Looking to purchase new PC

Midland Red

Midland Red

Messages
934
Name
Cliff
Edit My Images
Yes
Limited budget
Main needs, image processing using Photoshop and heavy genealogy work load
OAP, not technically minded so need ease of moving from old PC on Windows 7 to 10
Any advice would be appreciated
 
Anything will be faster than the present one! It would be good to have something with decent speeds for all operations.
Not a massive budget - we have a new monitor so that doesn’t need including.
 
I think you need to state your budget for effective help. "Not a massive budget" is subjective.

As a rule of thumb, the Ryzen chips provide much more bang for the buck over the Intel chips, so look for their 6 or 8 core offerings (the 3rd gen Ryzen chips have just come out so the 2nd gen are pretty good value at the moment).

In addition the best upgrade you can make on a new PC is adding an M.2 drive which will make the computer boot and load programs much faster.

Let us know the budget and we can provide more specific advice.
 
Because I believe one has to pay for Word, Excel, etc plus warranty, support, etc I’m limited to about £500 top whack
I looked online at Dell Inspiron, only because it’s a name I’ve heard of - other names I’ve seen don’t ring any bells I’m afraid
My existing Dell dates back a number of years and predates my digital photography!
 
Ah OK if you're not building the PC yourself then that budget isn't going stretch that far, bearing in mind that you will need a system with:
- CPU
- RAM
- motherboard
- graphics card

The advice I can give is a) buy from a PC building service like PCSpecialist.co.uk because unless you find an amazing deal on a 'named' brand you will get more for your money, and the install will be clean, and b) look for the following components in a PC you decide to go for:

- Ryzen 5 chips (these far out perform equivalent Intel chips at the same price point) e.g. 2400 quad core or the 2600 hex core - obviously 2600 is better if you can afford it
- at least 8gb RAM, preferably 2666mhz or faster (Ryzen's like as fast RAM as possible)
- a solid state hard drive for Windows & your programs (pound for pound the best performance upgrade you can make on a computer)
- whatever graphics card you can afford once you've got the rest (Lightroom doesn't make use of GPU but Photoshop can)

Let me know if you have any specific questions on that stuff :)
 
Here's a suggestion from Chillblast PCs
It's right at the top of your budget but it does come with a large M. 2 drive, 16gb ram and a decent CPU.

There's no dedicated graphics but depending on use you may never need one.
Screenshot_20191007-170046.png
 
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Midland Red said:
Because I believe one has to pay for Word, Excel, etc plus warranty, support, etc I’m limited to about £500 top whack
I looked online at Dell Inspiron, only because it’s a name I’ve heard of - other names I’ve seen don’t ring any bells I’m afraid
My existing Dell dates back a number of years and predates my digital photography!
Click to expand...
Libre Office is a free download which is very similar to microsoft office, it uses its own file format but will open and save files in the microsoft formats. The money you save can go towards your new computer. :) https://www.libreoffice.org/
 
Is building it yourself totally out of the question? You can get way more for you money.
For £550 I got an i5 9400f, 500gb solid state drive, 16gb of ram and a 1050ti gpu. That’s case included, but not power supply. You wouldn’t need a 1050ti for photo stuff though, I wanted one that was capable of playing games decently well too
 
Midland Red said:
Because I believe one has to pay for Word, Excel, etc
>< snip
Click to expand...
Are you sure you need to repurchase MS Office — if you already have it, as implied by your statement?
(And there’s LibreOffice, as mentioned.)
 
stupar said:
Here's a suggestion from Chillblast PCs
It's right at the top of your budget but it does come with a large M. 2 drive, 16gb ram and a decent GPU.

There's no dedicated graphics but depending on use you may never need one.
View attachment 257175
Click to expand...

That looks a pretty good deal - I've just been looking at Box and Ebuyer, and everything falls below that spec.
 
I replaced my 2007 Packard Bell running Vista earlier this year. Like you I am an OAP and after considering building my own, which I have done before, I bought an HP Pavillion from John Lewis with their 2 year guarantee. It was a superseded model so it was on offer. Most people on this forum would consider it slooooow but for what I use it for it is fine. Anything you buy these days with W10 will be a great improvement on what you have.
 
ancient_mariner said:
That looks a pretty good deal - I've just been looking at Box and Ebuyer, and everything falls below that spec.
Click to expand...
I thought so too all though ignore my typo (GPU should have read CPU as the graphics are integrated).
 
