# Choosing a Desktop PC without getting 'too into it'



## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

I'm after a new Desktop PC. I'm not very well up on all the latest tech and stats on PC's and tbh although I find it all very interesting I just don't have the time to research and learn all the ins and outs of the various components to enable me to configure my own PC to suit so I'm wanting an 'off the shelf' product.

Uses will mainly be internet surfing, light photo/video editing and possibly a touch of gaming (nothing Major games wise but if it could cope I would probably start gaming a bit)

Main use will be for online selling so although this won't be too strenuous on it I need to be able to flick through various windows quickly such as my selling sites, paypal, photo editor etc.

Budget can be up to £800 not including accesories/screen etc. although if there is only a mild performance advantage between say a £600 and an £800 one I might cheap out a bit.

Any help/advive/guidance would be greatly appreciated! :thumb:


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

I'll have a look for you tonight and send you some links across :thumb:

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## J306TD (May 19, 2008)

Currently looking into a self built pc for my mum. 

You have a really healthy budget. If you don't fancy self building. How about looking at websites that do?

I'd recommend at least an Intel Core i5 processor maybe even an i7 on that budget. 

Also an SSD is the way to go for speed but also maybe a HDD for data storage 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S7


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## Wrigit (May 2, 2007)

In the same boat, will be watching with interest


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2017)

Mac Mini or Intel NUC could be worth looking at, depending on your OS choice. Gaming might be a bit of push with these though. Maybe think of a console for gaming instead?


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Franzpan said:


> I'm after a new Desktop PC. I'm not very well up on all the latest tech and stats on PC's and tbh although I find it all very interesting I just don't have the time to research and learn all the ins and outs of the various components to enable me to configure my own PC to suit so I'm wanting an 'off the shelf' product.
> 
> Uses will mainly be internet surfing, light photo/video editing and possibly a touch of gaming (nothing Major games wise but if it could cope I would probably start gaming a bit)
> 
> ...


What games do you want to play, and what screen resolution monitor do you have / want?

Any particular storage capacity requirements and is physical size a concern for you?

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## DrEskimo (Jan 7, 2016)

As above, £800 would get you a very capable PC. I built mine about 2yrs ago now and sourced some stuff on sales and some off eBay. Its got a quad core CPU (Intel i7 4770k) mid tier GPU (GTX770) and 2 fast drives (SSDs, one for Mac and one for Windows) and one slow large capacity drive (HDD) and 8gb RAM. This cost me about £900....

Can handle pretty much anything! I have a 1440p screen so looking to upgrade the GPU eventually, but it does just fine. Still outperforms a console and is overkill for anything you list. 

I would say about £500 would get you what you need, and you could add about £200 to it if you want a decent graphics card to do gaming. That would do you fine for 1080p gaming on most games.


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## Shiny (Apr 23, 2007)

Budget for a decent monitor if you haven't already, I bought an LG Ultrawide a year ago and it is awesome having the desktop space for photo editing etc.

Me & my boys have build two pc's in recent years (for them, not me ) and it is relatively easy to do, so don't rule it out.

I'll probably stand corrected, but from what i understand an i7 doesn't really give much advantage an i5 as far as gaming is concerned, something to do with the way each core delivers power, although i7 is better for serious multitasking. So get the fastest i5 you can afford. Some people are still running serious gaming rigs on old i5s.

Whether building or buying pre-built, spend as much as you can afford on the graphics card, games are constantly developing and it also future proofs you somewhat. Can't beat running a decent game at full resolution.

Then RAM, make sure it has a decent amount, although you can always expand this later.

An SSD for the operating system and HDD for storage.

If you see a pc you fancy, go to https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/ and build one to the same spec and see if you can make a good saving (no forgetting fans, psu, case, o/s etc). Handy little site and it checks compatibility for people like me who aren't sure what cpu fits what socket board.


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

I would always advocate having a go and building one yourself, it really isn't that hard once you have component selection sorted

Having said that, if you literally want to plug and play, then there are plenty of companies out there that will sell you prebuilt machines
Scan are superb and really well rated

I think this machine fits your needs pretty well and is very well balanced. Will handle 1080p gaming on all of the AAA titles ATM and in the future with no issues. You can of course change / add options if you want, and scan have a great range of other components / peripherals to add on top of you want

https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/shared/6e5f7218-ea17-4eb8-b501-ebfc09a91f12

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## quaver84 (May 10, 2016)

A reliable mid range desktop PC...

http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/desktops/ideacentre/aio-500/aio-510s/

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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

quaver84 said:


> A reliable mid range desktop PC...
> 
> http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/desktops/ideacentre/aio-500/aio-510s/
> 
> Sent from my SGP712 using Tapatalk


I wouldn't really class that as a desktop or midrange I'm afraid

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## DrEskimo (Jan 7, 2016)

Hereisphilly said:


> I wouldn't really class that as a desktop or midrange I'm afraid
> 
> Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk


Yea I would be pretty peeved if I spent £700 and all I had to show for it was a i5 with integrated graphics, a 5000rpm HDD and a cheap looking 23" 1080p monitor....


