Need PC Recommendation (Old PC Died)

I have an approximately 9-10 year old Dell Inspiron Tower PC running Windows 7. The hard drive is almost completely full, the wireless card only works intermittently and there have been a host of other problems. My wife has been (legitimately) haranguing me for literally 2+ years to replace the damn thing. I haven't because (a) laziness (plus I tend to obsess over PC build decisions) and (b) we are renovating our apartment so I wanted to wait until we were done to get a new PC once we knew what the home office space would look like.

This morning my wife called me in. She had been shopping on Amazon when she got a BSOD with a "data dump" message. Since I was still half asleep I didn't think to take a screen shot. PC was not responsive to any keyboard commands. I tried the power button to reboot but nothing. So, I pulled the power and tried to restart but nothing. PC won't start and no power light indicator. There is a local repair shop I have used before and I had had a similar problem years ago with the predecessor to this PC and it was a power supply issue and we fixed it for not too much money. I will take this in for a free diagnostic in the next couple of days but I am not inclined to spend more than a very de minimis amount to fix this PC that was on its last legs (assuming it can be fixed). Data recovery would be good although I do have a backup (the integrity of which I will confirm tonight), but I should be good on that front. Given the age of the PC, I think I had planned to do a fresh install rather than trying to replicate my old PC on a new one and risk importing in all sorts of crap. Rather, just grab software I need and then import files. So, I am not too stressed assuming backup is good.

However, we use the PC for work at home and personal finance matters, etc. I really don't want to be without a PC (although we have a MacAir that has none of these files on it; really a work-travel computer) for too long. So, I am almost inclined to see what Best Buy has in stock rather than doing a build through Dell or HP which could take a few weeks. That said, I am open to all suggestions. I am also curious what people think about AIOs versus towers. I think towers are pretty dated now and I cannot think of last time I inserted a CD/DVD in my PC. But that is what I have always had.

Use at home would be remote work (mostly Word documents), managing photos and music, light photo/video editing, internet browsing, no gaming. Although everything else in our house is IOS, I have never been comfortable with Mac OS but would at least consider an IMac. I just think it would be easier to get up and running on another PC.

All help appreciated.

 

what's your budget for PC
Ideally you buy two OK laptops with small SSD, and NAS. Peace of mind for years

 

I have been recommending Intel NUCs to people who have needed a new computer but had no need for powerful graphics or a permanent DVD/Bluray drive. Super small footprint that can even be mounted to the back of a monitor for an AIO format without most of the downsides of an AIO. No real need for people to get towers anymore unless for gaming or niche workloads that require a ton of power. I would also echo the use of a NAS for local backups going forward.

 

Why not an Intel NUC? Small, low power consumption but it's limited on how many SSD/HDD drives it can take.
I'd recommend one with Iris Graphics so it can take 4K playback with ease. They usually come barebone so you can buy whatever amount of RAM and space you need.

 

I am going to suggest NUC is not a great way to go. It is small, and powerful for what it is. However, it also runs loud, hot and is very noisy on the USB ports.

I'd recommend building/buying an ITX Ryzen PC. There are APU's like the 2200G/2400G that are quite potent. They run cool, quiet and many boards have optical out. You also get the expandability of a larger PC for drives/etc.

 

For browsing stuff I've never heard the fan on my NUC. Maybe a lower end CPU that struggles to process...

 

It can depend on the series surely, but every one I've deployed for my clients has run in the upper 70-80's and was very audible when streaming video/using certain programs. For work purposes it didn't matter but at home it wasn't ideal for my environment. The units I've deployed were all i5's from 4th to 7th gen. Dell has some really good ultra small form factor PCs that have beefier cooling solutions as an alternative to consider.

 

I went through this same process a few weeks ago. Still using an original Surface Pro, which works OK, but gets bogged down with a number of Chrome tabs open.

Already have a monitor, and have another laptop I use when I need to be mobile, so looking at tower vs. another laptop, the tower turned out to be a cheaper option for similar performance and with some definite benefits. I ended up buying this one. I definitely wanted to be booting off an SSD and have a biggish hard drive for storage. I found it was cheaper to buy a 256GB M2 card for this rig than upgrading to a desktop that already had both drives. Cyber Monday it was down to $370 on eBay, so I snagged one. It's now more expensive than just buying from Newegg, but if eBay do another 15% off promo, you could be down to a little over $350. Plus $55 - 60 for a 256GB M2 SSD. Compared to an Intel NUC, Newegg has the i5 for $365, but you have to add at least the SSD plus DRAM, so another $120 or so. And no hard drive. The desktop also has the advantage of being able to put in a graphics card if you want, easy to add more DRAM (I ended up buying another 8GB stick) and there's room for an additional 2.5" SATA III drive. NUC is super small, but I have a ton of space under my desk, so that wasn't an issue.

