Hey all,

 

I'm a little out of touch with current developments in the PC component world. I last built a gaming rig around 3 years ago.

 

I've been asked by the girlfriends old man who's a work at home insurance broker to build him a new pc. It's not used for anything particularly taxing, running insurance programs and general office work, internet browsing youtubing etc.

 

So if anything his £1kish budget is a little OTT I think, but he wants the best he can get to futureproof himself somewhat.

 

SSD's are definitely top of the list, their brilliant fast running will be ideal, and with the budget I can run it soley on SSD's too. With a HDD back up used incase of failure.

 

My previous system was an Intel i5 build, would you recommend i5 or 7?

 

Basically after a lightning fast system that needs no real graphics power to speak of, a nice small but practical (and quiet) case recommendation would be handy too.

 

I plan to cool the CPU with a closed loop water set up too to help keep noise levels down.

 

Any tips and good picks would be very gratefully received!

 

Thanks in advance

I think your suggestion is ideal for what it will be used for.

SSD's are a must. I would forget the i7, an i5 will suffice and spend the money saved on a decent monitor as I find people always seem to neglect that important aspect of a PC!

With the budget available, I would run two SSD's forgetting a HDD and maybe look at paying for a cloud backup subscription to back up important documents.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

 

I found using this really cut down the cost of building my computer.

 

I will also recommend the Samsung 840 Evo SSDs as they are brilliant and relatively cheap

Looking at this from a business PC point of view I wouldn't be building a PC, I'd be getting one off Dell or another similar company that offers a three year next business day on site warranty so that if anything fails, it can be sorted promptly and be back up and running.  I wouldn't be considering an i7 at all, a quad core i5 sounds like it should be more than enough for that sort of use as the i7 adds quite a premium but only offers a performance benefit in heavily threaded applications.  I'd be sticking with a normal cooler as it doesn't sound like the system is going to be in any way CPU limited and without a toasty graphics card, a standard air cooler should be quiet and it's simpler than a closed loop water cooling system.

 

I very much agree with the SSD which will make the biggest difference to general responsiveness but other than that with it being a desktop at least there's plenty of scope to upgrade in the future if needed.

 

John

Cheers Ally,

 

I guess with the power of the i5 and the use of the pc any budget for a gfx card can be better used on a monitor!

 

I've put together an initial basket on Scan, see what you think...perhaps mobo is a little overkill but still comes nicely into the budget.

 

 

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

 

I found using this really cut down the cost of building my computer.

 

I will also recommend the Samsung 840 Evo SSDs as they are brilliant and relatively cheap

Thanks Dom I will check it out

 

Looking at this from a business PC point of view I wouldn't be building a PC, I'd be getting one off Dell or another similar company that offers a three year next business day on site warranty so that if anything fails, it can be sorted promptly and be back up and running.  I wouldn't be considering an i7 at all, a quad core i5 sounds like it should be more than enough for that sort of use as the i7 adds quite a premium but only offers a performance benefit in heavily threaded applications.  I'd be sticking with a normal cooler as it doesn't sound like the system is going to be in any way CPU limited and without a toasty graphics card, a standard air cooler should be quiet and it's simpler than a closed loop water cooling system.

 

I very much agree with the SSD which will make the biggest difference to general responsiveness but other than that with it being a desktop at least there's plenty of scope to upgrade in the future if needed.

 

John

I see what you're saying John, its an avenue worth looking down, although his previous 2 have been Dell pc's and I think he has been a little off put by their service. Not had any dealings with them myself.

 

I think it'll be quite easy to completely over spec the PC, however it's an option of either build something that'll do the job and not a great deal else more or go a little further as his initial comments were moneys no object (within reason) so I'm kind of stuck on what best to offer, I guess a low, medium and high end build list and allow him to decide.

You'll only really need 8gb of RAM first of all, mobo is a bit over kill as is the PSU really

Two suggestions.............Firsty as above, PSU doesnt need to be that powerful for what youve bought. http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp use that to calculate roughly what you would need.

Second: As its a work PC, is it worth going for a small graphics card and using dual screens to increase productivity? Reckon two screens would make a much bigger difference than an extra 2gb of ram or 100W on the PSU.

