Hi IT gurus,
It’s been years… (12 years) since I brought a desktop pc.
I am thinking of getting one this year. What should I be looking for? storage? ram? processors? (the processor part is completely foreign to me now). anything else I should know? I am a basic user, some online streaming, some gaming, some office work.
all-in-one pcs vs mini tower and lcd screens?
Thanks.
Of the list of things you want to do, gaming will be the most load on a machine. So it depends on what you mean by gaming.
My son and I just built him a gaming PC. The Intel i5 processor is plenty; no need to spend on the i7. 8GB RAM would be ideal. The video card will drive a lot of the cost and again is mostly relevant for gaming. For what it’s worth, we went with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 GPU. A 1 TB hard drive is pretty standard, but may be overkill, depending on how much gaming you do and how much stuff you store on your PC. A solid state drive (SSD) for at least part of your storage needs would be ideal, but again it is pricey and only adds a little to the speed. All in (tower, parts, monitor, keyboard, etc., the machine we built was about $1300. You will spend more if you don’t build it yourself.
If you are not focused on gaming, you can get a really decent laptop or desktop PC for $500-600. I’m in the market for one now and am focusing on machines with the i5 chip, 500GB-1TB hard drive (no SSD), and 6GB RAM. I don’t care too much about the video card; I find that the basic stuff works just fine for watching videos online.
Regarding SSD - most definitely impacts performance. Probably the best bang for the buck upgrade one can make. Nothing better than a PC that boots in 15 to 30 seconds. The PC I built is a combo gaming and work PC, and the work I do is structural analysis. One of the upgrades down the road will be a large SSD when prices drop. A 500gb SSD will be great for some of the I/o intensive apps I run where the scratch files can run in the 100s of gbs for really big models.
We’ve got an old (6 or so years) desktop PC that went to the wife’s office. Upgraded with an SSD and it’s a new machine.
Even if you’re looking for decent gaming, you can do a desktop for under $800 easily that will run almost anything. There are sites out there that will also custom build for you or you can order your own parts.
As the other poster said, I’d recommend an i5 processor, at least 8GB of RAM, if you don’t really care about fast booting then you don’t need a solid state drive, but you can get one for less than $100 plus a 1TB drive for $50-$80. The Radeon R9 270X is an excellent graphics card that will perform totally great for $200 less than the GTX970.
Thanks all.
This helps. I was quite out of the loop but your advice will help me gauge the requirements when I shop.
Thanks all.
This helps. I was quite out of the loop but your advice will help me gauge the requirements when I shop.
Just to reiterate, gaming is gonna be your main decision maker here. If you are doing general online games that are not graphics intensive you probably don’t even need a graphics card, an intel processor with onboard graphics would suit your needs, and I would even suggest an Intel NUC(i3 or i5) with an external drive for additional storage(you are looking at $800-900 with a really small footprint). If you want to play the latest and greatest games, Titanfall, Divinity, FC4, Dragon Age, etc, then yes you will need a graphics card(GPU) and the specific GPU will depend on what kind of monitor you get. Standard 1080p monitor, a mid range GPU in the $100-$200 range will do you fine. Multiple monitors or 2K or higher monitors, now you are looking at needing a higher level GPU at a price probably north of $250. This is really easy to research too, just figure out what game/games you will primarly playing, what resolution you are playing at, and search for GPU benchmarks and you can see what each GPU can do and then decide how much to spend. A figure to keep in mind, 30fps(frames per second) is standard for video and slightly above where the eye can discern individual frames, however most of the gaming experts will recommend that you stay above 60fps when playing your game to keep everything really smooth and nice looking.
I built my desktop almost 3 years ago, but have kept it fairly up to date. Building your own can save a decent chunk of change.
Processor: i7 (3.06 GHz)
RAM: 6x2GB
GPU: GTX-760 (a bit underpowered but it works well enough on the newest games)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE, forget which model
Power: 650W
OS: Win 7 Pro (64bit)
I went with a standard 500GB hard drive, but I wish I had gone solid state.
I built my desktop almost 3 years ago, but have kept it fairly up to date. Building your own can save a decent chunk of change.
Processor: i7 (3.06 GHz)
RAM: 6x2GB
GPU: GTX-760 (a bit underpowered but it works well enough on the newest games)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE, forget which model
Power: 650W
OS: Win 7 Pro (64bit)
I went with a standard 500GB hard drive, but I wish I had gone solid state.
Pick up an SSD during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, you won’t regret it.
http://lifehacker.com/5840963/the-best-pcs-you-can-build-for-600-and-1200
Not bad recommendations. I’m not a gamer so that part is lost on me.
Thanks all. Will keep a look out for SSD deals and thanks for the tip on the graphics card - I did not know about that.
I am not that serious a gamer, probably simple FPS stuff for fun.
Everyone’s saying the same things, and I’ll say close to the same. This is the computer I was going to build before a coworker sold me and older one with a similar specs:
i5
GTX 760
8 GB RAM
128 GB SSD
Reasoning:
i5s are nice and the new 4xxx series will chug through anything 90% as fast as a twice-the-price i7.
The GTX 760 SC is pretty freaking sweet and so reasonably priced. GTX 970 is down to $330 right now, if you know where to look. That is a stellar card that will last you for years.
8 GB of RAM is minimum. If I were to build something today, I’d put 12 GB in (for $100 instead of $75).
SSDs are absolutely required. Even a 256 GB isn’t that expensive. They don’t only improve how quickly your machine boots, but also how quickly it works. Big apps like InDesign launch in five seconds instead of 30.
That said, if you’re not planning on doing anything crazy, you can buy a stock PC and throw a nice discreet card in it. Maybe not the cheapest way to do it, but definitely the easiest. If you take your time and know what you’re doing, I’d priced the above build at $700 mostly new.
You won’t regret a WQHD monitor. They have a 2560x1440 resolution that has 50% more screen space than a 1920 (1080p) monitor. I can have eight full-size Word pages open on one screen and use them all. The new 4K monitors are pretty unreasonably nice, and those can be had for about $600.