New computer help
Discussion
Hi everyone,
It’s been a while since I’ve built a computer.
I’m putting one together for my Dad, he currently uses my circa 2 decade old core 2 duo 2gb ram machine and has done for 10+ years and has decided to get a new replacement.
It would be nice for it to last 8-10 years with as few problems as possible, this will obviously be a bit of a lottery down the the specific item you get and the capacitors that unit has, however hopefully buying a reasonable quality motherboard and psu etc will give it a long life.
This computer will mainly be used for general office like tasks and probably watching videos on youtube. So not overly demanding.
I’ve decided on an 11600k processor, I believe this will allow the most uptodate features on the 1200 socket before it’s changed and the price is little different to a 10500 or 10400 however as it’s the K its base clock speed is significantly higher.
I’m looking at a 250gb pcie 4 or 512gb pcie 3 drive not sure which to go for yet.
My Dad probably has less than 30gb from over a decade and most of that is windows and office.
What I mainly need help with is the motherboard and ram which i find a bit confusing.
The 11 series should be able to run 3200? Ram, but then you can also run faster ram? Does it make a difference? also some motherboards have mention of over 5000mhz turbo boost? Also it seems that its hard to tell wether a ram stick uses 4 or 8 chips when it has a heatsink over it, however it appears it can impact performance somewhat too.
I think i’ll end up with a z590 chipset board with plenty of usb ports and they usually have 1 usb c back there for future proofing a little, it also needs hdmi out as it will be using the onboard 750 graphics.
Motherboards with ssd heatsinks as well as upgraded multi stage cooled power stages sound like they would cope well over time, to minimise heat in onboard components to maximise life which sound appealing, especially if in a future life it is overclocked a little.
It just seems to me that each motherboard seems to have about 10 variants which is making it confusing, under £200 on the MB would be nice.
That together with a reasonable power supply and a very big heatsink and fan is my usual formula. The PSU will generally run fanless as it will be below the fan cut in speed which will help with noise.
I’m planning on putting it all into a Fractal Design Define S case, which seems to have plenty of space for airflow with a scythe or similar cpu cooler in there.
Any advice on how ram makes a difference in modern computers and which motherboard would be suitable would be great, probably going to put 16gb in there.
This overall combo should probably boot up faster than the current one wakes up.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
It’s been a while since I’ve built a computer.
I’m putting one together for my Dad, he currently uses my circa 2 decade old core 2 duo 2gb ram machine and has done for 10+ years and has decided to get a new replacement.
It would be nice for it to last 8-10 years with as few problems as possible, this will obviously be a bit of a lottery down the the specific item you get and the capacitors that unit has, however hopefully buying a reasonable quality motherboard and psu etc will give it a long life.
This computer will mainly be used for general office like tasks and probably watching videos on youtube. So not overly demanding.
I’ve decided on an 11600k processor, I believe this will allow the most uptodate features on the 1200 socket before it’s changed and the price is little different to a 10500 or 10400 however as it’s the K its base clock speed is significantly higher.
I’m looking at a 250gb pcie 4 or 512gb pcie 3 drive not sure which to go for yet.
My Dad probably has less than 30gb from over a decade and most of that is windows and office.
What I mainly need help with is the motherboard and ram which i find a bit confusing.
The 11 series should be able to run 3200? Ram, but then you can also run faster ram? Does it make a difference? also some motherboards have mention of over 5000mhz turbo boost? Also it seems that its hard to tell wether a ram stick uses 4 or 8 chips when it has a heatsink over it, however it appears it can impact performance somewhat too.
I think i’ll end up with a z590 chipset board with plenty of usb ports and they usually have 1 usb c back there for future proofing a little, it also needs hdmi out as it will be using the onboard 750 graphics.
Motherboards with ssd heatsinks as well as upgraded multi stage cooled power stages sound like they would cope well over time, to minimise heat in onboard components to maximise life which sound appealing, especially if in a future life it is overclocked a little.
It just seems to me that each motherboard seems to have about 10 variants which is making it confusing, under £200 on the MB would be nice.
That together with a reasonable power supply and a very big heatsink and fan is my usual formula. The PSU will generally run fanless as it will be below the fan cut in speed which will help with noise.
I’m planning on putting it all into a Fractal Design Define S case, which seems to have plenty of space for airflow with a scythe or similar cpu cooler in there.
Any advice on how ram makes a difference in modern computers and which motherboard would be suitable would be great, probably going to put 16gb in there.