How about a laptop + docking station + dual external monitor set up?

 

For future proofing, laptop will offer maximum flexibility if he ever needs to work away from the home office. But when at home it will be indistinguishable from using a desktop PC. 

Some good suggestions here, dual monitors would be good but i've found some people never 'get it'. The amount of budget i've spent buying second monitors for people only to find they never use them!

 

Laptop and docks are a good alternative, but if the user very rarely works away from their desk than it may be wasted, also those setups cost more so you will likely get less performance for the same price.

I'd only go with a Laptop if portability is required as you say you get less bang for your buck.

 

I would also recommend a UPS to protect the system if it is used for business.

Were the last dells bought as home or business? That makes a big difference to the support you get.

Spec is a bit overkill for word processing, spreadsheets and average Web usage. You don't need ssd as being a business most data should be backed up on a separate drive.

You can get a very impressive laptop for £500 from HP, Dell etc with business next day on site support. This will allow taking it to clients and cover any issues. A built system could be down for days, and who will fix it and at what price?

I wouldn't be spending much more on a pc system, and for that you'd be better and cheaper buying a built system than building one yourself.

Most manufacturers also have outlet pages with end of line or factory refurbs that will still come with full backup and warranty and be like new. My HP laptop was an end of line model rrp was £600 something and I got it for £350 + topcashback (£30 iirc) and very few models around have anywhere near the same spec for the same money.

TBH for what he's doing an i3, 8Gb ram and an SSD would be more than capable.

 

Probably the best thing to look at for keeping him ok is resilience, how can you keep the thing running without you getting a call that he's lost his data?

So I'd look at adding some sort of automated backup storage even if you get a cloud service.

 

Decent case probably with quiet fans and dust screens. Decent quiet PSU that will last.

Decent monitor, possibly a touch monitor if you're going the win8 route.

 

Dual monitor are something you don't care about until you have it, then you'd never go back. But a Big 22-24" monitor can give much the same experience.

 

 

I wouldn't bother about future proofing. If the rig lasts 3yr then everything will have moved on so far you'd pretty much be starting from scratch anyway.

 

I'd guess you could manage that for about £500.

 

If you're thinking about mobility then a Dell Venue 11 with a dock and keyboard case can be a pretty good option. You'd get an i5 4Gb 128Gb SSD from the outlet with budget to spare for the extras. Some bad review online but bios updates sort the problems. We've got them at work and they're very popular.

Why bother with as SSD?  A normal HD would be more than enough. As his business relies on the PC it should be the most reliable and stable PC you can make - rather than the fastest and all singing.  No prizes for losing a couple of day's work while the PC is fixed.. 

TBH for what he's doing an i3, 8Gb ram and an SSD would be more than capable.

 

Im going to disagree with that one.

 

The difference between an i3 and i5 is noticable. Between i5 and i7 not so much.

 

From experience I have found i3 processors to be easy to swamp and max out. You could give it 16gb of RAM but if the processor isn't half decent, you will stil get a slow machine.

 

An i5 with 8gb of RAM would suffice. That coupled with a SSD will give you decent speeds and should last for atleast 3 years or more.

 

Why bother with as SSD?  A normal HD would be more than enough. As his business relies on the PC it should be the most reliable and stable PC you can make - rather than the fastest and all singing.  No prizes for losing a couple of day's work while the PC is fixed.. 

 

Not only are they faster, but they are more reliable. HHD's contain moving parts, for resiliance, you want to remove as many variables as possible.

I'd humbly disagree again, for a bit of text processing + internet an i5 is a bit of a waste.

I'd humbly disagree again, for a bit of text processing + internet an i5 is a bit of a waste.

 

 

I've found that most users these days expect click and open performance like they get from smartphones / tablets. They want fast performance and get frustrated waiting for a sytem to catch up after opening programmes etc.

 

Rightly or worngly that is what they expect from a PC too. If i gave my users i3 spec equipment I know they would moan about it being 'slow'. They handle ok at first, but after months of use / updates / temp files building up and all other manner of junk people seem to aquire, they quckily slow down.