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## DrEskimo (Jan 7, 2016)

Shiny said:


> Budget for a decent monitor if you haven't already, I bought an LG Ultrawide a year ago and it is awesome having the desktop space for photo editing etc.
> 
> Me & my boys have build two pc's in recent years (for them, not me ) and it is relatively easy to do, so don't rule it out.
> 
> ...


Yea that's what I understand from the i7. The i5 desktop CPU will be quad core without the hyper threading, and you will see no difference in gaming performance or day to day tasks between them.

I run a lot of very large data simulations, so that's why I have it.


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## davies20 (Feb 22, 2009)

Watching this with interest. Our trusty 8 year old Dell is starting to struggle abit now, especially after the hideous windows 10 Auto install 

I'm after all mentioned bar with the gaming side. Never thought of running an SSD for OS & HDD for storage, be interesting to see how that works.


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

DrEskimo said:


> Yea that's what I understand from the i7. The i5 desktop CPU will be quad core without the hyper threading, and you will see no difference in gaming performance or day to day tasks between them.
> 
> I run a lot of very large data simulations, so that's why I have it.


Yeah that's correct, nearly all games do not see any noticeable improvement in performance past a quad core CPU. What is more important is the frequency of that core, which is why an overclockable i5 gives a gamer the most bang for their buck

i7s have hyperthreading on each core (which means you get 2 logical cores for every 1 physical) and are important in other areas such as simulations, encoding or other large compute based tasks that will take every core available



davies20 said:


> Watching this with interest. Our trusty 8 year old Dell is starting to struggle abit now, especially after the hideous windows 10 Auto install
> 
> I'm after all mentioned bar with the gaming side. Never thought of running an SSD for OS & HDD for storage, be interesting to see how that works.


If all you want is something to browse the web, play videos, office etc etc and maybe a bit of light gaming, a modern pentium or i3 will more than be enough, especially when paired with an ssd

The single biggest improvement you can make to how a PC feels and operates in day to day use is not an incrementally faster CPU or more ram, (as all of the high street will have you think) but is in fact adding an ssd

Rotating hard drives are by nature slow as the head has to physically move (seek) to the various sectors to access the relevant data, and it's his access time that makes a PC feel slow. With an ssd it's instant and everything feels instant too

It's dead easy to run multiple drives in a PC, just grab an ssd that's at least 250gb in size for Windows, and run everything off that

Store music, films, TV, photos etc on the hard drive where access times aren't a problem, and away you go

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## Alan W (May 11, 2006)

davies20 said:


> Watching this with interest. Our trusty 8 year old Dell is starting to struggle abit now, especially after the hideous windows 10 Auto install
> 
> I'm after all mentioned bar with the gaming side. Never thought of running an SSD for OS & HDD for storage, be interesting to see how that works.





Hereisphilly said:


> If all you want is something to browse the web, play videos, office etc etc and maybe a bit of light gaming, a modern pentium or i3 will more than be enough, especially when paired with an ssd.


I've just bought THIS for a little over £300 and it seems great value for the small outlay. It meets my modest needs and I may add a 2nd SSD as mentioned by Philly and may be of interest.

Alan W


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Alan W said:


> I've just bought THIS for a little over £300 and it seems great value for the small outlay. It meets my modest needs and I may add a 2nd SSD as mentioned by Philly and may be of interest.
> 
> Alan W


Yeah, looks good for the price, fine for 90% people who just want a PC, will be pretty nippy too

You may find that 120gb ssd fills up pretty quickly, but it sounds like you have that in hand too :thumb:

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## pxr5 (Feb 13, 2012)

Hereisphilly said:


> The single biggest improvement you can make to how a PC feels and operates in day to day use is not an incrementally faster CPU or more ram, (as all of the high street will have you think) but is in fact adding an ssd
> 
> Rotating hard drives are by nature slow as the head has to physically move (seek) to the various sectors to access the relevant data, and it's his access time that makes a PC feel slow. With an ssd it's instant and everything feels instant too
> 
> ...


Excellent advice there. When I got my last PC, I did a bit of quick research and came to the same conclusion. In fact I specifically chose a PC that only had an SSD, just enough for Windows and any applications. After that an external could do for any additional storage. In my own set up I went the NAS route and have a Synology as storage for everything and everyone, even remotely if I wish.