This overall combo should probably boot up faster than the current one wakes up.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
What are you going to use your machine for to start with?
Personally I would avoid the 11000 series CPU's, just not as good as the AMD 5000 series, if anything the only thing they brought to the table over the 10000 series was PCIe 4, and even I won't buy what Intel are chucking out just now, maybe the 12000 series if they live up to the hype, but Intel are stuck on their 14nm+++++++ series and deserve a kick up their backsides (considering the amount of Intel CPU's i've had, changing to an AMD one was quite refreshing).
Motherboards, if you are not going for the all singing and dancing features, most of the lower end (avoid the total bottom end though) will suffice, most have 2 M.2 MVNe slots in, higher end have up to 3, low end usually 1, easy to install but you may have to fiddle around in the bios to get all your drives working perfectly (if you are adding additional SSD/HDD's).
Memory will be board dependent, most are 3200 as standard, firmware updates can improve motherboards to take higher speeds (my motherboard needed an update to run 3600+), so it's worth looking to see what they can run before buying, though unless you are building a machine just to run Time Spy/3D Mark, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
Personally I would avoid the 11000 series CPU's, just not as good as the AMD 5000 series, if anything the only thing they brought to the table over the 10000 series was PCIe 4, and even I won't buy what Intel are chucking out just now, maybe the 12000 series if they live up to the hype, but Intel are stuck on their 14nm+++++++ series and deserve a kick up their backsides (considering the amount of Intel CPU's i've had, changing to an AMD one was quite refreshing).
Motherboards, if you are not going for the all singing and dancing features, most of the lower end (avoid the total bottom end though) will suffice, most have 2 M.2 MVNe slots in, higher end have up to 3, low end usually 1, easy to install but you may have to fiddle around in the bios to get all your drives working perfectly (if you are adding additional SSD/HDD's).
Memory will be board dependent, most are 3200 as standard, firmware updates can improve motherboards to take higher speeds (my motherboard needed an update to run 3600+), so it's worth looking to see what they can run before buying, though unless you are building a machine just to run Time Spy/3D Mark, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
Honestly? Go on the Dell outlet store and buy something that looks half-decent. You'll get a computer that will work perfectly acceptably for a number of years, and pay quite a lot less than you are proposing to spend here.
Unless you actively enjoy selecting components and building PCs, in which case that's great, fill your boots.
Unless you actively enjoy selecting components and building PCs, in which case that's great, fill your boots.
BlueMR2 said:
I’m putting one together for my Dad, he currently uses my circa 2 decade old core 2 duo 2gb ram machine and has done for 10+ years and has decided to get a new replacement.
Some quick, cheap upgrades might be surprisingly effective.Some time ago I picked up a Windows 7 Optiplex 780 as a non-runner. Basically it would start up but would take a few minutes to open anything that was clicked on.
It had 2GB of RAM.
Task manager showed that it was using all of it at idle.
I added 2GB more and it transformed into a respectable casual computing machine. That extra 2GB RAM module was the biggest and simplest computer improvement I have ever seen.
I later added SSD and although it further improved the computer, it wasn't as effective as taking it up to 4GB RAM.
I work in IT - design and develop systems. I can't remember the last time I needed to build a PC for anything.
My 5 year old Alienware Dell eats anything but I use an 8 year old Mac for most tasks.
Unless you want to play the latest games then as already suggested just go to the Dell outlet store or even eBay and spend £300. You might even get away with an Ipad and Keyboard.
My 5 year old Alienware Dell eats anything but I use an 8 year old Mac for most tasks.
Unless you want to play the latest games then as already suggested just go to the Dell outlet store or even eBay and spend £300. You might even get away with an Ipad and Keyboard.
tonyb1968 said:
What are you going to use your machine for to start with?
Personally I would avoid the 11000 series CPU's, just not as good as the AMD 5000 series, if anything the only thing they brought to the table over the 10000 series was PCIe 4, and even I won't buy what Intel are chucking out just now, maybe the 12000 series if they live up to the hype, but Intel are stuck on their 14nm+++++++ series and deserve a kick up their backsides (considering the amount of Intel CPU's i've had, changing to an AMD one was quite refreshing).
Motherboards, if you are not going for the all singing and dancing features, most of the lower end (avoid the total bottom end though) will suffice, most have 2 M.2 MVNe slots in, higher end have up to 3, low end usually 1, easy to install but you may have to fiddle around in the bios to get all your drives working perfectly (if you are adding additional SSD/HDD's).
