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- Joined
- 6 Nov 2011
- Posts
- 112
Following my success at building a PC for my sister, my parents are interested in getting me to put one together for them. They're currently getting by on a 10 year old Pentium 4 machine!
What I'm looking for is the kind of machine which will still be usable in a decade. Not able to play the latest games or run the latest OS, but be usable. Their current PC still handles Office pretty damn well, runs a fully up to date copy of XP, and runs a modern browser like Chrome pretty damn well considering its age. This is the same sort of lifetime I'm looking for from a new machine. So the big question is- how best to future proof?
The kinds of things I'm considering are-
-number of cores. Currently I'm thinking 4 is the safest bet- could risk 2 with hyperthreading, but parallelised programs are only going to get more and more common, and more and more everyday tasks will benefit from 4 physical cores.
-RAM- I'd say about 4GB is a safe bet to be going on with, but the board must be able to handle an upgrade in the future. The only reason that my parents' machine is still usable is because a few years back I doubled the RAM in it.
-Graphics- This one is going to be controversial, but I think they'd be better off with a low to mid range DirectX 11 graphics card than on-die Intel graphics. Two main reasons- video resolutions are only going to increase (and my parents may upgrade their monitor at some point, they replaced their old CRT with an LCD during the life of this machine), and GPGPU is going to become more and more common. MS and AMD in particular are pushing C++ AMP as the big, new, portable API, and it requires a DirectX 11 GPU. Of course on the flipside the additional power draw and heat generation from a discrete GPU may run the risk of reducing the life of the system as a whole, which is not something I would want.
-Storage- two pronged, this. I am questioning whether Bluray is really ever going to take off the way DVD has- it's a very expensive format, my parents won't watch films on their PC (they have a TV for that), and software distribution is moving to more digital distribution. To be honest I think a DVD burner would suffice, and if I am proved wrong then installing a SATA Bluray drive in 5 year's time will be simple (and cheaper than buying it now). Second aspect- hard drive space. As I stated above my parents do not watch films on their PC, but they also don't really use it for music either. The only thing that really uses hard drive space is my mother's photo collection, and even that has taken 10 years to almost fill their pathetic 40GB hard drive. I think 1TB of space would be enough- but would it be worth getting 2 drives in a RAID configuration? Hard drives are notorious for failing, and I would trust a mirrored RAID array more than my parents' haphazard backup strategy in the event of a failure. I've also heard some nightmare stories about SSDs (catastrophic failure without warning, etc), which I would be able to deal with but would stress my parents the hell out. So a fast hard drive would be preferable.
-connections- not fussed about eSATA, but USB3 is a must. Their current machine only has USB1, and it drives me nuts how long it takes to transfer large files. SATA 6GB/s would be preferable, in case we ever wanted to upgrade to an SSD if the stability improved.
-size- nothing larger than a mATX case- this is what they currently have, and I doubt they'd want to upsize. A smaller case could work, but I doubt all this could be crammed into a small case (plus it would limit future upgrade potential). For preference a case with front USB3 connectors- their PC is stashed away in a cupboard, meaning that the back ports never, ever get used (well, the printer, mouse and keyboard are permanently connected, but nothing else). Its no use having a USB3 board if the only ports they ever use are connected to USB2.
-networking- wifi, Wireless-N is a necessity.
-sound- my parents have pretty bad hearing, so I doubt they would notice the improvement over on-board sound from a Xonar DG.
-long term stability- this is ESSENTIAL. I am happy to splash out on some extra case fans, a good quality PSU, to make sure it stays alive and healthy for the next decade. I am also NOT looking to overclock any component, and as such will happily take the non-OC friendly parts for a healthy discount (e.g. i5-2400 vs i5-2500k).
-operating system- Windows 7. No way I'm letting them try and figure out Linux
So, OCUK, what do you think would match these requirements? Spec me!
What I'm looking for is the kind of machine which will still be usable in a decade. Not able to play the latest games or run the latest OS, but be usable. Their current PC still handles Office pretty damn well, runs a fully up to date copy of XP, and runs a modern browser like Chrome pretty damn well considering its age. This is the same sort of lifetime I'm looking for from a new machine. So the big question is- how best to future proof?
The kinds of things I'm considering are-
-number of cores. Currently I'm thinking 4 is the safest bet- could risk 2 with hyperthreading, but parallelised programs are only going to get more and more common, and more and more everyday tasks will benefit from 4 physical cores.
-RAM- I'd say about 4GB is a safe bet to be going on with, but the board must be able to handle an upgrade in the future. The only reason that my parents' machine is still usable is because a few years back I doubled the RAM in it.
-Graphics- This one is going to be controversial, but I think they'd be better off with a low to mid range DirectX 11 graphics card than on-die Intel graphics. Two main reasons- video resolutions are only going to increase (and my parents may upgrade their monitor at some point, they replaced their old CRT with an LCD during the life of this machine), and GPGPU is going to become more and more common. MS and AMD in particular are pushing C++ AMP as the big, new, portable API, and it requires a DirectX 11 GPU. Of course on the flipside the additional power draw and heat generation from a discrete GPU may run the risk of reducing the life of the system as a whole, which is not something I would want.
-Storage- two pronged, this. I am questioning whether Bluray is really ever going to take off the way DVD has- it's a very expensive format, my parents won't watch films on their PC (they have a TV for that), and software distribution is moving to more digital distribution. To be honest I think a DVD burner would suffice, and if I am proved wrong then installing a SATA Bluray drive in 5 year's time will be simple (and cheaper than buying it now). Second aspect- hard drive space. As I stated above my parents do not watch films on their PC, but they also don't really use it for music either. The only thing that really uses hard drive space is my mother's photo collection, and even that has taken 10 years to almost fill their pathetic 40GB hard drive. I think 1TB of space would be enough- but would it be worth getting 2 drives in a RAID configuration? Hard drives are notorious for failing, and I would trust a mirrored RAID array more than my parents' haphazard backup strategy in the event of a failure. I've also heard some nightmare stories about SSDs (catastrophic failure without warning, etc), which I would be able to deal with but would stress my parents the hell out. So a fast hard drive would be preferable.
-connections- not fussed about eSATA, but USB3 is a must. Their current machine only has USB1, and it drives me nuts how long it takes to transfer large files. SATA 6GB/s would be preferable, in case we ever wanted to upgrade to an SSD if the stability improved.
-size- nothing larger than a mATX case- this is what they currently have, and I doubt they'd want to upsize. A smaller case could work, but I doubt all this could be crammed into a small case (plus it would limit future upgrade potential). For preference a case with front USB3 connectors- their PC is stashed away in a cupboard, meaning that the back ports never, ever get used (well, the printer, mouse and keyboard are permanently connected, but nothing else). Its no use having a USB3 board if the only ports they ever use are connected to USB2.
-networking- wifi, Wireless-N is a necessity.
-sound- my parents have pretty bad hearing, so I doubt they would notice the improvement over on-board sound from a Xonar DG.
-long term stability- this is ESSENTIAL. I am happy to splash out on some extra case fans, a good quality PSU, to make sure it stays alive and healthy for the next decade. I am also NOT looking to overclock any component, and as such will happily take the non-OC friendly parts for a healthy discount (e.g. i5-2400 vs i5-2500k).
-operating system- Windows 7. No way I'm letting them try and figure out Linux
So, OCUK, what do you think would match these requirements? Spec me!
Can't believe I forgot to mention budget! 
