I have no idea where to start, please help if you can

[Gray2233]

We actually started off looking at laptops however I quickly came to learn that they burn out easily and within 3 years itl be out dated and a new one would needed. I'm now looking at pcs as they don't burn out as quick and can easily be upgraded in 3 years where as a laptop cant be apparently. My first stop when starting this journey was Currys, they suggested the Acer Nitro 5 for just over a grand. Everyone I spoke to after that though said that was the worst idea ever.

It's an extremely weird time to buy into the desktop PC world at the moment, especially for the sake of longevity while on a budget. The system recommend by @Haz123 is a good shout, but hold in mind that in 3 years time the best you'll be able to do with that is upgrade the graphics card and buy a second hand CPU such as the 5800X3D, it's effectively end of life due to the platform it's based on. The included PSU will almost certainly be a bottom of the barrel Kolink unit too. When you do go to upgrade in 3 years you're going to have to update the PSU + buy a second hand CPU. The most you're getting out of that build in the long term otherwise is a mid range GPU upgrade and maybe another 16GB of RAM, storage is easily added to any build including laptops.

I'm not at all an advocate of laptops under normal circumstances, but a decent company should offer you 3-5 years warranty and you would get a better out of the gate spec.

If you can spend up to a grand there might be more wiggle room.

 

[MidnightKisses]

Ok here you go.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x MSI 24" PRO MP242C 1920x1080 VA 75Hz 4ms Curved Widescreen Gaming Monitor (SKU: MO-01X-MS) = £108.95
• 1 x Logitech MK120 Keyboard and Mouse Desktop Set (920-002552) (SKU: KB-205-LG) = £19.99
• 1 x OcUK Gaming Harrier - AMD Ryzen 5 5600, Radeon Gaming PC (SKU: FS-1EU-OG) = £813.91
  • Case: 1 x Phanteks Eclipse P300 Air Midi Tower Case - Black Window
    
  • Memory: 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey
    
  • Graphics Card: 1 x Asus Radeon RX 6500 XT Dual OC 4GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
    
  • Primary Solid State Drive (M.2.): 1 x WD Black SN770 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS100T3X0E)
    
  • Operating System: 1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Home Advanced - Systems

Total: £958.85 (includes delivery: £16.00)​

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The above PC is perfectly useable and is built by OCUK so it will have a 3 year ocuk guarantee. The above build contains many parts I normally advise people to avoid but this is the only way to get within your budget with the OCUK configurators. Points I do not like in it are the PSU and GPU but it is what it is I am afraid. I even left in the OS so all you would have to do is plug it in and turn it on.

How much would I be looking at with the parts that you like to avoid taken out and replaced with parts that you would recommend? Also is this upgradable over time? Or am I not able to allow for that with my budget?

 

[MidnightKisses]

It's an extremely weird time to buy into the desktop PC world at the moment, especially for the sake of longevity while on a budget. The system recommend by @Haz123 is a good shout, but hold in mind that in 3 years time the best you'll be able to do with that is upgrade the graphics card and buy a second hand CPU such as the 5800X3D, it's effectively end of life due to the platform it's based on. The included PSU will almost certainly be a bottom of the barrel Kolink unit too. When you do go to upgrade in 3 years you're going to have to update the PSU + buy a second hand CPU. The most you're getting out of that build in the long term otherwise is a mid range GPU upgrade and maybe another 16GB of RAM, storage is easily added to any build including laptops.

I'm not at all an advocate of laptops under normal circumstances, but a decent company should offer you 3-5 years warranty and you would get a better out of the gate spec.

If you can spend up to a grand there might be more wiggle room.

I honestly never took into account the warranty. Hearing of editing and possible game play everyone I spoke to pushed for me to ideally get a pc.

 

[Tetras]

Basically editing footage thats most likely an hour long from a PlayStation or DSLR camera. It would be nice if he was able to play minecraft or fortnite on it as he's never had a pc at home before and I'm sure itl be something that he would like to do. He may use it for 2 hours each day, and longer on the weekends. Editing program wise would most likely be Movavi. He's no pro at this at the moment he's still learning but it's something he loves to do and would love to be able to do it at home.

Unfortunately, I can't find any recent benchmarks specifically for Movavi, but in their "learning portal" I noticed they refer the reader to Puget, who do a lot of content creation benchmarks.

