New computer: thoughts? input? avoid? recommendations?

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madcow rocketry
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What are your gaming needs as that’s probably the heaviest workloads you mentioned? Resolution of your monitor, type of game you play? That will be the main factor in hardware choices and budget.

As has been said already, laptops are out unless you want to pay for portability, typically for identical performance to a desktop they are 1.5 to 2 x the price.

Windows 10 is basically the only option unless you are rely into alternative operating systems like Linux. You can download an install disk from Microsoft to install it and buy a activation key online from many places.

Your processor and graphics card will be the big decisions, you want a pair that are well balanced performance wise so they don’t limit each other, and can comfortably do what you currently need with headroom. Until you have a budget and know your performance need it’s hard to say what this pairing will be. Cooling will also be dependent on processor, all in one (AIO) water coolers have become very affordable and are easy to install.

Currently AMD processors put intel to shame, for performance at a budget. graphics wise nvidia has many great offerings as well as AMD however I am less familia with AMDs graphics cards.


For RAM, this will depend on your processor a bit, but 16gb of ddr4 in 2 channels gives room to expand whilst being more than enough for most people’s usage.

Motherboard, will again be dependent on processor.

Storage wise, absolutely get a ssd to run your operating system on and your most used programs and games, 250gb will do but you will fill it fast, go bigger if you can afford. This makes a huge impact on how fast your computer feels. Then get larger standard harddrives for storage of all your data, pictures etc. 1Tb drives are cheep these days.

For the rest, case wise get something with good ventilation, that’s all they rely matters, keyboard, mouse and monitor depends what you have already or if you want to upgrade resolution etc.

I realise I haven’t rely given any specific answers, but the best thing to do is as I said work out a rough budget, what sort of games you will use it for etc, then have a look at what currently is the meta build in your price range, all of the major tech websites have current pc builds for a number of price points and performance levels which will give you a much better idea of what is currently the best hardware.

And remember to be a pro gamer you need RGB LEDs on every single component , and an elite garming mouse mat (also RGB obviously)
 
Lots of good advice here. It looks like you keep your systems a while, so my advice would be to pick a higher end card that allows for growth and of your gaming needs over the next foreseeable window, but also a system that allows you to replace the card (not a laptop) as your needs continue to grow past that window. I often find that nVidia offers a much higher performance level and longevity of cards, even though they are a bit more expensive. I've had too many Radeons crap out just months out of warranty (Asus and Gigabyte cards). I'm intrigued by the latest AMD generation, but had a very bad experience with my first 2900X. It would not stay stable with either it's stock cooler or my Predator 240 at stock settings. It needed more voltage out of the box to just boot and run a stress test, this wasn't even overclocked or "optimized".

Maybe this new series is better. I returned mine and got a replacement. The replacement part was good in the very same system, so it was definitely the CPU, so I am a bit wary. It took about 8 weeks to get a new part on warranty replacement.

I'm active on the overclocking forums and have seen quite a few "quality control" posts over similar items (people Undervolting their parts to see how much margin is in them for aging to find that there is very little to none, meaning that over time if nothing it done to voltage or speed, that part will fail as mine did out of the box). Ryzen 3 appears to be a bit better on the forum talk, but I am worried that a year or two down the road, I might be out of warranty and out of luck with mine. But hey, in those 3 years I'm saving money right? :)
 
Here is what I did for computers - upgrades this time 'round.

First laptop
Lenovo x240 ultrabook with core i7 processor $100 (ebay)
256gb M.2 ssd drive $50 (Amazon)
1tb ssd drive $85 (Newegg)

Second Laptop
Lenovo T440p $150 (ebay)
Upgraded with quad core i7 processor $90 (ebay)
256gb M.2 ssd drive $50 (Amazon)
1tb ssd drive $85 (Newegg)

Lenovo laptop docking station $21 (ebay)

Upgraded my desktop PC with a Ryzen 2700x processor $170 (newegg)
Dual 27" 1080p monitors 2x $127 Costco

The cool thing about these old Lenovo laptops - they are coming out of service from large corporations = plentiful and cheap on ebay and still very powerful. They are usually hard-coded with a Microsoft key - meaning you can load Windows 10 Pro on them for free.

