PC Spec sufficient for 6th form? (self build, advice pls???)

[DailyMailEthicalFail]

Hi.
Ds wants to build a pc. He built his first aged 9.
Good learning experience for him.
I want him to build it with LOTS of 'growth room' even though he is only 12.
He is super clever tech wise so needs something well ahead of his age.
Currently his only gaming is Minecraft and Robocraft but he does make films so needs good video/sound/production software?

His spec is:
128gb SSD
ASUS FM2 + A68H
AMD A8 / 3.1gh

• GB RAM DDR3 KINGSTON
  GT 730 2GB graphics card
  
  No advice from local High School. There is a local pc shop but they asked our budget (500 max) and then came up with something for £490 that ds himself said was not so great.
  
  I know its a bit niche but I'd be grateful for any advice?

[TeenAndTween]

There is a techy board on here somewhere called geeks or Nerds or something, maybe try there?

And you say for 6th form? but he is 12?

[Ladymuck]

Is the GBP500 budget just for the hardware? How much will he spend on software?

In some respects it may be hard to anticipate what software he will be using in 6th form as it will depend in part as to whether he simply needs word processing, or whether he is doing video editing/photography and needs more storage space, or a more powerful processor.

Software sites will usually have a list of pc requirements. So looking at Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, they don't list the GT 730 graphics card, but do list the GT 730M instead (which is probably GBP40-50 more). 8GB RAM is the minimum with 16GB being recommended. Of course specs change over time, and a different card may be on the list in 3-4 years time. Being a self build of course your son will be able to upgrade some elements over the next few years. 128 GB of hard drive seems rather low for videos though? Does he have some other external disc?

[DailyMailEthicalFail]

OK. I'll report my post and ask for it to be moved, thanks.

Yy re 6th form and 12 yrs. He is v advanced tech wise

[DailyMailEthicalFail]

Oh, hi, Ladymuck - thanks for input!

The £500 would be all in, really, hard and software.

Yes, doing video editing and photography now, hobby wise.

Re film - currently using moviemaker.
Wants to use HitFilm4 Express, apparently, but would be grateful for any advice in this area?

no other hard drive.

[Ladymuck]

Have you had a look at uk.pcpartpicker.com/. Worth running the build through that to check compatibility. There's also plenty of other builds you can have a look at.

The downside with freeware is that it can be buggy and unsupported. But as a hobby for a 12 year old it should be fine. As he gets to 6th form then you and he will have a better idea as to whether he needs to upgrade anything to run the software that he will then need (which probably hasn't been written yet!).

That said, if he isn't doing a course that is specifically techy at school, then most 6th formers would value a laptop over a desktop, as they can take it to school/college for notes etc.

[DailyMailEthicalFail]

Ladymuck

he is very happily playing with the partpicker site now.

he wants to do this for a living when he is older, but meantime is making himself the pc of his dreams that he couldn't afford from a shop

can you suggest a good quality graphics card (size?) pls?

[sjane03]

I would not worry so much about the specifics of machine now but ensure that it has a motherboard with extra slots to add more memory and hard drives etc. If I was going to build a machine like that I would get the best motherboard and processor I could afford (these are hard to upgrade later) then keep everything else basic and add onto it as I could afford to.

[FinallyHere]

I wouldn't bother with hard drives, except perhaps for backup. Id go solid state every time, which i think he has from your spec. Having said that, he has got a plan for the backup, hasn't he.