I'm looking to buy a new PC and would like some advice on the spec I should be looking at for poker...at the moment my major issue on my lappy is that PT3 takes forever to load my ~500,000 hand database and want this to be much quicker...any advice:

a) money no object
b) slightly more realistic

think I want to spend around £500 - £600?

in the same boat, need a new desktop as my current one is about 6 years old and sounds like its away to explode, looking to spend around £500ish

i got a new one recently and this is what i remember:

get at least 4gb RAM, i3 processor or better, solid slate hard drive for your OS/programs and your hh DB, regular hdd for media.

£479.00 inc. VAT

AMD's latest Quad-Core processor, USB3 and NVIDIA's potent GTX 550 Ti 1GB graphics card.

Specification:
CPU:
AMD FX 4100 AM3+
Operating System:
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Motherboard:
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3
Memory:
8GB DDR3 1333mhz
Hard Drives:
1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drive:
22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Graphics card:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB
Sound card:
Onboard 7.1 Audio
Case:
Xigmatek Asgard + 400W Xigmatek PSU
Warranty:
3 Year Platinum Warranty

anyone have any opinions on this machine? would I be able to run 2 monitors off that graphics card?

You said 'utimate poker pc'

And then you said '500-600' gbp.

To the above, yes, that will handle 2 monitors with ease.

I know, right?

I'll just answer "a" since I'm putting one together tomorrow.

• Intel i7-2700k
• Some Z77-chipset board with DisplayPort
• Aftermarket CPU heatsink/fan combo, or modest water-cooling unit
• 2x 4GB (8GB) DDR3 1600 RAM, 1.5v
• A case with USB 3.0 up front, or one of these
• A high-end 128GB solid state drive at SATA 6gb/s speed, say Crucial M4 or better
• Put about $80 or better into a nice power supply you don't have to worry about for years
• DVD drive

That's enough for a dual-display setup without extreme resolutions. For more displays or biggest resolutions add a card. For poker though you don't need a high powered video card but if you play games then you'd want one.

2700k isn't needed relative to an i5 or a Bulldozer chip which will save you $80 or more, but it's the best chip worth paying for. Beyond what's listed here you're essentially burning money.

yes, I know i said "ultimate" and then put a price but I gave two options. I just needed to know what spec I should be looking at and where I can save money and what is essential hence the two options.

Thanks for the replies so far.

for poker you don't need awesome video card, maybe even integrated will be enough.
spend this money on better processor i5-i7 will be ok, and instead of HDD use SDD for more speed.

Assuming an all-around average new PC, your biggest gains in handling HEM with a large database would be using a solid-state hard drive. In the system you need that's really the key component to build around.

A modestly priced (semi-recent) quad core processor and ~6GB RAM works well enough as far as handling poker. Typically it's the hard drive holding up the show on the HEM end of things. So get a decent SATA 6gb/s SSD and a computer that supports it. Provided you don't go too cheap on the rest you'll be fine.

thanks for the help everyone - I spoke to PT and they also recommended SSD so this seems an important component

+1 to SSD obv

If you don't mind me asking what are the specs on the system you have now, the one struggling with PT3? Did it always struggle, or only when your database started approaching 500,000 hands?

On an old laptop (AMD Turion x64 I think) it started running slow. I thought it was a virus, but it turned out some kind of setting changed in the MSI power management software that made the processor run at half speed. I uninstalled it and let Windows do the power management, that made it speedy again. Might be worth checking out.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1750 laptop. PT3 has always been pretty slow.

A Core2Duo right? Those are slower but functional on the CPU side, but when it's got to do all of that other work with HEM and Table Ninja and iTunes at the same time it gets a bit tough. Newer/faster CPUs and higher speed RAM (and more of it) will improve things considerably. But, again, a SSD is kind of a no-brainer for HEM or PT3 processing today.

I'd snag a 128GB SSD and price the rest of the computer around it tbh.

Thanks for the advice SSD seems to be the byword.