Memory will be board dependent, most are 3200 as standard, firmware updates can improve motherboards to take higher speeds (my motherboard needed an update to run 3600+), so it's worth looking to see what they can run before buying, though unless you are building a machine just to run Time Spy/3D Mark, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
Hi Tony, thanks for replying.Personally I would avoid the 11000 series CPU's, just not as good as the AMD 5000 series, if anything the only thing they brought to the table over the 10000 series was PCIe 4, and even I won't buy what Intel are chucking out just now, maybe the 12000 series if they live up to the hype, but Intel are stuck on their 14nm+++++++ series and deserve a kick up their backsides (considering the amount of Intel CPU's i've had, changing to an AMD one was quite refreshing).
Motherboards, if you are not going for the all singing and dancing features, most of the lower end (avoid the total bottom end though) will suffice, most have 2 M.2 MVNe slots in, higher end have up to 3, low end usually 1, easy to install but you may have to fiddle around in the bios to get all your drives working perfectly (if you are adding additional SSD/HDD's).
Memory will be board dependent, most are 3200 as standard, firmware updates can improve motherboards to take higher speeds (my motherboard needed an update to run 3600+), so it's worth looking to see what they can run before buying, though unless you are building a machine just to run Time Spy/3D Mark, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
The machine will initially be used for fairly light office work. However it will be the most powerful machine available to us by far, so if anything else needs doing in the future, eg video compressing before uploading then it should have the grunt to do it.
I've found the 11600k for a similar price to the 10600k. The boosted core speed of the K versions ups the speed somewhat on single core use, more than the 10700k it would seem whilst being £200ish. As well as being 5-20% faster at most office tasks, it also has the 750 hd rather than 630 onboard graphics which will be getting put to use. The 5600x seems to come in at about 20% more than i found the 11600k for as well.
At the moment i'm quite liking this motherboard, however need to read a couple of reviews. It seems to have plenty of Usb ports including 2 C, has 4 onboard NVMe slots as well as quite a bit in the way of heatsinks over the board.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08XDY4FPZ/
I understand the disappointment with Intel, the MacBook Pro laptops were essentially the same for about 7 years as the chips barely changed.
However I've had bad experiences with AMD years ago and am not really wanting try them out in this system.
I'm just after something that will perhaps seem a bit overkill at the moment mb and cpu wise, with the aim of an easy life with low temps and good future connectivity to hopefully promote a long service life through unstressed quality components. However the option is there to pump up the speed somewhat in the future should it begin to fall a bit short.
deckster said:
Honestly? Go on the Dell outlet store and buy something that looks half-decent. You'll get a computer that will work perfectly acceptably for a number of years, and pay quite a lot less than you are proposing to spend here.
Unless you actively enjoy selecting components and building PCs, in which case that's great, fill your boots.
I am quite interested in building a PC, it's been a while. Unless you actively enjoy selecting components and building PCs, in which case that's great, fill your boots.
However, I had a quick look on Dell's outlet as people often recommend it, however whenever i check them out the specs are always either pretty rubbish or way to pricy for a system that lacks upgradability and repairability like they do.
Scratch and Dent
Dell Outlet OptiPlex 3080 Mini Tower
Intel Core 10th Generation i5-10500 Processor (6 Core, Up to 4.50GHz, 12MB Cache, 65W)
Windows 10 Pro
8GB (1X8GB) Up to 3200MHz DDR4 UDIMM Non-ECC
512GB PCIe M.2 NVMe Class 35 Solid State Drive
Mini Tower with 260W up to 85% efficient Power Supply (80Plus Bronze)
No Wireless
Dell KB212-B UK Irish Qwerty QuietKey USB Black Keyboard
Standard ShippingFREE
Outlet Price£445.00+ VAT = £534.
The system I'm looking at building for circa £700 of which £50 will be a large quiet cpu cooler and £400ish on the CPU motherboard combo has a much faster cpu, half the size (which is plenty) of much faster storage.
A much larger, gold rated psu which would allow adding of a pretty hefty graphics card without problem in the future as well as being able to run fanless most of the time and with 7-10 years warranty.
A much higher specced motherboard with large amount of connectivity and one would expect higher quality parts on a £200 motherboard.
Being able to have full control over the bios as well, I have a laptop that is very, very limited in what you can do because of the bios.