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

pxr5 said:


> Excellent advice there. When I got my last PC, I did a bit of quick research and came to the same conclusion. In fact I specifically chose a PC that only had an SSD, just enough for Windows and any applications. After that an external could do for any additional storage. In my own set up I went the NAS route and have a Synology as storage for everything and everyone, even remotely if I wish.


Yeah I've build my PCs myself for over 10 years now, and splashed a fortune on a 120gb ssd back in 2008, and the performance difference even back then was unreal

I've always had one in every one of my machines since then and absolutely hate it when I have to use rotating media as an OS drive in anything else

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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

Thanks for all the advice so far guys :thumb: 

Regarding building my own, I would love to but I just don't have the time unfortunately. Ideally I'll get a decent spec plug and play now and over time be able to upgrade it myself as technology progresses and if my demands from it change.

On the gaming side of things, this isn't a huge factor. I haven't gamed in years but that's down to my PC slowing and not being able to cope. I'll not be one to be buying all the latest releases but I would like the option of Playing COD online for half an hour here and there when I have time.


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## davies20 (Feb 22, 2009)

Thanks for the advice guys, folk on here always manage to impress me with their knowledge!

Out of interest, what sites do you guys recommend for browsing/ buying a plug & play desk top.


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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

DrEskimo said:


> Yea that's what I understand from the i7. The i5 desktop CPU will be quad core without the hyper threading, and you will see no difference in gaming performance or day to day tasks between them.
> 
> I run a lot of very large data simulations, so that's why I have it.


Monitor wise I've got some sort of LG atm. Maaged to bag it for nowt and its brand new, so will run with it for a few months at least. If I do take in to gaming in a bigger way I can invest in s decent one down the line :thumb:


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## J306TD (May 19, 2008)

This is the set up i went for

Intel Core i3 7300 4ghz processor

Corsair Vengeance 2400mhz 8gb ram

Samsung 850 Evo 250gb ssd

Gigabyte B250M-DS3H motherboard 



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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

J306TD said:


> This is the set up i went for
> 
> Intel Core i3 7300 4ghz processor
> 
> ...


Nicely balanced that, plenty of headroom if you want to add a GPU at a later date

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## Shiny (Apr 23, 2007)

This is the spec we went with for my lad a year back with some help from Hereisphilly :thumb:. Bought it all from Scan (other than the RAM and SSD which i got in a black friday deal) and it came to sub £800 at the time.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PPZrNG


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Shiny said:


> This is the spec we went with for my lad a year back with some help from Hereisphilly :thumb:. Bought it all from Scan (other than the RAM and SSD which i got in a black friday deal) and it came to sub £800 at the time.
> 
> https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PPZrNG


I knew I recognised that build from somewhere!

Everything go alright then?

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## Shiny (Apr 23, 2007)

Yeah, it's superb, handles everything (and he lives on it).

He's a proper geek, with it all linked into his Nvidia Shield, laptop etc. and using his phone for temp monitoring and so on. I get lost by it all to be honest :lol:


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## Delboy_Trotter (Jun 7, 2007)

I'd build based on bang/buck, but its not particularly challenging for me as i work with computers and servers everyday

If you want to spec, but not build id be looking to Novatech or Overclockers as they (for a fee) will build it up for you from some base specs at each level.

If i was building middle of the road id go i5, 16gb RAM, reasonable GFX card, SSD for the OS and HDD for storage 

Having said that if it was for me id be getting into nVme's and even building off a server chassis, but im a sadist.lol


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## DrEskimo (Jan 7, 2016)

Heres my build 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/DrEskimo/builds/

As you can see, did some minor mods to make it colour match....naturally my OCD transcends to other areas...!


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

If we're in the business of show and tell...

Yes I know I've got a ridiculous amount of rad space 5 x 140mm and 2 x 120mm but I'm chopping cards around and only running one atm until I can get some more funds to jump back up to sli

Excuse the poor photos



















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## DLGWRX02 (Apr 6, 2010)

Ide have one of these, if the wife would let me....









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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

I'm coming round to the idea of building my own now. We went and got a laptop so that takes the pressure off needing something 'now'.

I've now got the freedom of being able to do more research in to parts etc. to be able to build my own. Still sticking to the original budget, going to build something which can handle the basics really well and then I'll upgrade on the graphics and things for gaming as I go along.


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## Talidan (Sep 2, 2014)

Good read this thinking of building my own soon.

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## GleemSpray (Jan 26, 2014)

DLGWRX02 said:


> Ide have one of these, if the wife would let me....


If I had my pc components exposed to the air this way, I wouldn't have such an elaborate water cooling set-up.... Would get same (or better) results from a regular heatsink set up with a wall mounted desk fan gently blowing across the whole set up, I reckon.

