OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

John McGaw

I am probably not the best person to answer this since I have owned home-built desktop system for decades now. I can say that for 'basic' use a current-generation i5 system with 8gb will probably handle anything you throw at it and a bit more. That is basically what I'm using for my home theater system and it is able to handle that while simultaneously running really heavy computational scientific tasks under the BOINC client.You might want to do a Google search for 'reliable basic desktop computers' (without the quotes, of course) to get some ideas.

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

Mark Nowicki

Our son builds ours so I can't comment on a brand but a comparison of specs shows that his is an I5 with a 3.40 gigahertz clock speed, 16Gig RAM and some super duper video card with a separate processor.

He has dual cooling fans, better quality power supply, CD-Rom drives.

We all have solid state drives (SSD's) instead of mechanical hard drives.

My lap top is an I5 with a 2.4 clock speed, 4G of RAM, NVIDIA video card and an SSD.

I would get one custom made, and I would get one better than I think I need.

Definitely top of the line video card, and lots of RAM.

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

Hoa in Alameda

I'm cheap, so my opinions tend to be, well, cheap.

If you don't do games or anything requiring extreme computing power, go for a mid-ranged (read: mid-priced) desktop and swap the stock hard disk with an SSD. Then setup the stock hard disk as a backup disk.

E.g. HP Pavilion 570-p017c ($650) + Crucial MX300 525GB ($140).

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

John McGaw

As the OP wrote "No fancy CAD/CAM, gaming or graphics." That would suggest that a high-end video card would be a waste -- the embedded graphics in Intel's modern chips is quite sufficient for almost any other sort of work. If OP decides later that fast graphics is now a priority then a separate graphics card can always be added.

I'd spend any extra money on a good SSD, M.2 unit rather than a regular SATA device -- the extra speed is quite noticeable even on mundane tasks. Upgrading to an NVMe Samsung 960 M.2 on my daily-driver made most activities about twice as fast and the old SATA drive was one of the faster of its type to begin with. Oh, and if a fresh start is being made, a good external USB drive for backups might be a good investment.

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

Hoa in Alameda

>> if a fresh start is being made, a good external USB drive for backups might be a good investment.

- Buy a desktop with a cheap (magnetic) hard disk.

- Buy an SSD of the same (or less) capacity as the stock hard disk.

- Clone the stock hard disk to the SSD and verify that the SSD works (most after market SSD comes with a cloning software).

- Add the SSD to the computer as the boot disk.

- Set up the original disk as a secondary disk.

- Every so often (weekly?), clone the boot disk (SSD) to the secondary disk.

- If there is extra space on the secondary disk, use that space for daily data backup.

If the SSD crashes (happened to me twice last year on separate computers), set the secondary disk as a boot disk. You'll be up and running in a few minutes with very little data loss.

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

John McGaw

I always recommend external backup since it can be totally disconnected and kept in a safe(r) location. Besides nightly automatic backups of my entire main system to a 16tB network server in house I keep a set of three 3-tB external hard drives which are rotated in and out of my bank's vault one at a time on a monthly or more frequent basis. Whatever befalls my local systems I can be sure that recovery is going to be possible from one of those even though it might be weeks out of date. Big bulky files, mostly of the media sort, are kept on my HTPC which is also backed up to the server but new files are also copied to a 12tB Drobo as they are generated. Additionally I keep a frequent snapshot of my main system drive on an external SSD which lives in a fireproof and waterproof media safe in the house. All this may seem paranoid but, after being in the small computer business in one way or another since 1975, I know firsthand about data loss in almost every form.

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

Larry Clinton At Frankfort, (Central) Indiana

I have to find my sister one (she is 90 years old) to play simple games, this is hard for me to do since i have assembled my own for many years (since the 386's were top dog).

I haven't been convinced to go to solid state drives, instead I am running RAID 10, using four 2 terabyte drives ~ standard high speed drives are so cheap now it makes sense to me. The RAID 10 system is almost as fast, if not as fast as solid state drives and guarantees complete backup at all times. My wife wanted a standalone computer with touch screen so that is what she has. It has worked well for her, again she only plays simple games and plays on the internet.

Costco is your friend

Mike Farinella

Really good deals and the best warranties anywhere.

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

Bill Howatt

Agree, the video card would be a total waste of money. I've looked into it for my Intel CPU machine and unless you do serious gaming or other very intensive graphics it won't help at all.

SSD disks are good but I only have one for the OS and applications, that is the "C" drive on Windows machines. I also believe in having the OS and apps in a separate partition from my data files but this starts making things a slight bit more complex since everything these days tends to default to "C".

Bill

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

TomD

I'm really cheap, still running XP on the desktop, does pretty much everything I want, streaming, CAD. Youtube, etc... cost me 22 bucks so I bought 5.

Current headache is the new Seagate external drive I got doesn't work with it. I would assume there is a patch, but I am too stupid to figure it out. I remember when they first started selling big cards with over one gig and they wouldn't run in some relatively new computers. If I put them in a usb cardeader, they would handle any size, so it probably is just some setting. Anyone have any ideas?

Maybe an AFD drive

Bill Howatt

This may or may not be your problem but there has been a change to what is called Advanced Format Drives or Native 4k drives. These drives have 4096 byte sectors instead of 512 bytes. XP does not understand this at all and the first time they were somewhat handled was back in Vista Service Pack 1. Windows 8 and 10 fully understand them.

Drives were/are produced that have 4K sectors but present the data to the computer as if they were a 512 byte sector drives.

If your drive is a Native 4K drive, I can't tell you what you might do but this could be your problem. Check your disks documentation if you got any or look it up on the Seagate website. You may also find ways to get around it there as well, hopefully, if that's it. Of course, it could be something else. Have you tried it on a newer OS say Windows 7 or later?

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/4k-sector-hard-drives-windows

Bill

Re: OT - new desktop computer recommendations?

johannaj

I have had good results by ordering from Dell - I customize the order so that I get Windows Professional, not the home edition. I can specify drive size, memory capacity, etc.