In their hardware and system requirements pages, they don't seem to place much importance on the the graphics card, so I think a 1650 (or higher) would be fine for now, but this review says:

"Movavi uses graphics hardware acceleration with all three major GPUs: Intel, Nvidia, and AMD. It also creates proxies for high-resolution content for faster editing. In my rendering test, the program turned in decent, if not leading numbers. For the test, I create a five-minute movie consisting of four clips of mixed types (some 1080p, some SD, some 4K) with a standard set of transitions and rendered it to 1080p30 MPEG-4 at 15Mbps, H.264 High Profile. I run the test three times and take the geometric mean (which minimizes the effect of outliers). I test on a PC running 64-bit Windows 10 Pro with a 3.4GHz Core i7 6700 CPU, 16GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB GDDR5 RAM."

Movavi Video Editor

User-friendly, inexpensive video editing software

uk.pcmag.com

Nowadays, that's a pretty old system (i7-6700 is from 2015). The CPU in Haz123's spec is much faster than the i7-6700 and a 6500 XT is somewhat faster, so it will be fine for video editing and playing Minecraft or Fortnite.

 

[lsg1r]

Footage he takes is from pc gaming, playstation, phone, DSLR camera. Were talking on average an hour of footage each time. I'm not in the know when it comes to specs, software etc. I'm trying to reach out to someone that does without their being a money incentive. Unfortunately I'm not able to build a pc, im really doing my best to learn but I dont think building one will be an option.

You'd be shocked how easy building a pc is, there are no end of tutorials on youtube so I'd maybe spend a bit of time watching some of them... it also wouldn't hurt for your son to have basic knowledge of how to build/upgrade the pc because it would save money long term.
The reason being is that generally speaking you'll end up losing about £200, sometimes more, of your budget if you have it built for you, an upgrade to the pc could also end up costing money each time too... that's a pretty large chunk when you're aiming for around £1000 for everything.

I tried to speak to a new local business today about a pc and they suggested an Intel i7 3.7 GHZ, Nvidia RTX Geforce 1650 4GB, 8GB Ram, 440GB Storage, Windows 10 Pro activated, Front RGB lighting - with various modes, Wifi, 6 USB Ports (2 Front 4 back), when i questioned if 8gb would be enough as iv previously been told it wouldn't be, the price jumped by £100, exactly the same computer but 16gb. It started off at £499 then. 8gb more took us to £599. I'm not sure at this point if this is something I'm going to be able to do, I had no idea how hard getting a pc for my boy would be. If it could be under a grand including monitor, keyboard and mouse that would be ideal. I'm not sure how much any of this should be costing, I think I may have a lot to learn before parting with any money for a pc in my area.

Don't go back to that new local business, they're just going to waste your money... that spec wouldn't have been borderline for what you're asking for 5 years ago let alone now....

I can't even believe I'm going to suggest this as an idea (I'm heavily pc master race lol)... what about a m2 mac mini (son's in school so education discount).... it plays minecraft and fortnite, it will run movavi in rosetta emulation (not the fastest way) and if your son wanted to pick up a more 'industry standard' piece of software for video editing it will happily support davinci resolve (it's free)

If you do go with a windows pc, the one thing I would try to ensure is that you go with an nvidia card with cuda... it's far better supported by software that can make use of gpu acceleration (davinci resolve does for example)

 

[Haz123]

Forum rules do not allow us to mention competitors or link to other websites so I will pick one of the cheapest laptops available on OCUK so you can see what is available.

Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop

Order Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

It will not be pretty and it may be quite loud but will work and has a 2 year warranty. The main problem with the above laptop is the 512mb of storage, that will get filled up very very quickly with video projects and you will need to add storage. A normal tower PC is much easier to add storage to than a laptop.

A little over a year ago I picked up a similar spec laptop to the one above for my son, was an Asus one and it works just fine. Was £800 and B grade so this option at that price point will remain available.

 

[MidnightKisses]

You'd be shocked how easy building a pc is, there are no end of tutorials on youtube so I'd maybe spend a bit of time watching some of them... it also wouldn't hurt for your son to have basic knowledge of how to build/upgrade the pc because it would save money long term.
The reason being is that generally speaking you'll end up losing about £200, sometimes more, of your budget if you have it built for you, an upgrade to the pc could also end up costing money each time too... that's a pretty large chunk when you're aiming for around £1000 for everything.


Don't go back to that new local business, they're just going to waste your money... that spec wouldn't have been borderline for what you're asking for 5 years ago let alone now....