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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

Its impossible to stick to a budget when looking at components. With each component I'm finding myself thinking sure the next model up is only an extra £50 but over 5 or 6 items that's an extra £300


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Franzpan said:


> Its impossible to stick to a budget when looking at components. With each component I'm finding myself thinking sure the next model up is only an extra £50 but over 5 or 6 items that's an extra £300


When people ask me to put a PC together for them, I always always ask them what their budget is, as that's the limiting factor

There is always something slightly better for slightly more money up till you reach about 10k!

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## Talidan (Sep 2, 2014)

Franzpan said:


> Its impossible to stick to a budget when looking at components. With each component I'm finding myself thinking sure the next model up is only an extra £50 but over 5 or 6 items that's an extra £300


Hahah that's exactly what I'm doing oooh but the next gpu is only £60 more and then oooh might as well stick a extra 8gb of ram and extra terabyte memory and why not bang a ssd in, before you know it's jobs gone out of the window.

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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

Intel I5 7600k £229 vs I7 7700k £329

I probably won't notice the difference between them, but I'm thinking its worth spending £100 just to 'future proof' my machine for longer?


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## Shiny (Apr 23, 2007)

Franzpan said:


> Intel I5 7600k £229 vs I7 7700k £329
> 
> I probably won't notice the difference between them, but I'm thinking its worth spending £100 just to 'future proof' my machine for longer?


If it was me i'd be getting the i5 and spending the extra £100 on the graphics card :thumb:

You won't need an i7 unless you are doing some serious multitasking.


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## DrEskimo (Jan 7, 2016)

Shiny said:


> If it was me i'd be getting the i5 and spending the extra £100 on the graphics card :thumb:
> 
> You won't need an i7 unless you are doing some serious multitasking.


Would be my advice if you are more interested in gaming, rather than pure CPU horsepower.

Also a good idea to map out exactly what you intend to do with the machine, and tailor the components from that.

Of course if you can afford to include an i7 and a great GPU...go for it :thumb:


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

As everyone has said above, an i7 is only really needed for rendering or serious encoding that can make use of the 8 logical cores of the i7

You don't see much improvement in games above a quad core of the i5, so if that's all you need it for, stick with that and spend the cash on a better GPU

You see a better improvement in games with higher clock speeds, so I would recommend dialling in an overclock on the CPU before you think to changing, and see how you go

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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

:thumb: Thanks guys.

I'm building a list of parts on PC Partpicker. I'll post it once I finish up a few parts. I'm going to be well embarrassed though as I'm sure some of my choices won't make sense to you guys who know what you're at


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Franzpan said:


> :thumb: Thanks guys.
> 
> I'm building a list of parts on PC Partpicker. I'll post it once I finish up a few parts. I'm going to be well embarrassed though as I'm sure some of my choices won't make sense to you guys who know what you're at


No probs, that's why you post things, better to ask beforehand than buy everything and find it doesn't work when you have it

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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

One thing I'm not sure on - I want an SSD and I know a lot of PC'c have a smaller SSD and a secondary large HDD for storage.

Do you think I could get away with just a 256gb SSD on its own? I won't be storing any music or photo's or large files. I was thinking I can always add a large HDD down the line.

Would 256gb on its own be crippling?


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## Hereisphilly (Nov 17, 2014)

Franzpan said:


> One thing I'm not sure on - I want an SSD and I know a lot of PC'c have a smaller SSD and a secondary large HDD for storage.
> 
> Do you think I could get away with just a 256gb SSD on its own? I won't be storing any music or photo's or large files. I was thinking I can always add a large HDD down the line.
> 
> Would 256gb on its own be crippling?


256 is absolutely fine, in fact 128 is manageable but for ease of use I always recommend 256 as a minimum

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## DrEskimo (Jan 7, 2016)

Games are what are going to kill you for storage. Most are around 30-50gb these days!

On my Apple side without games, 250gb is more Han enough, but I struggle with 250gb on my Windows side because of the games. I bought a 2TB HDD to solve that issue, and just make sure my most played games are on the SSD.


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## GleemSpray (Jan 26, 2014)

for some years now i have successfully run an SSD as drive C: , just for Windows and a few most used apps.

All my games, other apps, music and vids are on drive D: , which is a high capacity regular HDD and it all works just fine.

You can easily tell Windows to remember that drive D: is your default location for documents, music, pictures and videos


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## Franzpan (Mar 2, 2009)

I think I'll go down the single SSD route atm and then add a large HDD down the line then. In terms of games I'm only going to be playing COD the odd time. I'll see how it goes, but I really don't have the time to get into gaming in a big way.


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## Shiny (Apr 23, 2007)

I'd still get a secondary HDD for any storage and just use the SSD for the O/S. They are relatively cheap.

By the time you've stuck some music, photos, videos and a couple of games on it, it will soon fill up.


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