[Tech] New family PC specs

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elDiablo

Guest
So I'm building a "very good" family PC for someone. It's not a gaming rig. Not at all. It's to be around the £1000 (ex VAT) mark, and needs to last them a very long time (assuming regular maintenance blah blah). Below is the list of things I have put together so far. I would very much appreciate people's thoughts on what is wrong with the list. Also, the list needs a screen, around the 23" mark. Thoughts on that would be very helpful too please!

(Edit: New list here, old list in spoiler tags)

Total: £706.13 (£600.96 ex VAT)

If anything seems to be TOO PRICEY then please speak up! Cookies and love muffins for those that help.

Ta!

Old list:

Total: £948.80 (£807.50 ex VAT)
 
Iron_fist

Iron_fist

Super Moderator
Staff member
go for something AMD, you'll save £100 on the CPU, the 955 for instance is a monster and you'll probably be able to up the machine to 8GB still saving at least £75 on the current cost

edit:
also look at a PSU in the 600-650 range, i personally have a 130W CPU and the 5770XXX running perfectly off a 650W and previously a 400W, i highly recommend the corsair 650 or the seasonic 650
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
6GB DDR is overkill for a family PC - in 5 years we'll still all be on windows 7 I reccon. Drop to 4GB and use all the savings from that and the AMD suggestions to buy a 64GB SSD for the OS and use the 1TB for storage.
 
T

[THN]Buffalo_Hunter

In Cryo Sleep
Couple of Qs...

1. Why the particular price?

2. What do they/are theygoing to use it for?

I'm all for spending money on bits where necessary, but I don't see the point of spending money on something that's overkill and never likely to be used.

For general stuff, do you really need an X58 motherboard with SLI/X-Fire if it's never going to be used for gaming.

I'd have thought simplicity would have been the best approach - less potential OS problems with fancy chipsets etc.

Just my 50p worth...
 
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elDiablo

Guest
Iron: cheers! Sounds good. Will look into it.

Haven: the 6gb pack was comparable to buyin the 4gb sticks, if memory serves. That's the only real reason.

Buffalo: the price point was what they set it at. In a "here's a grand make it nice." I'm all up for spending less, my own thoughts beig that those PC is intended to last 6, 7, 8+ years. Their only real requirements were "big screen, and all in one printer, and will last us a long time". It's a family PC for web browsing, watching videos, some home movies editing (windows movie maker stuff nothing superly massive), some syballus software and storing/editing/ printing photos (from a proper DSLR not a handbag camera).

Cheers for the comments so far! Will do proper reply tomorrow when not on iPhone
 
Ronin Storm

Ronin Storm

Administrator
Staff member
elDiablo said:
my own thoughts beig that those PC is intended to last 6, 7, 8+ years
Click to expand...

6+ years is unrealistic on a single platform, especially for a family PC that will see little or no regular maintenance. 3-4 years is a more likely marker.

Personally wouldn't touch a Radeon with a barge pole, especially not for the less PC literate. I'm put in mind of ATI driver updates that screw up important things; in my experience, happens much less with nVidia. Suggest instead something such as:

XFX GT 240 (~£75)

The case should be chosen for minimum dust entry. This case will never be cleaned. Not ever. Expect failures due to gunk. Not sure the mesh-fronted Coolermaster is a good choice, as a result. That said, not really found a case that really suits either... though my Antec P182 does have removable and washable front filters.

Haven's suggestion on SSD is a nice one and should provide long term survivability to the most punished drive.

Consider a backup solution to run in parallel. Over this extended period, the storage drive will fail.

Agree with Iron on the PSU. 850W is over-amped for this use. 650W is more than sufficient. However, I approve of the Corsair HX series; best supplies I've used.

No Blu-ray drive?

I assume that the 1TB drive has no price because they already have it? If so, there's a risk this drive hasn't been kept well and thus treating it as primary system and storage may not be the best plan. Consider whether this drive is suspect, or should only be used as a secondary.

Found my last two ASUS motherboards to be very reliable. Don't know Gigabyte. Hence, I might suggest:

ASUS P6X58D-E

Looks like SLI/Crossfire/etc are pretty standard at this board specification, as are USB3 and SATA 6Gb/s. Not tried the above board, just happy with the lineage.
 
Iron_fist

Iron_fist

Super Moderator
Staff member
quick note before i hit the sack
Ronin Storm said:
Found my last two ASUS motherboards to be very reliable. Don't know Gigabyte. Hence, I might suggest:
Click to expand...
unfortunately i have been plagued with issues on the last 2 asus boards i have had both of which have been the high end ones... Gigabyte i have had no issues with what so ever, however, how much of that is me pushing things too hard i don't know.
 