If you want something better or newer - I recommend https://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php

For more info about buying and upgrading old Lenovo laptops - search YouTube for x240 upgrade or T440p upgrade - tons of info available.
 
scsager said:
Here is what I did for computers - upgrades this time 'round.

First laptop
Lenovo x240 ultrabook with core i7 processor $100 (ebay)
256gb M.2 ssd drive $50 (Amazon)
1tb ssd drive $85 (Newegg)

Second Laptop
Lenovo T440p $150 (ebay)
Upgraded with quad core i7 processor $90 (ebay)
256gb M.2 ssd drive $50 (Amazon)
1tb ssd drive $85 (Newegg)

Lenovo laptop docking station $21 (ebay)

Upgraded my desktop PC with a Ryzen 2700x processor $170 (newegg)
Dual 27" 1080p monitors 2x $127 Costco

The cool thing about these old Lenovo laptops - they are coming out of service from large corporations = plentiful and cheap on ebay and still very powerful. They are usually hard-coded with a Microsoft key - meaning you can load Windows 10 Pro on them for free.

If you want something better or newer - I recommend https://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php

For more info about buying and upgrading old Lenovo laptops - search YouTube for x240 upgrade or T440p upgrade - tons of info available.
Click to expand...
I had a Sager at one point back in the day. It was actually pretty decent... is that your company? (noticed the same last name)
 
i'm an asus fanboy, myself. got my kids a couple tuf laptops (milspec stuff, to some extent, if i remember the docs proper) and they're bangin.' i like amd chipset, rather than intel, though the nvidia 30 stuff is better than the radeon equiv (i run a 6700 xt, which pushes everything, but there's some issues), according to every benchmark i've seen. if i had to do it again, which i can't 'cause i work at arby's, i'd get AT LEAST an nvidia 3060 graphics card. don't skimp on your graphics. other manufacturers that i like include acer, msi, and lenovo. i detest dell (long history of experience) and view hp with some disdain. if you search online for refurbs, you will find most are dell and hp.
 
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Pappy said:
if you search online for refurbs, you will find most are dell and hp.
Click to expand...
I bought a refurb HP desktop 1 1/2 years ago and it has less than 20 hours on it and now won't output anything out the graphics port. POS. I guess you don't get much for $150.00 🤬
 
I recently bought a Lenovo E15 from Lenovo. It was one of their on sale items. 15.6" touch screen, the better i5 CPU, 16 GB RAM, and a 500 GB PCIe solid state hard drive. It has a great alpha-numeric keyboard so it feels more like a desktop keyboard. I paid $778 for it and am very pleased with it.
 
Last week bought a Lenovo "gaming" laptop with an I7 processor (whatever that is), touchscreen 2560x1080, 32GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, $1200. It's running Win 11 which is showing a little weird behavior. Example: I printed a document, messed around a bit, went to print another document and was told that the paper was out (not even close). Rebooted, and was told that the printer doesn't work (OH NOOOO!!). Went to Epson and loaded the latest driver, and all is well. Until the next bug shows up.

Two minor issues but important to me: First, Win 11 forces the taskbar to the bottom of the screen. I prefer it on the right side. Second, opening most programs the window does not fill the screen by default, it opens in a smaller window. Which I have to expand to full screen. Every time.

Best,
Terry
PS: I found my Win 3.1 diskettes. Seven 1.44 MB floppies. Win 11 OTOH takes up a few hundred GIGAbytes, ten thousand times as much space. And bloatware.
 
figure out what you want to do with your computer then build it yourself

I myself would lean toward a PC with a full size AT motherboard case
AMD Processor , solid state hard drives several small hard drives instead of 1
big that way if one goes bad you don't lose the complete ball of wax. And make
copy hard drives as back up. NVIDIA video card. And no overclocking of the CPU as it
voids the CPUs warranty Newegg is a good source for parts.