 

People who know their way round a PC could probaly make it work for them.

Doesn't memory have to be fitted in pairs, thus 3x 4GB isn't going to work, or are those rules no longer in force?

 

SSD, i5 (i7 for proper future proofing, but very much overkill).  Second HDD for saving data / pictures too.#

 

That said, here I am using a Surface Pro 2 to browse the internet..... and its fast :-)

I believe pairs will work faster, but it can make do with 3.

If a hdd fails you have a high probability of getting data back or the drive working to get data off.

If a ssd fails you can pretty much kiss anything on it goodbye.

Although they don't have moving parts, just like rechargeable batteries, they have a limited read/write lifespan.

Ssd isn't recommended for a business system, and any that do have them have a small Ssd for the os and programs, and a conventional hdd for data storage.

Although they don't have moving parts, just like rechargeable batteries, they have a limited read/write lifespan.

 

Same can be said for HDD's too? Chances of retireiving data off them is slightly higher than SSD's although the chances of SSD's failing is less than HDD's.

 

Plus if an un-backed up HDD were to fail, the price of proffessional data recovery is high.

Every article I've read on ssd doesn't put reliability above hdd. Quite the opposite.

The all singing Mac book air my cousin has has failed for the 5th time with ssd failure. Currently her dead Mac book is on the way back from deployment in the middle east to be fixed here as the local agents won't honour Apples global warranty despite having confirmed it's in warranty and that the fault is the disk again. She'll be without it over Christmas (last time took 2 weeks to get back) so she's less than impressed at not having it to Skype her family.

She says she won't buy another Apple machine, or one with ssd again and will be flogging it when she's back. The only saviour is that everything's backed up to icloud by default so her husband can send it back ready to go.

Most of the following ssd failures are easily solved on a hdd by a fragmentation cycle. Ssd it's complete data loss.

http://mobile.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/ssd-vs.-hdd-performance-and-reliability-1.html

. Common points of failure include:

· Bit errors: Random data bits stored to cells, although it sounds much more impressive to say that the electrons leaked.

· Flying or shorn writes: Correct writes written in the wrong location, or truncated writes due to power loss.

· Unserializability: A hard-to-pronounce term that means writes are recorded in the wrong order.

· Firmware: Ah, firmware. Firmware fails, corrupts, or upgrades improperly throughout the computing universe: SSD firmware is no exception.

· Electronic failures: In spite of no moving parts, physical components like chips and transistors fail, taking the SSD down right along with it.

· Power outages: DRAM SSDs have volatile memory and will lose data if they lack a battery power supply. NAND SSDs are also subject to damaged file integrity if they are reading/writing during power interruptions.

Well it's hard to presume that all SSD's are bad because of a couple of failures on a MacBook.

I had a MacBook that had two different HDD failures. First time losing all of my first year uni work. Oh to be young and stupid again!

Anyway, all points listed in that article are valid to a degree. There are similar articles about HDD's and their flaws too. It all boils down to personal preference at the end of the day. I'm a fan on SSD's and trust them in my own machines and user Laptops that I build/administer at work.

You should never really rely on a single disk for anything important SSD or HDD.

 

Even if data is recoverable it can be prohibitively expensive. Much cheaper to be backed up so all you need to do is replace the disk and restore.

 

You'll never regret an SSD in terms of performance, they're stunningly fast compared to spinning rust. But they do have a reputation for being unreliable especially with cheaper consumer drives.

 

Small SSD for a boot drive with a nice big slow HDD for data. Backed up either to the cloud or to a local storage drive.

 

If your girlfriends old man is doing insurance and the data he works with contains the personal information of customers he'll be best to keep everything local, sticking it in the cloud can breach the DPA.

If he definitely has personal information especially if he's dealing with medial info for life insurance you might want to investigate encryption for him.

 

Is he self employed (IFA)? Usually this sort of stuff is quite tightly managed by the company

Why would you need to spend a £1000? You could quite easily get a 1TB HDD, quad core AMD with around 8 GB and decent onboard graphics for less than £300. That would probably last the next 20 years.