I'm in the market for a new desktop PC ("workstation"). No interest in gaming, Will want to run (probably) Ubuntu and a handful of VMs, plus FF or Chrome with a couple of hundred tabs open.
I'm more than happy to get one that's a few years out of date and refurbished if it gets me decent value.
My existing PC is a i5-6400 CPU @2.7GHz, with 24GB RAM - I've probably had it about 7 years. I don't really have a budget in mind - probably max £1k inc VAT.
It's so long since I looked at PCs or CPUs that I have no idea what to look for any more. Going to want at least 1TB SSD (preferably 2TB) but I can add that myself afterwards (although that would affect budget). Min 32GB, maybe 64GB RAM?
What should I be looking for (and where should I be looking)? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER
I bought an AMD system from https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ who I recommend if you want something custom.
S
On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 at 15:19, Mark Rogers mark@more-solutions.co.uk wrote:
I'm in the market for a new desktop PC ("workstation"). No interest in gaming, Will want to run (probably) Ubuntu and a handful of VMs, plus FF or Chrome with a couple of hundred tabs open.
I'm more than happy to get one that's a few years out of date and refurbished if it gets me decent value.
My existing PC is a i5-6400 CPU @2.7GHz, with 24GB RAM - I've probably had it about 7 years. I don't really have a budget in mind - probably max £1k inc VAT.
It's so long since I looked at PCs or CPUs that I have no idea what to look for any more. Going to want at least 1TB SSD (preferably 2TB) but I can add that myself afterwards (although that would affect budget). Min 32GB, maybe 64GB RAM?
What should I be looking for (and where should I be looking)?
Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe send an email to main-leave@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 at 15:57, Steve Mynott steve.mynott@gmail.com wrote:
I bought an AMD system from https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ who I recommend if you want something custom.
The problem with "something custom" is knowing what I want. I have previously bought a laptop from PC Specialist and it was rubbish but exactly to my spec - I made the foolish mistake of just assuming that whatever CPU it had would be better than the really old laptop I was replacing, and ended up with a laptop with SSD and loads of RAM (back when neither were common) which couldn't handle anything much due to the CPU, the one thing I couldn't upgrade.
Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER
FWIW (maybe not a lot, but still.) Don't dismiss a NVMe drive as an alternative. They're where hard drives are heading, apparently. Also, don't rule out a machine that could be used for gaming. My (refurbed) laptop could manage gaming if I played such things so for me it's slighty over spec but it's running well.
Bev
On Wed, 2023-11-08 at 15:19 +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
I'm in the market for a new desktop PC ("workstation"). No interest in gaming, Will want to run (probably) Ubuntu and a handful of VMs, plus FF or Chrome with a couple of hundred tabs open.
I'm more than happy to get one that's a few years out of date and refurbished if it gets me decent value.
My existing PC is a i5-6400 CPU @2.7GHz, with 24GB RAM - I've probably had it about 7 years. I don't really have a budget in mind - probably max £1k inc VAT.
It's so long since I looked at PCs or CPUs that I have no idea what to look for any more. Going to want at least 1TB SSD (preferably 2TB) but I can add that myself afterwards (although that would affect budget). Min 32GB, maybe 64GB RAM?
What should I be looking for (and where should I be looking)?
Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0344 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe send an email to main-leave@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 at 18:01, Bev Nicolson lumos@gmx.co.uk wrote:
FWIW (maybe not a lot, but still.) Don't dismiss a NVMe drive as an alternative. They're where hard drives are heading, apparently. Also, don't rule out a machine that could be used for gaming. My (refurbed) laptop could manage gaming if I played such things so for me it's slighty over spec but it's running well.
I just think of NVMe as SSD over a different (non-SATA) interface, so yeah I'm cool with that.
I don't mind gaming spec as long as it meets my non-gaming needs and I don't know how much they overlap - does a super fast graphics card have any impact on Chrome with 200 tabs open? I honestly have no idea.
I have managed to pick up a "Gaming" PC with i9-12900k, 64GB DDR4, and 2Tb NVMe (and Win11 Pro which I'm hoping I can repurpose in a VM) for £730 which seems like too much of a bargain that I wonder what I'm missing. I'm sure it'll become clear when it arrives! (PC Specialist wanted a lot more for the same spec.)
Thanks for the suggestions.
On Thu, Nov 09, 2023 at 12:31:18PM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
I have managed to pick up a "Gaming" PC with i9-12900k, 64GB DDR4, and 2Tb NVMe (and Win11 Pro which I'm hoping I can repurpose in a VM) for £730 which seems like too much of a bargain that I wonder what I'm missing. I'm sure it'll become clear when it arrives! (PC Specialist wanted a lot more for the same spec.)
Typically the worst things about cheap PC's are a cheap motherboard with a poor chipset and not much in the way of spare NVME slots or memory slots with poor voltage regulators and bad I/O. Poor quality cases and poor quality power supplies.
Other places to get halfway decent PC from is awd IT and Palicomp, they give you a decent selection of parts and you can work out what benefit you're getting for the extra few quid here and there.
Adam --
On Thu, 9 Nov 2023 at 16:58, Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk wrote:
Typically the worst things about cheap PC's are a cheap motherboard with a poor chipset and not much in the way of spare NVME slots or memory slots with poor voltage regulators and bad I/O. Poor quality cases and poor quality power supplies.
The mobo is a Gigabyte H610M S2H, I never had issues with Gigabyte in the past but I don't know my chipsets any more to know how that stacks up. I assume it's weak (for the price) but if it comes to it I don't mind replacing a mobo later. (It only has 2xDIMM but with 64GB that's not likely to trouble me in the lifetime of this PC.) 1xM2, 1xPCIe, 4xSATA.
It's a CIT "Seven" case - nothing special but I figure it could be worse. Don't know what PSU but I'll probably plan on replacing that at some point anyway.
For the money I figured that it won't owe me a lot and it'll give me a reference point given I haven't really looked at PC specs in a decade.
Other places to get halfway decent PC from is awd IT and Palicomp,
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. The PC I'm replacing is urgent as its playing up but I think there are a few others I should consider upgrading rather than spending so long waiting on them to do basic tasks!
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Adam Bower -
Bev Nicolson -
Mark Rogers -
Steve Mynott