Building a PC will be a good learning experience and worth the effort

Bobby
 
Pappy said:
i'm an asus fanboy, myself. got my kids a couple tuf laptops (milspec stuff, to some extent, if i remember the docs proper) and they're bangin.' i like amd chipset, rather than intel, though the nvidia 30 stuff is better than the radeon equiv (i run a 6700 xt, which pushes everything, but there's some issues), according to every benchmark i've seen. if i had to do it again, which i can't 'cause i work at arby's, i'd get AT LEAST an nvidia 3060 graphics card. don't skimp on your graphics. other manufacturers that i like include acer, msi, and lenovo. i detest dell (long history of experience) and view hp with some disdain. if you search online for refurbs, you will find most are dell and hp.
Click to expand...
I'll second this. I recently bought another Asus gaming laptop. $1200 list price, but my wife bought it for $849 at Sams or BJs (not sure which). Almost zero bloatware(and what is there is easily removed with just a few clicks), already put an additional Samsung 1TB hard drive in it, and it's running like a well oiled machine. We already have 2 other Asus 'gaming' laptops that are well over 5 years old, both still going with never a hitch from day 1. In this case, I'd say that we've gotten what we wanted most: capability, stability and longevity.......and we're not 'gamers'.
 
Absolutely build it yourself - the only hard part is getting the front panel buttons and lights correct.
The pinout of that header is pretty much the only thing I need to lookup when building a machine.

Highly recommend TWO SSD's. One for boot and one for TEMP. Move your pagefile, TEMP and TMP variables to point to the temp drive. Point any application caches there too. Put all the paging wear on that and save your boot drive.

My system has three SSD's that are as fast as possible.
The SLOWEST is my boot drive.
The fastest is the TEMP drive.
The other is my WORK drive - where I unload photos/videos and edit before moving them to rotating storage for prosperity.
 
scsager said:
Here is what I did for computers - upgrades this time 'round.

First laptop
Lenovo x240 ultrabook with core i7 processor $100 (ebay)
256gb M.2 ssd drive $50 (Amazon)
1tb ssd drive $85 (Newegg)

Second Laptop
Lenovo T440p $150 (ebay)
Upgraded with quad core i7 processor $90 (ebay)
256gb M.2 ssd drive $50 (Amazon)
1tb ssd drive $85 (Newegg)

Lenovo laptop docking station $21 (ebay)

Upgraded my desktop PC with a Ryzen 2700x processor $170 (newegg)
Dual 27" 1080p monitors 2x $127 Costco

The cool thing about these old Lenovo laptops - they are coming out of service from large corporations = plentiful and cheap on ebay and still very powerful. They are usually hard-coded with a Microsoft key - meaning you can load Windows 10 Pro on them for free.

If you want something better or newer - I recommend https://www.sagernotebook.com/home.php

For more info about buying and upgrading old Lenovo laptops - search YouTube for x240 upgrade or T440p upgrade - tons of info available.
Click to expand...
Great solution but you are way over my budget. I buy used Dell Latitudes off Ebay, ie E6530 4 core, 8 processor w/hyperthreading, 8-16 gb ram, build up my own system on an SSD, 1TB. Ends up being just over $130. Plenty good for my needs. If you only want 2 cores then buy E4310s for well under $100.
 
wirelessenabled said:
Great solution but you are way over my budget. I buy used Dell Latitudes off Ebay, ie E6530 4 core, 8 processor w/hyperthreading, 8-16 gb ram, build up my own system on an SSD, 1TB. Ends up being just over $130. Plenty good for my needs. If you only want 2 cores then buy E4310s for well under $100.
Click to expand...
That may work for you, but Solidworks will bring a processor and GPU to its knees pretty quickly especially if anything else is running in the background. My current machine is a 7-8 year old i5-3570K, its barely hanging in there, new system will be sometime around Feb 2023.
 
There are incredible Xeon processors from previous generations available. I'm building a e52650v2 xeon system with a sub-100 buck mobo, and memory from previous builds. It's 10/20 cores, and has been oced to 3ghz.
 
This thread went from 2019 to 2022, which is like a 20+ year jump in rocket technology.