I can't even believe I'm going to suggest this as an idea (I'm heavily pc master race lol)... what about a m2 mac mini (son's in school so education discount).... it plays minecraft and fortnite, it will run movavi in rosetta emulation (not the fastest way) and if your son wanted to pick up a more 'industry standard' piece of software for video editing it will happily support davinci resolve (it's free)

If you do go with a windows pc, the one thing I would try to ensure is that you go with an nvidia card with cuda... it's far better supported by software that can make use of gpu acceleration (davinci resolve does for example)

Thank you for all the info and advise. I'm going to keep learning as much as I can.

 

[MidnightKisses]

Forum rules do not allow us to mention competitors or link to other websites so I will pick one of the cheapest laptops available on OCUK so you can see what is available.

Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop

Order Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

It will not be pretty and it may be quite loud but will work and has a 2 year warranty. The main problem with the above laptop is the 512mb of storage, that will get filled up very very quickly with video projects and you will need to add storage. A normal tower PC is much easier to add storage to than a laptop.

A little over a year ago I picked up a similar spec laptop to the one above for my son, was an Asus one and it works just fine. Was £800 and B grade so this option at that price point will remain available.

Ok thank you

 

[Gray2233]

Forum rules do not allow us to mention competitors or link to other websites so I will pick one of the cheapest laptops available on OCUK so you can see what is available.

Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop

Order Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

It will not be pretty and it may be quite loud but will work and has a 2 year warranty. The main problem with the above laptop is the 512mb of storage, that will get filled up very very quickly with video projects and you will need to add storage. A normal tower PC is much easier to add storage to than a laptop.

A little over a year ago I picked up a similar spec laptop to the one above for my son, was an Asus one and it works just fine. Was £800 and B grade so this option at that price point will remain available.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x MSI Katana GF76 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 17.3" FHD 144Hz, Intel i7-12700H Gaming Laptop (SKU: LT-2H2-MS) = £949.99

Total: £957.98 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

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Alternative from a better known company, I would look into getting an extended warranty if at all possible.

Better specs and a bit prettier on the eye for the extra £100.

An external drive would be easy to add and not be bank breaking.

 

[tamzzy]

512mb of storage

1995 called and they want their IDE PATA hard drive back

 

[lsg1r]

Thank you for all the info and advise. I'm going to keep learning as much as I can.

I've put together something I would be looking to build if it was me... it's a little over budget and doesn't include windows (you can run the windows insider version for free or get a cheap license) but I'm sure some others might tweak it here or there. I can't vouch for all the parts personally but they 'should' be good quality in most cases. Remember this is without paying the 'build it for me tax', having said that if you shop around (not that we can suggest anywhere) you may get some offers which are similar to this sort of price range.

And in case anyone is curious why I went matx... size considerations and the potential to downsize it to media pc or server if it ever gets upgraded with a new motherboard etc..... plus I just prefer matx

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5700X Eight Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D1-AM) = £209.99 - 8 cores, 16 threads - plenty of performance for games and video encoding
• 1 x Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-58U-GI) = £99.95 - cheapest 'good' b550 motherboard
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB (2x8GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK16GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4BW-CS) = £49.99
• 1 x WD Blue SN570 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T3B0C) (SKU: HD-589-WD) = £53.99 - tried to fit 2 in budget but couldn't quite make it, grab a second if you can.
• 1 x Alpenfohn Ben Nevis CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: HS-048-AL) = £21.94 - can't say if this is good or not, I've gone water cooled, but it should be fine.
• 1 x MSI 24" PRO MP242C 1920x1080 VA 75Hz 4ms Curved Widescreen Gaming Monitor (SKU: MO-01X-MS) = £108.95 - I would have prefered a flat screen rather than a curved one but cost was a factor.
• 1 x Logitech Wireless Desktop MK270 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse (920-004523) (SKU: KB-252-LG) = £29.99 - I prefer wireless and it's logitech so should be sound.
• 1 x Kolink Citadel Mesh Micro-ATX Case - Black (SKU: CA-051-KK) = £52.99 - plenty of air flow to keep stuff cool
• 1 x Super Flower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black (SKU: CA-004-SF) = £64.99 - super flower had a good rep last I checked
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge LHR 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-12G-ZT) = £320.00 - should be more than enough for 1080p gaming and has plenty of vram if used with gpu encoding etc
• 3 x Arctic P12 PWM PST Black Fan - 120mm (SKU: FG-04H-AR) = £5.95 - to fill the 3 slots in the case without any fans.

