Advice on PC Spec- Circa £800-£1,200

DHaste

DHaste

DHaste

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Hi Guys, I've been looking at various companies but orignally bought my old PC from Overclockers and it's been great but just recently it seems really slow and crashes, so after 8yrs I though time to upgrade.

My requirements/thoughts:

  • I don't really play games on my PC, but doesnt mean I never will
  • Watch Youtube & other things a fair bit
  • Mostly use for Office based tasks , shopping, kids school work etc
  • Want something that has a bit of oomph and is quick to multi-task as I'm pretty impatient.
  • WHas good Wi-Fi connectivity/speed
  • Plenty of storage SDD & HDD, with the potential to stick a 5GB HDD that has all my films on it, so will look to run PLEX of it if possible as well.
  • Can run two monitors on HDMI?
  • Decent sound card, as I often play music whilstdoing stuff on PC- have Creative T40 speakers.
Any advice greatly appreciated as it's doing my head in trying to work out the best options
 

turbot1984

turbot1984

turbot1984

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DHaste said:
Hi Guys, I've been looking at various companies but orignally bought my old PC from Overclockers and it's been great but just recently it seems really slow and crashes, so after 8yrs I though time to upgrade.

My requirements/thoughts:

  • I don't really play games on my PC, but doesnt mean I never will
  • Watch Youtube & other things a fair bit
  • Mostly use for Office based tasks , shopping, kids school work etc
  • Want something that has a bit of oomph and is quick to multi-task as I'm pretty impatient.
  • WHas good Wi-Fi connectivity/speed
  • Plenty of storage SDD & HDD, with the potential to stick a 5GB HDD that has all my films on it, so will look to run PLEX of it if possible as well.
  • Can run two monitors on HDMI?
  • Decent sound card, as I often play music whilstdoing stuff on PC- have Creative T40 speakers.
Any advice greatly appreciated as it's doing my head in trying to work out the best options
Click to expand...
Hi, as you are not a gamer I would base pc around a Ryzen 5600g/5700g with integrated graphics. Graphics cards are still overpriced but you could always bung one in at a later date.
 

GreatAuk

GreatAuk

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If the slowness and crashing has come on relatively recently that could be a sign of something like a hard disk dying (does your current Windows installation live on a hard disc or solid state drive?) ... Could be worth getting a new ssd and doing a fresh Windows install on that just as a temporary measure, see if it brings performance back to an acceptable level?

Also do your monitors have other connections as well as HDMI or does it have to be 2x HDMI?

Anyway, my go at a build below. 5600g should be plenty fast enough for office tasks with potential for light gaming at reduced resolution if required. The mobo has very good WiFi connectivity, and decent on board audio from what I can tell. I'm not up on sound cards so you'd have to look into that a bit more of you wanted something more audiophile grade. The mobo has one HDMI output and one displayport output, so you'll need an adapter if your monitors only take HDMI. A 500gb boot drive, 1tb fast ssd storage, 8tb slow hdd storage, and a spare slot in the case for your existing hdd. Two fans to fill out the front of the case. The PSU has plenty of headroom to add a dedicated gpu in future if required.


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,022.18 (includes shipping: £12.30)
​


​
(some items out of stock here, but in stock elsewhere).
 
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Burly

Burly

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Posts
715
GreatAuk said:
If the slowness and crashing has come on relatively recently that could be a sign of something like a hard disk dying (does your current Windows installation live on a hard disc or solid state drive?) ... Could be worth getting a new ssd and doing a fresh Windows install on that just as a temporary measure, see if it brings performance back to an acceptable level?

Also do your monitors have other connections as well as HDMI or does it have to be 2x HDMI?

Anyway, my go at a build below. 5600g should be plenty fast enough for office tasks with potential for light gaming at reduced resolution if required. The mobo has very good WiFi connectivity, and decent on board audio from what I can tell. I'm not up on sound cards so you'd have to look into that a bit more of you wanted something more audiophile grade. The mobo has one HDMI output and one displayport output, so you'll need an adapter if your monitors only take HDMI. A 500gb boot drive, 1tb fast ssd storage, 8tb slow hdd storage, and a spare slot in the case for your existing hdd. Two fans to fill out the front of the case. The PSU has plenty of headroom to add a dedicated gpu in future if required.


My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,022.18 (includes shipping: £12.30)
​


​
(some items out of stock here, but in stock elsewhere).
Click to expand...

I like this setup. I might buy it for myself. Though I need more ram 32gb do you have a recommendation for that? Thanks.

<edit> Man I've been out of this game for so long there's cache internal hard drives and SSDs coming out of my eyes?
 

GreatAuk

GreatAuk

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Burly said:
I like this setup. I might buy it for myself. Though I need more ram 32gb do you have a recommendation for that? Thanks.

<edit> Man I've been out of this game for so long there's cache internal hard drives and SSDs coming out of my eyes?
Click to expand...
I think any of the below would be fine (just the cheapest at 3200 or 3600mhz with c16 timings in the store, plus the 8pack samsung B die which would be the pick for best performance & overclockability).
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £487.67 (includes shipping: £8.70)
​


Which one I'd go for depends a bit how much you want to spend and what kind of workload it'll be doing whether you'll notice much of a difference in speed. Broadly I think a jump from 3200 to 3600mhz or C18 to C16 gives you a few extra percent performance in things like games, could be much more or less in other workloads (although tbf with an integrated gpu memory becomes even more important, so you'd probably see much better gains than that in games). Personally I'd go for the 3600mhz c16 crucial kit as it should perform well, but is still a reasonable price.

Could go crazy and get some 4000mhz+ rated stuff but I'm not sure that really makes sense unless you're already getting a top of the range cpu, gpu, and everything else, which will probably have more noticeable performance impacts (also harder to get it performing well with Ryzen).

And yeah put a lot of drives (and largeish case) in that build because OP wanted 'plenty' of storage :p. Hopefully 9.5TB counts as plenty.
 
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Craig_d1

Craig_d1

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Think this is the Ram GreatAuk meant for Team Group. All too easy to mix up with the 16gb version as they have the same price.



My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £199.99 (includes shipping: £0.00)



I've got the 32gb 16x2 corsair pro vengeance rgb 3600C18. it's a little slower compared to C16 but as someone pointed out to me, you wouldn't notice unless doing benchmarks. You'll have to shop elsewhere for it but available for £138, so a fair bit cheaper. Got it paired with a 5800X and B550 gaming e board, with a sn850 nvme ...all I know is my pc boots from sleep quicker than my monitor wakes up(which is fast enough for me)...compared to my old laptop, it's a joy to use​
 
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