Ben johns said:
Is building it yourself totally out of the question? You can get way more for you money.
For £550 I got an i5 9400f, 500gb solid state drive, 16gb of ram and a 1050ti gpu. That’s case included, but not power supply. You wouldn’t need a 1050ti for photo stuff though, I wanted one that was capable of playing games decently well too
Click to expand...

You would still have to add on the operating system to that price though I presume.
 
stupar said:
I thought so too all though ignore my typo (GPU should have read CPU as the graphics are integrated).
Click to expand...

The only issue with that CPU is it doesn't have hyper threading. That means you only get 4 threads because it's a quad core. If he can jump to a 2600 (or even a 1st gen 1600) he will get 12 threads which is 3x as many. Lightroom and Photoshop both take avantage of multiple threads, so the CPU in that deal is quite handicapped for these tasks.
 
Thanks guys - appreciated
A lot to view, and try to evaluate
There’s a lot of mention of gaming - that’s something I’ve absolutely no need of, so does this affect my choices?
 
Midland Red said:
Thanks guys - appreciated
A lot to view, and try to evaluate
There’s a lot of mention of gaming - that’s something I’ve absolutely no need of, so does this affect my choices?
Click to expand...

Only so much as gaming builds will be more weighted towards a GPU which you don't need so much. Put your budget into the CPU, RAM and SSD where possible.
 
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Andy Into The Wild said:
The only issue with that CPU is it doesn't have hyper threading. That means you only get 4 threads because it's a quad core. If he can jump to a 2600 (or even a 1st gen 1600) he will get 12 threads which is 3x as many. Lightroom and Photoshop both take avantage of multiple threads, so the CPU in that deal is quite handicapped for these tasks.
Click to expand...

Fair point that (y)
Although light room and photoshop multi core benefits drop off rapidly after 6 cores.

I took it on the basis that the OP stated their current system to be old so there is a strong case that this quad core is night and day from what he has, plus I'm keeping within budget
 
Whats your opinion on
HP Z420 Intel Xeon 3.6GHz Quad Core Quadro K4000 + 24GB DDR3 ?
 
dcash29 said:
Whats your opinion on
HP Z420 Intel Xeon 3.6GHz Quad Core Quadro K4000 + 24GB DDR3 ?
Click to expand...
For what purpose?

If it’s for running vm’s then great. Otherwise it’s going to lose ground to consumer cpu’s for typical photo editing uses.
 
dcash29 said:
Whats your opinion on
HP Z420 Intel Xeon 3.6GHz Quad Core Quadro K4000 + 24GB DDR3 ?
Click to expand...
Circa 5 years old. They were pretty decent in their day but are thoroughly outpaced by today’s equivalents. We still use a load of them in work for avid video editing. Hell we still have a few of the older Z400’s and Z800’s floating around too. In comparison to the new Z4 and Z8, they are dog slow even with an ssd for the OS.

Basically, it all depends on how much it’s being sold for. £200 or so and it’s a reasonable deal. The quadro k4000 is probably the most valuable part in it.
 
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Maybe I should have asked what the comparison would have been against a : -

Intel Core 2 quad
Q8300 2.50Ghz 1333MHz 4MB Cache
Ge force GT210 512Mb
4GB DDR2 Sdram
1TB
2 hot swap bays

I'm not needing the top machine just an improvement with 16/32 ram to run photo editing software. Not video's.
 
The Core 2 line is 11 years old; that Xeon will hammer it in a comparison test.
If you're on a budget, and it's just a choice between the two, go for the Z420.
 
dcash29 said:
Maybe I should have asked what the comparison would have been against a : -

Intel Core 2 quad
Q8300 2.50Ghz 1333MHz 4MB Cache
Ge force GT210 512Mb
4GB DDR2 Sdram
1TB
2 hot swap bays

I'm not needing the top machine just an improvement with 16/32 ram to run photo editing software. Not video's.
Click to expand...
What Tori_T said. A Z420 would give that old Q8300 a serious hammering. It all depends on how much it costs.
 