I expect to get at least 5 years out of this rig before it's obsolete. M2 card just turned up at the beginning of this week, so hope to get it fired up by the weekend.

 

Well, I do this for work so maybe I can help you.

1. Forget trying to fix the old PC. Any money you put towards repair is throwing good money after bad. It will have a motherboard issue soon most likely. And that will be the end of it.

2. Pull out the hard drive and GET YOUR FILES!! And external HD cage or cables for reading is all you need. If you already have a backup (on Carbonite or elsewhere then no worries). Be sure to get the little stuff like favorites/bookmarks, stuff on the desktop and from all user accounts.

3. I don't know where you live, but here we have a local pc store called Microcenter. Their prices are tough to beat. They buy overstock from Best buy and other places and sell it as "used" for a fraction of the original cost.

4. What to look for when buying a desktop: buy a current gen Intel i5, 16 gigs of ram and a SS harddrive. Get these components are you are set for MANY years. And you'll love the speed of the computer everytime you use it.

5. Get a standard full sized case. Don't get one of the "mini" towers. The wife may think it looks cute but they are a pain in the ass when you try to do a repair.

6. If you want a safe manufacturer then Dell tends to be a safe choice. They use quality motherboards, hard drive, ram etc. And their warranty and support are better than average.

7. DO NOT buy an AIO desktop. They are a piece shit. I say again, PIECE OF SHIT!!!! I work on AIO computers 10 to 1 over anything else because they always have a high failure rate.

8. There are lots of sales and deals this time of year. $400-$500 will get you the pc that I've recommended. Keep an eye on sites like slickdeals which post best prices on electronics daily.

PM me if you need more advice.

 

I built my PC and will literally never buy a prebuilt, just keep rolling upgrades and replacement components as needed.

 

OP stated he didn't want to deal with building. While sure it is the better choice he wants a machine up and running simply without having to deal with it. His last PC is 8-10 years old so.. a cheaper Microcenter prebuilt or a used dell is likely a pretty easy and safe option. If he wants to be cheap and doesn't mind installing windows* himself i5-3450 optiplex's are on ebay for like $100 with 8GB of ram. Add an SSD and it'll do everything he is wanting from a PC. I use one of these older machines I got from a client who went all NUC's as an HTPC/wife rig and it performs flawlessly.

*Just use Microsoft's installer from their website to program a USB storage drive and use the CD key on the PC even if it is windows 7 to install a fresh copy of 10

 

I think the budget range is a major non-included factor for the OP right now. Without knowing how much you'd like to stay under for expenditure it's hard to give any solid input.

Learned the hard way during grad school that you should have pleeeeenty of redundancy of backups of anything important - the universe will conspire to take out your backups during very inopportune moments. Storage is cheap - your time and frustration isn't. Now isn't a bad time to look into getting external storage, whether that's just a few portable USB harddrives or a full blown NAS setup.

I fully agree with @Ice-man on spending $400-500 on quality components for a good no-frills desktop computer that will last, and avoiding any cheeky AIO or ultra compact form factors, unless you're able and willing to do significant troubleshooting yourself.

Building your own computer may not save you money on a budget system, as the Windows OS licenses are pretty pricey to get on their own now.

 

I wouldn't suggest anything

I wouldn't get into anything prior to 6th generation Intel chips due to lack of Heartbleed/Spectre and other security patches.

 

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll echo avoiding an AIO. I've been lucky with mine so far, but they are noisy as hell, constantly triggering the extra fan...I actually bought a cheap quieter supplemental fan that I blow in the vents. I've read a few articles since as to why to avoid them. Good luck.

 

I thought all 2nd gen+ intel processors got support for these issues. Hell, at the rate vulnerabilities are being uncovered there's almost no point in caring. I block my file server off the web and use my PC for gaming/streaming.

 

Have you considered a second hand business laptop and docking station with external HDD? Those are usually pretty robust with good components. Office 365 with 1TB of cloud space for files. I would not bother with a desktop at all, while their repairability and upgraded ability might be an asset, it is also something that gets more difficult the older the machine gets.

 

This may or may not have the side effect of allowing purr1n access to your nudes... who knows, maybe he'll upload some of his stash to you. Joking aside, this is a kind offer for those worried.