Total: £1,042.62 (includes delivery: £11.99)​

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[MidnightKisses]

Forum rules do not allow us to mention competitors or link to other websites so I will pick one of the cheapest laptops available on OCUK so you can see what is available.

Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop

Order Medion Erazer Deputy P25 NVIDIA RTX 3060, 16GB, 15.6" 144Hz FHD, AMD R5-5600H Gaming Laptop now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

It will not be pretty and it may be quite loud but will work and has a 2 year warranty. The main problem with the above laptop is the 512mb of storage, that will get filled up very very quickly with video projects and you will need to add storage. A normal tower PC is much easier to add storage to than a laptop.

A little over a year ago I picked up a similar spec laptop to the one above for my son, was an Asus one and it works just fine. Was £800 and B grade so this option at that price point will remain available.

Ok thank you

 

[MidnightKisses]

I've put together something I would be looking to build if it was me... it's a little over budget and doesn't include windows (you can run the windows insider version for free or get a cheap license) but I'm sure some others might tweak it here or there. I can't vouch for all the parts personally but they 'should' be good quality in most cases. Remember this is without paying the 'build it for me tax', having said that if you shop around (not that we can suggest anywhere) you may get some offers which are similar to this sort of price range.

And in case anyone is curious why I went matx... size considerations and the potential to downsize it to media pc or server if it ever gets upgraded with a new motherboard etc..... plus I just prefer matx

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 5700X Eight Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D1-AM) = £209.99 - 8 cores, 16 threads - plenty of performance for games and video encoding
• 1 x Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-58U-GI) = £99.95 - cheapest 'good' b550 motherboard
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB (2x8GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK16GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4BW-CS) = £49.99
• 1 x WD Blue SN570 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T3B0C) (SKU: HD-589-WD) = £53.99 - tried to fit 2 in budget but couldn't quite make it, grab a second if you can.
• 1 x Alpenfohn Ben Nevis CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: HS-048-AL) = £21.94 - can't say if this is good or not, I've gone water cooled, but it should be fine.
• 1 x MSI 24" PRO MP242C 1920x1080 VA 75Hz 4ms Curved Widescreen Gaming Monitor (SKU: MO-01X-MS) = £108.95 - I would have prefered a flat screen rather than a curved one but cost was a factor.
• 1 x Logitech Wireless Desktop MK270 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse (920-004523) (SKU: KB-252-LG) = £29.99 - I prefer wireless and it's logitech so should be sound.
• 1 x Kolink Citadel Mesh Micro-ATX Case - Black (SKU: CA-051-KK) = £52.99 - plenty of air flow to keep stuff cool
• 1 x Super Flower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black (SKU: CA-004-SF) = £64.99 - super flower had a good rep last I checked
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge LHR 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-12G-ZT) = £320.00 - should be more than enough for 1080p gaming and has plenty of vram if used with gpu encoding etc
• 3 x Arctic P12 PWM PST Black Fan - 120mm (SKU: FG-04H-AR) = £5.95 - to fill the 3 slots in the case without any fans.

Total: £1,042.62 (includes delivery: £11.99)​

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​

​

Thank you and thank you for the info under each item, it helps me a lot.

 

[Gray2233]

Thank you and thank you for the info under each item, it helps me a lot.

That's a great build specified if you build yourself. Alternatively if you ring OCUk they'd build it for you for a fee if you give them the list.

 

[MidnightKisses]

Unfortunately, I can't find any recent benchmarks specifically for Movavi, but in their "learning portal" I noticed they refer the reader to Puget, who do a lot of content creation benchmarks.

In their hardware and system requirements pages, they don't seem to place much importance on the the graphics card, so I think a 1650 (or higher) would be fine for now, but this review says:

Movavi Video Editor

User-friendly, inexpensive video editing software

uk.pcmag.com

Nowadays, that's a pretty old system (i7-6700 is from 2015). The CPU in Haz123's spec is much faster than the i7-6700 and a 6500 XT is somewhat faster, so it will be fine for video editing and playing Minecraft or Fortnite.

Thank you

 

[Capitano]

what sort of footage is he recording? If its 4k footage then will require more power to edit and process. as hes doing game footage as well might need a bit more power than the absolute bare bones.