Ben johns said:
You would but you can (and I have twice) get them really really cheap on eBay. I got windows 10 professional 64bit for about £10 I think, at the most £20.
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/173998207408
Click to expand...

A really good price so I just got 1 for myself though I really hate win 10 but my latest workstation really has to have it to run properly.

It's a Z840 I just bought and it's almost impossible to get Win 7 to run on it so I guess the future is either Win 10 or Linux!

One good thing with Win 10 is that I can now boot into my Samsung 970 NVME M.2 (at 3.5 GB/Sec!) even though the Z840 doesn't have a dedicated M.2 slot.
 
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Midland Red said:
Limited budget
Main needs, image processing using Photoshop and heavy genealogy work load
OAP, not technically minded so need ease of moving from old PC on Windows 7 to 10
Any advice would be appreciated
Click to expand...

Any computers will do fine.

Just pick whatever computer you like, just make sure that it must have a minimum of 4GB of RAM (memory) and not less than that. If your budget allows it, you could try for more than 4GB of RAM, like aiming for 8GB or 16GB, but just make sure that it must have a minimum of 4GB.

As for hard drive, just make sure that it could be either a HDD or a SSD, but aim for minimum of 500GB if needed.

Based on what you said you would need it for, Photoshop, Word, Excel and that you would be doing a lot of genealogy work, I would say any computer will do fine as long as it have 4GB or more RAM and a minimum of 500GB HDD or SSD.

Also since you mention you already have a monitor, just check what kind of ports the monitor have, like HDMI or DisplayPort etc., and try to find a computer that offers a matching output. For example, if your monitor use HDMI cable then try to get a computer that would output HDMI.

That's just about it, that's all you need to worry about.
 
As others have said, think a Ryzen system would be ideal. I have a Ryzen 2400 (4 cores/8 threads) which powers my HTPC system and blazes through anything I throw at it (it's also good for basic gaming though you said that's not important). As you can get W10 for cheap (above eBay link), strongly suggest getting an SSD and your budget should allow for it. If your GO work and image processing needs space, can you use an existing external HD or buy a large mechanical further down the line. SSDs do make a nice difference over mechanical. A DIY system from e.g. OcUK comes to:

Ryzen 5 3400G - £140
B450 motherboard - £100
Case - £50
500w PSU - £50
256GB/512GB SSD - £35/£60
8GB of 3000MHz RAM - £63

£438/£463 (used a thread on their forum for reference - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/budget-build-second-pc-for-light-gaming-500.18868170/ )

However for a little more money, you could buy the suggested pre-built PC from Chillblast PCs which is hard to beat.

Edit - just seen the full specs of the suggested Chillblast PC, decent! It's got a slower processor that my suggestion but has double the RAM!! No brainer :)
 
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xibinim said:
As others have said, think a Ryzen system would be ideal. I have a Ryzen 2400 (4 cores/8 threads) which powers my HTPC system and blazes through anything I throw at it (it's also good for basic gaming though you said that's not important). As you can get W10 for cheap (above eBay link), strongly suggest getting an SSD and your budget should allow for it. If your GO work and image processing needs space, can you use an existing external HD or buy a large mechanical further down the line. SSDs do make a nice difference over mechanical. A DIY system from e.g. OcUK comes to:

Ryzen 5 3400G - £140
B450 motherboard - £100
Case - £50
500w PSU - £50
256GB/512GB SSD - £35/£60
8GB of 3000MHz RAM - £63

£438/£463 (used a thread on their forum for reference - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/budget-build-second-pc-for-light-gaming-500.18868170/ )

However for a little more money, you could buy the suggested pre-built PC from Chillblast PCs which is hard to beat.

Edit - just seen the full specs of the suggested Chillblast PC, decent! It's got a slower processor that my suggestion but has double the RAM!! No brainer :)
Click to expand...

Thanks to you, too! Three new tyres and a boiler repair have put back the purchase slightly - but it has to happen!
 
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