Need PC Recommendation (Old PC Died)

Discussion in 'Geek Cave: Computers, Tablets, HT, Phones, Games' started by Colgin, Dec 5, 2018.

  1. allegro

    allegro Friend

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    I prefer laptops to desktops but I have never had the smaller 2.5 inch HDD used in laptops last longer than three years. Now if you get a laptop with a one TB SSD that is another story.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2018
  2. Colgin

    Colgin Friend

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    Got a free diagnostic and the computer is good and dead as I expected. Although my IT guy says he can do it for me For free, I think am going to let the repair shop salvage the hard drive for me. Am I better off having it put in an enclosure than having them copy to an external hard drive that I would supply. I assume I should go the enclosure route. While I do have backups I want the piece of mind that everything (hopefully) that was on the PC before it died is available to me. The PC tech didn't know but said he expected the hard drive to be OK. Fingers crossed on that.

    I have a tentative Dell XPS build that I can either post here for advice or maybe PM you, @Ice-man , for advice. I was going to start building off an Inspiron but it seemed as if some of features I wanted could only be built in if I started with XPS as my base.

    I have wanted to check my backup by plugging into my wife's Mac Air just to see what files are there. Is there a risk of the Mac trying to reformat the external backup drive if I plug it in or should that be OK. Don't want to take any risk so maybe I wait until I have access to a PC (like borrow a firm laptop) before checking.
     
  3. Colgin

    Colgin Friend

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    Further to whether to put HDD in enclosure versus having files put on backup drive, I am not looking to recreate my former desktop. I want to clean install all software on new PC and not carry over old clutter files. I only care about data and even then primarily photos/videos (which I should have redundant backups of already as well as at least 1/2 being on our iPhones) and my Roboform data. Music comes next as I would not want to re rip yet again but do have all my CDs if needs be. But I should have several backups of music as well. The only reason I have not checked backup drives is out of concern about plugging my backup drive into the Mac Air case it tries to reformat. Off hand I am not sure how my current backup drives are formatted.
     
  4. BenjaminBore

    BenjaminBore Friend

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    Don’t worry, you’ll be fine with an enclosure. The Mac won’t auto format anything. In fact it can read your drive without issue, but if it is in NTFS format as it should be you’ll need a driver to write to it as well. Last time I had to do this MacFUSE was the thing, but it may have been superseded by now.
     
  5. Baten

    Baten Friend

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    Yeah no it's not going to reformat unless you tell it to.
     
  6. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    I’m looking for a new desktop. Current unit is old, runs XP, and is backed up. We don’t use it online. Been using a laptop, but my wife wants a desktop for retirement. When you say Microcenter sells overstock as “used” do you mean refurbished as well?
    I found a great price on a Dell you described, I would just need to add 8GB of RAM. I can get along with 500 GB of SSD.
    Thanks for the advice @Ice-man.
     
  7. Elnrik

    Elnrik Super Friendly

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    No matter what people buy, I thought I'd lay this bit of advice out there: There is no reason, at all, to purchase a device that has a spinning hard drive in it. SSD has so many advantages, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't get one. It's also cheaper if you buy aftermarket.
     
  8. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    Agreeed. At this point HDD is going to be for backup, probably short term.
     
  9. Colgin

    Colgin Friend

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    Below are the relevant specs for the Dell I have put together, followed by some questions:

    XPS 8930 Base - special edition silver chassis

    8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-8700 6-Core Processor (12MB Cache, up to 4.6 GHz)
    Windows 10 Home 64bit English - do I need Pro version, which Dell seems to be pushing.
    Memory - 16GB, DDR4, 2666MHz - is this overkill for home, non-gaming use. Seems reasonable to me and 32gb seems like ti might be excessive.
    Hard Drive - 512GB PCIe x4 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD - I can up the size of the SSD but it gets kind of expensive. This seems like a fair combo but I could also up the SSD to 1TB I suppose. Also, Dell is giving me option for M.2 version of the SSD. Not sure if/why I would need that.
    Video Card - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory - this was base option offered in this configuration.
    CD ROM/DVD ROM - Tray Load DVD-RW Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD) - base configuration; don't think I need Blu-ray capability.
    Wireless - 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1 - they have an "upgrade" option for a Killer wifi card, but I have read the Killer card has had problems.