Going for something a bit beefier from Dell,
1 in stock
Scratch and Dent
Dell Outlet XPS 8940 Desktop
Intel Core 11th Generation i7-11700 Processor (8 Core, Up to 4.90GHz, 16MB Cache, 65W)
Windows 10 Home
8GB (1X8GB) Up to 3200MHz DDR4 UDIMM Non-ECC
1TB 3.5inch SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
512GB PCIe M.2 NVMe Class 35 Solid State Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti 6GB GDDR6
360W Chassis including Optical Drive (Black)
Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i (2x2) 802.11ax Wireless and Bluetooth 5.1
External English/UK Wired Black Keyboard
8X DVD +/- RW DRIVE
Standard ShippingFREE
Outlet Price£918.00 + vat = £1.1k
Similar processor power as stock, if all cores are used on the 11700, however slower on single core performance due to it's low 2.5ghz clock speed.
Half the ram only 8gb in one stick.
Slow ssd and small 1tb drive
It does have a dvd drive (I have a couple in the old machine) and a reasonable but unnecessary in our case graphics card. Not really sure that that makes it worth £400 more than what i'm building, and with its tiny power supply, limiting its future expansion.
RVB said:
BlueMR2 said:
I’m putting one together for my Dad, he currently uses my circa 2 decade old core 2 duo 2gb ram machine and has done for 10+ years and has decided to get a new replacement.
Some quick, cheap upgrades might be surprisingly effective.Some time ago I picked up a Windows 7 Optiplex 780 as a non-runner. Basically it would start up but would take a few minutes to open anything that was clicked on.
It had 2GB of RAM.
Task manager showed that it was using all of it at idle.
I added 2GB more and it transformed into a respectable casual computing machine. That extra 2GB RAM module was the biggest and simplest computer improvement I have ever seen.
I later added SSD and although it further improved the computer, it wasn't as effective as taking it up to 4GB RAM.
Not sure how easy it would be to find suitable ram, but it's still a slow processor holding it back a fair bit,It actually has a few hundred megs ram free when it is in use with a couple of programs open. It's very much is chugging along with windows 8 however.
rustyuk said:
I work in IT - design and develop systems. I can't remember the last time I needed to build a PC for anything.
My 5 year old Alienware Dell eats anything but I use an 8 year old Mac for most tasks.
Unless you want to play the latest games then as already suggested just go to the Dell outlet store or even eBay and spend £300. You might even get away with an Ipad and Keyboard.
I use a 5 year old iMac myself, although its getting a bit slow and the screen has a weird ghosting effect at times.My 5 year old Alienware Dell eats anything but I use an 8 year old Mac for most tasks.
Unless you want to play the latest games then as already suggested just go to the Dell outlet store or even eBay and spend £300. You might even get away with an Ipad and Keyboard.
He does also use an iPad for reading the news and banking, however he wants a proper computer as well that should last for the foreseeable future.
I think he'd just like something new and reliable rather than an ebay refurb, like I say he doesn't want to be changing it every few years. The one I built a relative in a similar vein has been going fine for the last 5 years with no problem.
This PC should be able to do 10 years+ service, at £70 or less a year i'd rather that than messing about with an ebay special every 4 years.
To be fair, I'd expect a couple of grand of computer to still be doing pretty well after 5 years. I hope this one will too.
BlueMR2 said:
did offer to drop in one of my sata ssds that I don't use.
Not sure how easy it would be to find suitable ram, but it's still a slow processor holding it back a fair bit,It actually has a few hundred megs ram free when it is in use with a couple of programs open. It's very much is chugging along with windows 8 however.
The processor on the W7 machine wasn't anything special - Core2Duo/DualCore - but it was definitely insufficient RAM which crippled it. Windows 7 and 10 need at least 4GB RAM to get anything done.Not sure how easy it would be to find suitable ram, but it's still a slow processor holding it back a fair bit,It actually has a few hundred megs ram free when it is in use with a couple of programs open. It's very much is chugging along with windows 8 however.
With enough RAM and an SSD it's surprising what an old Core2 computer can do.
For casual computing I can't tell the difference between our 1.5yr old Ryzen7 Octa-core (can run >4GHz) and my 10yr old C2D E5300 (2.6GHz) which has been upgraded to 8GB RAM and SSD. Both running Windows 10 but the old C2D Optiplex is more stable!