I built a new desktop in 2009 with an Intel Q9400. This is a quad core processor and I overclocked it to 4GHz. I'm still using that computer but I'm about ready to replace it. It only has 32bit OS and 4GB of RAM, USB2 ports on the motherboard and external WIFI dongle. It has been upgraded to SSD and it still runs reasonably well for what I need.
About 2009 I bought a new Dell business class laptop and kept it until 1.5 years ago when I replaced it with an HP Omen gaming laptop. I have gamed on it but usually use it as a normal laptop. A gaming laptop comes with a good screen and a good cooling system for the CPU which was a deficiency of my Dell laptop. The Dell still runs and I have used it on occasion when I needed a backup.
Not being into gaming, I'm not interested in building a desktop with discrete graphics. I'm thinking in terms of the Ryzen 5700G which is low priced now and should do what I need. As mentioned I typically don't do my changing of my desktop after it is built except for changing storage. My current desktop got switched to an SSD main drive and also has a 4TB spinning drive for file storage, that is hard to do with a laptop or I could consider replacing it with a laptop and a docking station to run 2 monitors.
 
The Lenovo I got in 2019 has been awesome. The one I got in 2021 has been the biggest POS I've ever had to deal with as a computer. I'm not convinced the supply chain problems have gotten much better. Roll the dice on whether you thing things will recover and get back to how they were, stay the same beyond where it's worth waiting, or get worse in the future.
 
SolarYellow said:
The Lenovo I got in 2019 has been awesome. The one I got in 2021 has been the biggest POS I've ever had to deal with as a computer. I'm not convinced the supply chain problems have gotten much better. Roll the dice on whether you thing things will recover and get back to how they were, stay the same beyond where it's worth waiting, or get worse in the future.
Click to expand...
What line Lenovo did you buy in 2021? So far the only truly reliable Lenovo's have been the business class, the ThinkPads & the ThinkCentres.
I was an IT guy at a Community College. I retired a couple of years ago. When I did need Lenovo support for ThinkPads or ThinkCentres when I called the Lenovo Support numbers I ended up talking to someone in Atlanta who worked for IBM. IBM started the Think lines and I believe they still have some input on what Lenovo makes with that brand name. Durable, reliable computers.
 
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Go to Cybertron and build/order your perfect computer.
Talk to Bill Workman and get the best deal possible.
I can't say this enough, because over the years this has been the best place I've done business with.
They stand behind their systems, honor warranty and pay shipping both ways if there is a problem and don't cost you a problem.
You get what you want or what you can afford and it's the fastest, longest lasting computer you will ever own.
How many time must I say this?
I will keep saying it until ya all listen and make the call to Bill Workman!
 
dr wogz said:
So, the annual Christmas bonus this year should be put towards a new household computer. Our current model is old (abut 7 yrs) and is showing its age / running slow, especially with Windows 10...

The question is:
Desktop or laptop?
Click to expand...

I would start with the usual questions:
  1. Budget constraints - do you have ANY?
    • If yes, trend towards used and desktops
    • If no, get a new laptop, max out memory, SSD hard disk and graphics card
  2. With either laptop of desktop, you will likely need quality monitor (I like two per workstation, some prefer 3, kids are OK with 1).
    • Will you ever need the compute power on the road (laptop)?
    • Have you ever upgraded your laptops to prolong their useful life (desktop)?
    • You can spend more money on quality monitors that double as 4K TVs, then the laptop itself!
  3. Build or buy off-the-shelf?
    • Do you want a challenge/project, or want things to work out of the box? Again, entirely up to you.
  4. Windows or Mac?
    • Most people have strong preferences around this question, especially if they work with graphics or photo/video editing.
    • Some like a new challenge and flip-flop.
dr wogz said:
It's only the wife & I who use it. We game quite a bit with it, and she does her office & business stuff on it.. I do the occasional CAD stuff, and also do photo editing. So, there is a need for good / current graphics & 3D capability. And, I've always been a Nvidia guy, but had issues when we changed over to win 10.. We would plug in a keyboard & mouse, and our larger monitor when at home, which would be most of the time..
Click to expand...