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elDiablo

Guest
In reply to Ronin:
  • It's a PC for someone I see regularly, and have said I will be happy to do the maintenance for. This probably means a look at it at least once a month, and they'll tell me if it starts to slow down or anything. With that in mind, 7 years is pretty good going. My parrent's PC was about that when they bought a new laptop to replace it.
  • The harddrive is free as a friend has given me a bundle of them. It's brand new, never been opened, so no need to worry on that.
  • Never used ATI myself, so if other people would go with an nVidia out of choice, that worries me a little. As said I would be giving them regular maintenance.
  • The case I chose was more for fans, so that the thing isn't annoyingly loud. I can (and they will be able to) clean out the dust. But if people have better ideas (which don't involve something stupid like watercooling) I'm up for it.
  • Blu-Ray they have on their Plasma in the living room, so I don't see the need.
  • (From haven's suggestion of an SSD) As it is just a family PC, I'm not worried about disk speed. And they will be, I'd assume, using the standard "Libraries" folder in Win 7, which would be hassle to set up. Would the SSD really survive more than a regular HDD? Is that something that will be considered nowadays? I'm happy to reinstall Win 7 for them every few years either way, and would be happy to wait for the tech to progress if it needs to?
  • As for backup solutions, they already use an external drive, so will just install it's backup software when I load the PC. Ta for the reminder though!

And yeah, Buffalo, sorry, forgot to say that the mobo was pretty much the cheapest Socket 1366. I wanted USB3 (as it looks like it's coming in now) so that it wouldn't be behind very quickly. I don't care for the SLI/Crossfire.

Cheers again all! Any thoughts on monitors?
 
VibroAxe

VibroAxe

Junior Administrator
elDiablo said:
Iron: cheers! Sounds good. Will look into it.

Haven: the 6gb pack was comparable to buyin the 4gb sticks, if memory serves. That's the only real reason.

Buffalo: the price point was what they set it at. In a "here's a grand make it nice." I'm all up for spending less, my own thoughts beig that those PC is intended to last 6, 7, 8+ years. Their only real requirements were "big screen, and all in one printer, and will last us a long time". It's a family PC for web browsing, watching videos, some home movies editing (windows movie maker stuff nothing superly massive), some syballus software and storing/editing/ printing photos (from a proper DSLR not a handbag camera).

Cheers for the comments so far! Will do proper reply tomorrow when not on iPhone
Click to expand...

I've got to give my honest opinion here, and hope that it wont get flamed down.

You're primary requirements for this machine are Sibelius (learn to spell man), Movie making and RAW file editing. This is prime requirements for a mac of some description.

For starters, Sibelius is actually a Mac app, and Os X includes raw support out of the box. For hobbyist photography the current version of iPhoto is more than sufficient, throw in aperture instead (£130) and you've got more than you will ever need for semi-pro to pro digital photography editing. Web browsing and such like should be OS independant.

iMovie for video editing is far superior to windows movie maker (tbh not difficult) and very easy to use, my dad uses it quite happily and he's not an easy man to please...

You only current disadvantage with the mac is Office 2008, but if your planning on this box lasting for 7 years, then Office 2011 is just around the corner and is very fucking shiny (Running the dev preview atm).

The other main advantage of a mac in this instance is the support agreement with apple meaning any issues can easily be fixed with a trip to the local store, and if you have any problems after the 3 year support deadline then apple still carry spare parts for an AWFULL long time (you'd have to ask bob for specifics)

As elD said, this isn't a gaming machine, which is the primary downer for macs atm (and tbh is getting much better) so that shouldn't be a reason for passing em over.
 
G

Gombol

Guest
VibroAxe said:
I've got to give my honest opinion here, and hope that it wont get flamed down.

You're primary requirements for this machine are Sibelius (learn to spell man), Movie making and RAW file editing. This is prime requirements for a mac of some description.

For starters, Sibelius is actually a Mac app, and Os X includes raw support out of the box. For hobbyist photography the current version of iPhoto is more than sufficient, throw in aperture instead (£130) and you've got more than you will ever need for semi-pro to pro digital photography editing. Web browsing and such like should be OS independant.

iMovie for video editing is far superior to windows movie maker (tbh not difficult) and very easy to use, my dad uses it quite happily and he's not an easy man to please...

You only current disadvantage with the mac is Office 2008, but if your planning on this box lasting for 7 years, then Office 2011 is just around the corner and is very fucking shiny (Running the dev preview atm).

The other main advantage of a mac in this instance is the support agreement with apple meaning any issues can easily be fixed with a trip to the local store, and if you have any problems after the 3 year support deadline then apple still carry spare parts for an AWFULL long time (you'd have to ask bob for specifics)

As elD said, this isn't a gaming machine, which is the primary downer for macs atm (and tbh is getting much better) so that shouldn't be a reason for passing em over.
Click to expand...