Edited by RVB on Friday 17th September 13:32
Mr Pointy said:
Yup. For that sort of use just spend £350 on an ebay refurb & it'll be perfectly fine. Just make sure you get a 8th generation processor.
I'm sure there are some out there, however most of the ones I looked at around £300 were 2nd or 3rd gen with a few 10400's at 500 but not much else without searching for a while. Just ordered the CPU though, so build under way now.BlueMR2 said:
I'm sure there are some out there, however most of the ones I looked at around £300 were 2nd or 3rd gen with a few 10400's at 500 but not much else without searching for a while. Just ordered the CPU though, so build under way now.
Return itNo one needs to spend £700 on a self build a pc for general office use and youtube.
Discovered over the weekend that the kids use Windows PCs at school. We only have Mac and Linux at home, so it was causing some confusion for them.
So I build an old Dell laptop (identical to this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165056062896?hash=item2... with an SSD I had, and bough 8GB RAM for it. Spent almost nothing, but even that one on ebay is only £180.
It runs Win10 Pro flawlessy. If you spend any more, it's because you want to, not because you need to.
So I build an old Dell laptop (identical to this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165056062896?hash=item2... with an SSD I had, and bough 8GB RAM for it. Spent almost nothing, but even that one on ebay is only £180.
It runs Win10 Pro flawlessy. If you spend any more, it's because you want to, not because you need to.
MortyC137 said:
Discovered over the weekend that the kids use Windows PCs at school. We only have Mac and Linux at home, so it was causing some confusion for them.
So I build an old Dell laptop (identical to this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165056062896?hash=item2... with an SSD I had, and bough 8GB RAM for it. Spent almost nothing, but even that one on ebay is only £180.
It runs Win10 Pro flawlessy. If you spend any more, it's because you want to, not because you need to.
Maybe they've got even sSo I build an old Dell laptop (identical to this one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/165056062896?hash=item2... with an SSD I had, and bough 8GB RAM for it. Spent almost nothing, but even that one on ebay is only £180.
It runs Win10 Pro flawlessy. If you spend any more, it's because you want to, not because you need to.
ttier PCs at school and this dual-core i5 doesn't seem that slow to them as they have very little other experience to judge it by.Just wait until they install Roblox or want to play Facebook games
I'm not saying that what you've bought isn't perfect for your kids' use...but claiming it's 'good enough' and no-one needs anything faster is just trolling
In one of my cases - not school type of usage - my Excel to Access to Excel macro takes 1 hour to run on a 5 year old HP Z-Book with an 6th Gen i7H. It takes 13 minutes on my 10th Gen i7H Z-Book (both SSD, W10, 64GB RAM, 1080p screens). I run this 2-4 times a day (4x on Friday, 2x on Mon-Thur) and the time saving in one month alone offset the £2k cost of the new laptop.
Even with this improvement, I wouldn't recommend an annual upgrade as the incremental performance improvement (or not if you include the 11th Gen Intel CPUs) isn't worth it, but our 4-5 year cycle works fine...and of course feeds the supply chain of people perfectly happy with a 5-10 year old laptop/CPU.
As an aside, ebay PC sellers are strange, and are no better than 'lucky heather' sellers, as it seems that every laptop/PC on ebay is 'perfect for gaming', 'very fast processor', excellent graphics' - even when it's got an almost 10 year old CPU with an iGPU, a HDD and a 720p screen
I've seen posts on gaming PC forums where someone has believed the descriptions on ebay/Curry/etc. and bought a 'fast gaming PC' for £700, only to ask why they're only getting 10fps on Cyberpunk.
Edited by mmm-five on Monday 20th September 10:01
Nobody mentioned gaming. It'll do MS office and youtube fine. It's got far more processing power than a phone, and that manages.
3 years ago before it went in the cupboard it was running Win 7 Pro and Visual Studio all day. I think it'll manage Office and Youtube for a few more years...
3 years ago before it went in the cupboard it was running Win 7 Pro and Visual Studio all day. I think it'll manage Office and Youtube for a few more years...
deckster said:
Honestly? Go on the Dell outlet store and buy something that looks half-decent. You'll get a computer that will work perfectly acceptably for a number of years, and pay quite a lot less than you are proposing to spend here.
Unless you actively enjoy selecting components and building PCs, in which case that's great, fill your boots.
I agree with this. It'll be easier to keep updated too, Dell's software will sort it out rather than myriad drivers from multiple manufacturers.Unless you actively enjoy selecting components and building PCs, in which case that's great, fill your boots.
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