    Should I add on a thunderbolt I/O for an additional $50-70. What would that be used for.

    Appreciate any comments on the above as I am looking to put in order in next day or so.
     
  10. FallingObjects

    FallingObjects Pay It Forward

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    Gonna do a line-by-line here


    8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-8700 6-Core Processor (12MB Cache, up to 4.6 GHz)
    • Largely overkill unless you're doing some serious multitasking, a quad core i5 processor is still more than sufficient nowadays, even for high-end gaming. Only exception is if you're streaming simultaneously using the same computer and not a streaming box, or do workstation type rendering.
    Windows 10 Home 64bit English - do I need Pro version, which Dell seems to be pushing.
    • If you want to access your computer remotely fairly easily, or care about device encryption, then you need Pro. Otherwise home should do.
    Memory - 16GB, DDR4, 2666MHz - is this overkill for home, non-gaming use. Seems reasonable to me and 32gb seems like ti might be excessive.
    • Unless your hobbies include rendering, movie editing, or running excel spreadsheets the size of the Burj Khalifa, 8GB is still enough on its own for pure gaming. 16GB will let you game, run Chrome, listen to spotify, and have your choice of voice communication software open in the background without a hiccup. If the cost between the two is less than $100-150 though, you may as well just get the 16GB for future-proofing.

    Hard Drive - 512GB PCIe x4 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD - I can up the size of the SSD but it gets kind of expensive. This seems like a fair combo but I could also up the SSD to 1TB I suppose. Also, Dell is giving me option for M.2 version of the SSD. Not sure if/why I would need that.
    • M.2 is basically an even faster version of SSD, so no harm in taking it if you want sub-10 second bootups, so depends on how badly you need that speed difference. As far as file space goes, stick with the basic size for SSD; you shouldn't be putting anything other than programs onto your SSD. You can easily pick up another 4-5TB of HDD or external storage space for a couple hundred if you ever run out of space, so use the HDD for storing video and picture files; it's way cheaper per volume and that's what its there for. SSD space is much more expensive comparatively.
    Video Card - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory - this was base option offered in this configuration.
    • As much as I'm a gaming enthusiast, unless you really want to play videogames on ultra detail at 1080p, this is pretty overkill as far as cost additions go. If you're a casual gamer the 1050ti will save you a lot of cash here.
    • The GTX 1060 6GB is the recommended minimum model for gaming in VR, and will comfortably run any modern games thrown at it, so it's not a BAD thing to have either though.

    CD ROM/DVD ROM - Tray Load DVD-RW Drive (Reads and Writes to DVD/CD) - base configuration; don't think I need Blu-ray capability.
    • You can buy external Blu-ray readers for $50-100 anyways if you ever do need that.
    Wireless - 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1 - they have an "upgrade" option for a Killer wifi card, but I have read the Killer card has had problems.
    • Ethernet is king wherever possible, otherwise that seems sufficient for connectivity purposes. I'd advocate rewiring your home's ethernet plugs or just running a long ass cable if you truly need hyper-low latency, killer-wifi cards are meh.
    Should I add on a thunderbolt I/O for an additional $50-70. What would that be used for.
    • Its a few times faster than USB ports, potentially ten or even twenty times faster, capping out at 20Gbps. Which is fast enough it can also run thunderbolt compliant monitors through the plug as well. Probably overkill if you're just doing file transfers, but if you need an extra monitor port, could work in a pinch.
    • If you do use it as a monitor port, I don't know whether it runs off your videocard of choice, and there would be significantly lower performance if it doesn't. Just something to be aware of in a multiple monitor setup.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2018
  11. JustAnotherRando

    JustAnotherRando My other bike is a Ferrari

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    Windows 10 Home 64bit English - do I need Pro version, which Dell seems to be pushing.
    You don't need Pro if costs more. It'll let you join Windows Domains so it's useful at work. But stuff like the included disk encryption can be done by third party stuff for free.


