget is around 1200$, with a wiggle room of 300$. What I usually do on my computer is: Develop software (the heaviest program I use is probably Visual Studio). Watch HD media (I have two screens: 24' and 19') and listen to music. Do some graphic design using Photoshop. Play games. Now, I'm not a hardcore gamer... I play some Team Fortress 2, and I'd like to be able to play GTA 5 when it does come out for the PC. Run a VM or two in the background. There is no need for any part beside the computer itself. I think my only specific request is for the computer to have an SSD drive. Thank you very much!
I concur. That and RAM are probably the biggest concerns here. A socket 1150-based Haswell might be the ticket, but if you need more than a quad-core and/or hyper-threading that moves into Socket 2011 i7's or even a Xeon. For the SSD, are you looking to this as a the main drive for everything, for software development and/or Photoshop, or something else? I know of 960GB SSD's, but that would eat up a lot of your budget. Going with a smaller SSD (say 256GB or less) for the OS and essential programs and a larger one(s) for everything else would be a way to go. Additionally, there are some drives that feature a small SSD in tandem with a traditional one all in a 3.5" package. You have a pretty generous budget for the PC itself, but a few more details will allow us to have a better idea on what to suggest for your needs.