Why not stick with what you know works for you?!
Just get a new desktop, and call it done.
Unless you want a challenge (DIY build), or want to try a higher-end laptop (Lenovo, or Precision)

dr wogz said:
I've typically had a custom PC built for me, by the company's IT supplier*: choosing the video card, RAM & such.. But is that still necessary?
Click to expand...

Absolutely not, but many of us find it fun to speck out our own builds.
The end result is not THAT different, but the choose your own parts journey is either more engaging and fun (for some), or frustrating and confusing (for most).

dr wogz said:
Can a laptop rival a desktop PC for graphics speed for gaming & some CAD work? And at the same cost?
Click to expand...

Hell no!

dr wogz said:
* I used to work at a small company, so we had our IT needs farmed out. I could get a deal on a new PC.. Now, I'm at a company that has an internal IT dept.. I will ask them for their opinion, but want a wider audience / opinion poll since I'll be 'going at it alone'.
Click to expand...
I've gone through dozens of laptops from work, as had my wife. My recurring favorite are ThinkPads. X1-series for when you travel (with windows). P1-series for when you don't (Linux).

Having said that, my wife is currently on a Dell, one of my kids build his own windows workstation from parts (great learning experience) but mostly uses MacBook Air for school, and my other kid lives off iPads and Mac Cube.

Have fun shopping (don't overthink this)!
 
Would like to mention, because Moore's law has slowed down dramatically over the past decade, a computer built as much as 10 years ago can be completely usable. I'm typing this on a used 16 GB Dell Optiplex I7-4790 that I got on Ebay for only $250. It's a business grade, not consumer grade machine, very durable. Geekbench scores show it to be not far behind a current I3. There are also Youtube videos of young people taking 10 year old machines and putting modern graphics cards in them to turn them into very adequate gaming machines.

By or build new if you want to, but technological maturation means obsolescence is less of a problem then it used to be.
 
mlytle0 said:
Would like to mention, because Moore's law has slowed down dramatically over the past decade, a computer built as much as 10 years ago can be completely usable. I'm typing this on a used 16 GB Dell Optiplex I7-4790
Click to expand...
My desktop is reasonably powerful and still useful, it was built long before the i7-4790, actually before any i3/i5/i7 was invented. It has 4 cores but only 4 threads. There are problems with older computers, some that are easier to overcome than others. My machine does not have wifi so I have to use a dongle, and you have to do a little searching to find good ones. The motherboard only has USB 2 ports. I have an add-in USB 3 card that works reasonably well, but I had to go through 3 different ones to find one that worked well. And the hard drive interface is slower than modern boards with M.2 slots. I've upgraded to an SSD and that helped a lot but still probably not as fast as a newer motherboard. And I'm still running 32 bit Windows and 4GB of RAM. It would be difficult and expensive to upgrade my RAM because I would have to hunt up a much older style of DDR RAM. I still use the computer but I'm to a point where I'm willing to just build a new one. For what I want, relatively modest hardware and no discrete graphics, it will be about $800: Ryzen 5700G, 16 or 32GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and 4TB spinning drive, basic motherboard and case, simple air cooler.
 
Take your old system and stick Linux Mint on it after you get your new machine. Yeah you can't use WinBlows stuff on it without using an emulator but Mint or any form of Linux runs snappier on older hardware and a lot AND I MEAN A LOT of software is available free or minimal cost.
On a Slackware system with the WINE emulator installed, I ran all of the programming software for all my deployment devices with no problems once debugged. Windows games don't work well under emulation though I haven't tried in years. Am not a gamer anyways. Even had Rocksim running on a linux machine just fine.
I was tied to Microsoft stuff at work so lived with it. When I retired, I kept my two older laptops and put Linux on them. I asked and the company didn't want them back so I wasn't stealing from them. I believed it was justified as the old machines wouldn't run their proprietary software fast enough. Shoot, I'm typing this message on a measly dual core Fujitsu Lifebook T Series. Kurt
 

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