A Build for Mum! (Spec Check)

MoridinUK

MoridinUK

MoridinUK

Associate
Joined
16 Jun 2014
Posts
396
Ok so this one isn't hard I don't think.

My Mum works as a funeral celebrate, so she leads many funerals doing the talking bits for people who aren't religious and what not.

She currently uses a slow flimsy laptop to work from and I've promised to build here a desktop to sort her out.

She is not very tech savvy and reliability and redundancy is the top word.

Her toughest use for the machine will be office applications and not much else. I have only ever built pc with gaming in mind so I expect this to be somewhat over spec'ed but I want her to be wow'ed anyway.

What I can not decide is whether to put her drives into a mirror raid. I want to set her up, with the OS and maybe office installed on the SSD and all data libraries etc, rerouted to the hard drives.

Currently roles in under £500.

Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) 1 £152.98
Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 1 £61.99
EVGA 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply 1 £43.99
WD Caviar Blue 1TB SATAIII 2 £41.99 £83.98
Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATAIII 1 £38.99
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1 £32.99
BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Black 1 £29.99
Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler 1 £19.99
Samsung SH-118CB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM 1 £13.99
BitFenix Spectre Plain BLACK 120mm Fan 2 £5.99 £11.98

Have I missed a good deal or am I being a bit silly? I did think of 2 SSHD's in a Mirror, partitioned with an OS drive and other?

The point is for me to be able to fix this all pretty easily, I'll make a copy of the system drive once she is up and running.

I also want advice on a good external HD backup drive?

(also can anyone point me to the script that puts the shopping baskets in these posts all nicely?)
 
Does she need an i-5 ? and 500w psu is overkill unless shes gonna drop in a gpu and start gaming .You can also schedule windows to back up your data.
 
I wasn't sure about the PSU I wanted to go on the safe side rather than run into issues later. I don't expect a GPU, now or in the future, but I thought the I5 would handle the graphics better than an I3 if she ever started to watch tv online, though I seriously doubt she would, so I guess an I3 would suit her needs?
 
I think you're massively overspeccing what she needs. If it's just for office apps then you could drop the mechanical drive (if the files are important then she should be back up to USB or external hard drive anyway), go to 4GB of ram, stick to an i3 and drop down on the PSU as Mickey above says.

Have you thought about something like a cheap mini PC that could clip into the VESA mounts on the monitor?
 
Even this is overkill :p

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i3-6100 3.70GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail Intel Core i3-6100 3.70GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail £95.99
(£79.99) £95.99
(£79.99)
Seagate 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST2000DM001) Seagate 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache HDD - OEM (ST2000DM001) £54.95
(£45.79) £54.95
(£45.79)
Asus H110M-K D3 Intel H110 (Socket 1151) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard Asus H110M-K D3 Intel H110 (Socket 1151) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £44.99
(£37.49) £44.99
(£37.49)
Kingston HyperX Fury 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (SHFS37A/120G) Kingston HyperX Fury 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (SHFS37A/120G) £43.99
(£36.66) £43.99
(£36.66)
Avexir Core Red Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (AVD4UZ124001604G-2CIR) - Red Light Avexir Core Red Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (AVD4UZ124001604G-2CIR) - Red Light £39.95
(£33.29) £39.95
(£33.29)
SuperFlower FX 450W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black SuperFlower FX 450W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - Black £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
Submit Sub Total : £262.38
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
UPS Access Point Ex.VAT
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £54.08
Total : £324.46
Go to Checkout
 
Well the reason I tend to over spec, somewhat (aka a lot) is because you can not use what you don't have; The last system I built I made for a mate, who wanted only office apps and minecraft. I asked him if that was all he really wanted or whether he wanted a PC that could at least have a stab at running modern games, even if not in all their beauty, I could make it fit his budget so he agreed. He spends his days play Elite Dangerous now.... This will not happen with my Mum though...

The i3-6100 skylake vs the i3-4330 Haswell? I've no idea how to compare them!
and why the DDR4 memory on the DDR3 board? Though the 39.95 price is very good!
 
MoridinUK said:
What I can not decide is whether to put her drives into a mirror raid. I want to set her up, with the OS and maybe office installed on the SSD and all data libraries etc, rerouted to the hard drives.

Currently roles in under £500.

Intel Core i5-4460 3.20GHz (Haswell) 1 £152.98
Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 1 £61.99
EVGA 500W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply 1 £43.99
WD Caviar Blue 1TB SATAIII 2 £41.99 £83.98
Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATAIII 1 £38.99
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1 £32.99
BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Black 1 £29.99
Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler 1 £19.99
Samsung SH-118CB/BEBE SATA 18x DVD-ROM 1 £13.99
BitFenix Spectre Plain BLACK 120mm Fan 2 £5.99 £11.98

Have I missed a good deal or am I being a bit silly? I did think of 2 SSHD's in a Mirror, partitioned with an OS drive and other?

The point is for me to be able to fix this all pretty easily, I'll make a copy of the system drive once she is up and running.
Click to expand...

If you mirror RAID then if she messes up one drive (virus or something) the other will also be messed up and not so easy to fix. May even need to wipe both and lose the data. So I would use a program like BackupMaker to simply transfer the files she actually needs backing up (not the OS etc), automatically. BackupMaker can also be set to recognize an external HDD through USB, so that the moment it's plugged into the PC, it will start to backup what you've set, onto the external HDD. I find it quite handy, particularly for those who aren't too tech-savvy.


MoridinUK said:
I also want advice on a good external HD backup drive?
Click to expand...

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung M3 1TB USB3.0 Slimline Portable Hard Drive - Piano Black £46.99



Can recommend. Have two of these (500GB/1TB).


MoridinUK said:
(also can anyone point me to the script that puts the shopping baskets in these posts all nicely?)
Click to expand...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18371076
 
Hi all, sorry to resurrect this one!

This is what I'm looking at:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £359.77
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​


But I have some questions, I think this will fit in that cute cube case, but have I missed anything?

Secondly all the H110 chipset socket 1151 ddr4 boards are out of stock with no eta, should I step down to ddr3 or even ditch the skylake as I can't find a ddr4 inexpensive board, and move to a haswell?

All help always appreciated!
 
I gave my mum my old i7 920/HD 7950 mobo combo and stuck it in the case of her old Core2Duo PC the gubbins of which I chucked out. She's very happy with it. Of course if I happen to do a bit of gaming with it when I visit its purely coincidental. :)
 
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