    Memory - 16GB, DDR4, 2666MHz - is this overkill for home, non-gaming use. Seems reasonable to me and 32gb seems like ti might be excessive.
    For typical home use, documents and a bit of simple photo or video editing, this is mild overkill. 8GB will be fine. There's nothing wrong with 16G, but 8G should be no problem.


    Hard Drive - 512GB PCIe x4 SSD + 1TB 7200RPM HDD - I can up the size of the SSD but it gets kind of expensive. This seems like a fair combo but I could also up the SSD to 1TB I suppose. Also, Dell is giving me option for M.2 version of the SSD. Not sure if/why I would need that.

    512 SSD is plenty for a C:\ drive. If you've been using a 9 year old computer quite happily all this time, it's unlikely that you're the kind of person who junks up their drives with masses of unused crap.


    Video Card - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory - this was base option offered in this configuration.

    Overkill if you're not playing games, but if it's the base option, then no problem.
     
  12. Elnrik

    Elnrik Super Friendly

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    A point of clarification on the SSD... M.2 is a connector. That's all. You have to dig a bit to see which BUS architecture it's wired to use. M.2 can either be wired for SATA or PCIE, the latter being vastly superior.

    If it is PCIE, it likely uses NVME, which replaces AHCI as the communication protocol between CPU and the drive and is something you want if you are trying to maximize hard drive performance. If it doesn't say which type the M.2 is, assume SATA and stick with cheaper 2.5" SATA SSD drives.

    Edit, point being, if it's not PCIE M.2, it's not worth it.

    Links to some light reading...
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2018
  13. Colgin

    Colgin Friend

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    So I re-configured starting at a lower priced configuration and put together a build that is $300 cheaper and as far as I can tell the only differences are instead of specs above the new build would have:

    8th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-8400 6-Core Processor (9MB Cache, up to 4.0 GHz)
    NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5 Graphics Memory

    I don't mind spending $300 more for future proofing but I also don't want to waste money on unnecessary overkill either. Seems like this trade-off should be fine, but if anyone thinks first build is a better value let me know.

    I couldn't get a lower-priced build that would let me do 16GB of RAM. Might be able to do it through a live rep rather than online but this was best I could do on my own. I checked and my old PC had 6GB of RAM. Given how laggy it got with multiple browsers open (it being understood that lots could have contributed to this) I really want to have 16GB instead of only say 8GB. 12 GB would probably be fine if I could find that config, but when I go for a system like that I am not getting SSD options I want. Again, a live rep might give more flexibility but I am working within Dell website which depending on which base you choose only gives you certain upgrade options even if that chassis would permit other configurations.
     
  14. Zhanming057

    Zhanming057 Friend

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    The i5 and 1050ti are plenty good, I don't think you need a 1060 or the i7 unless you game/know that you need more CPU power.

    RAM prices are at an all-time high right now because people are buying too many smartphones, and if you can figure out what configuration the 8Gb is in (e.g. 2x4 or 1x8) then you can add a second stick down the road. Generally though, more RAM is the most important part about future proofing a machine.

    I guess it's a bit late in the cycle, but have you considered working with a local computer shop instead of Dell? You can actually work with a human being, and Dell's support for non-professional machines isn't the greatest. Some Microcenter locations have pre-build services, and you can get in-person support easily with a builder like Maingear or Origin. Just show them the spec list and they'll be able to give you a quote.
     
  15. FallingObjects

    FallingObjects Pay It Forward

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    Those specs seem good for what you've stated your usage is, I'd definitely agree with taking the parts list to a few local places and seeing if they can do any better.

    All else though, warranty is an important consideration, so make sure you shop with places that have reputable warranty services. That's one advantage youll get from Dell that you wouldn't get if you built it yourself.

    For computers, you should be getting a 1-2 year complementary regular and services warranty, or at least less than $50 a year for extended warranty on that price of rig.
     

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