*Flames down*

I accually agree with Vibs here. If it's just for "General Useage" then a Mac would be better.

I personally would get a normal mouse for it though (Don't like the Mac Mouses, with their "Single" button that does 2 things.)
 
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elDiablo

Guest
Yeah, when they first asked, I did say, "Have you considered a Mac?". They said they wanted a PC, so meh, I tried...
 
G

Gombol

Guest
elDiablo said:
Yeah, when they first asked, I did say, "Have you considered a Mac?". They said they wanted a PC, so meh, I tried...
Click to expand...

You just wanna corrupt. ;)

But It's always worth a mac if you don't want to use it for gaming.
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
To add to what Vibs has said there. Any of the current range of iMacs would do what they are looking to do and then some. The screens are amazing and as an all round solution they are awesome. As a family computer they are just awesome. For home video stuff imovie makes movie maker look pretty funny.

Another benefit of Apple is the after sales support side if they live anywhere near a store. Office 11 really is very shiny as well. The iMac screens really are very very nice. Also if you are thinking (but I already have a HDD) grab a SATA caddie and they have an external drive and time machine offers you the most idiot proof backup method I've seen to date.

If any of the family are students then the possible discounts/promotions they can get are awesome. As far as support goes in Europe a machine goes vintage once it's generation is 5 years old which means no new parts are stocked for it however typically you can still get parts until 7 years when it is marked as obsolete.

If it were me doing this I would take a very serious look at the iMacs. Up until this current generation I wouldn't have but I've been using a bottom spec 27" in work and they are simply awesome. Considering what you would normally have to pay to get a 27" display with a 2560-by-1440 res I personally feel the cost of the rest of the unit isn't that bad. There is also currently a printer rebate going on in all apple stores so you can get £70 of all-in-one printers. So you can currently get an all-in-one wireless compatible printer for £20 or a all-in-one non wireless one for nothing.

There are also many ways to get discount in apple stores, best being students, but also other ways to get them as well.
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
From haven's suggestion of an SSD) As it is just a family PC, I'm not worried about disk speed. And they will be, I'd assume, using the standard "Libraries" folder in Win 7, which would be hassle to set up. Would the SSD really survive more than a regular HDD? Is that something that will be considered nowadays? I'm happy to reinstall Win 7 for them every few years either way, and would be happy to wait for the tech to progress if it needs to?
Click to expand...
SSD's are probably the biggest performance upgrade you can put in a modern computer. Lifespan is around 5 years so better than most hard drives. I would suggest they install the OS and apps on the SSD (64GB is fine for most folks if they are not installing games) and any data on the 1TB.

If on the other hand they want to cut the cost a chunk then ignore SSD. I've recently specced a new system for my parents and dual atom/ion2 with SSD is what I'm going for in a small form factor (mini-itx). Not sure if that helps at all but its where I'm coming from.
 
T

[THN]Buffalo_Hunter

In Cryo Sleep
Further to my previous comment, would it not make more sense to buy a PC that does what is required, and not one that is never going to be used to it's full potential. After all, what use is a quad core CPU if you never put anything on it that uses all four cores, and by the sounds of it, that's not likely to happen.

Would it not make better financial sense to buy a £500 PC now that does what is needed and keep the rest for upgrades/repairs during the time your parents have it?
 
Dr Drae

Dr Drae

In Cryo Sleep
Gombol said:
You just wanna corrupt. ;)

But It's always worth a mac if you don't want to use it for gaming.
Click to expand...

1279753745432.jpg
 
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elDiablo

Guest
Ok, so, spent some time this morning re-reading what everyone has said (so thanks again for all your input!) and I think I've mostly finalised the list, which is now in the front post, and copied below.

Some points:
  • Didn't go for an SSD HDD for now, as it is a pretty high addition to cost. That said, when they feel that this computer is getting slow in a few years and I go to reinstall Windows 7 for them, it is something I will honestly consider getting them then.
  • The mobo is fairly cheap, but with 4x PCI-E x1 slots it's got room to add new things if they need in the future, and the fact that they won't be using dual graphics cards or anything else that I can really see them needing a x16 slot for, who cares.
  • Dropped the RAM as Haven said to 4GB, and they can upgrade in future if they need (which I doubt).
  • Dropped PSU to 650W as per Iron's suggestion.
  • Changed graphics card as per Ronin's suggestion.
  • I've never used or seen a Viewsonic screen before, but this one came recommended by a friend. Still a bit worried, so if anyone has any experience with them, I would love to know...
  • I asked again (again) and they still said no to the Mac, so meh. Sorry to all you mac lovers, but this time was just not the right time for them to switch. I'll try not to cry myself to sleep every night ;)

Ta again, I really do appreciate it all. And so computer:


Total: £706.13 (£600.96 ex VAT)


  • P.S.
    • I like lists
 
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