PC Replacement Time - Recommendations

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BillyBeckers

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My desktop PC which I have had since 2011 has finally given up. It powers up but doesn’t do anything else. Suspect it could be a failed Hard Drive. Fortunately all my personal info is backed up on One Drive.

Due to the age of my PC I’m looking at buying a replacement rather than upgrading individual components. Appreciate any recommendations on decent suppliers out there. I bought my current one from Dino PC but after quick browse of the net the options now are endless and a little confusing.

I’m not a gamer so don’t need a high end machine but I do like to listen to music, either from Spotify or my Flac files (ripped from my CDs and stored on an external hard drive) so would like a half decent Sound Card. Also, now that I’ve retired, I’m planning to do some cataloguing work with all our digital photos as well as digitising all our paper photos with the intention of creating a book of our life to pass on to the kids and grandkids.

Hoping to spend £600 - 1000. I have bought new Keyboard, Display and Mouse in the last year, so only PC required. Any recommendations appreciated.
 
I can unreservedly recommend Punch Technology.

www.punchtechnology.co.uk

Computers for next-day delivery Archives | Punch Technology

Punch Technology computers for next-day delivery. A range of desktop computers for same day dispatch with 3 Year Warranty and UK Techincal Support
www.punchtechnology.co.uk www.punchtechnology.co.uk

I had them build a PC to my own spec and their service was second to none. Build quality was excellent.

They have a good range of "off the shelf" models too.
 
My hubby said yesterday he wants a new one ... I suppose I should 'allow' him to seeing as he did find the one he's currently using dumped in a field a few years ago and brought it home as it was better than the one he had! :giggle:
 
I once spent £2.2k on a high end laptop to run voice recognition software, ages ago. What a waste of time and money that was. Buyer's remorse, big time.

Since then, my budget has always been up to £600 tops. My next replacement will probably be a refurbished ex-corporate Dell from the local independent computer shop.

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BillyBeckers said:
My desktop PC which I have had since 2011 has finally given up. It powers up but doesn’t do anything else. Suspect it could be a failed Hard Drive. Fortunately all my personal info is backed up on One Drive.

Due to the age of my PC I’m looking at buying a replacement rather than upgrading individual components. Appreciate any recommendations on decent suppliers out there. I bought my current one from Dino PC but after quick browse of the net the options now are endless and a little confusing.

I’m not a gamer so don’t need a high end machine but I do like to listen to music, either from Spotify or my Flac files (ripped from my CDs and stored on an external hard drive) so would like a half decent Sound Card. Also, now that I’ve retired, I’m planning to do some cataloguing work with all our digital photos as well as digitising all our paper photos with the intention of creating a book of our life to pass on to the kids and grandkids.

Hoping to spend £600 - 1000. I have bought new Keyboard, Display and Mouse in the last year, so only PC required. Any recommendations appreciated.
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I would recommend a 17" laptop, even if it is second-hand. For instance I have my sons 2nd hand gaming laptop with a 17" screen and it does everything I need, Genealogy, Web Browsing, Dolby Sound, Bluetooth, WIFI etc. etc. Playing games on a second 34" monitor. Very portable & very power efficient . Acer Predator G9-793. Its from 2018 and solid & reliable.

Helps a lot if you know if second hand equipment has been well looked after. I regularly blow out the fans in reverse with compressed air to keep things cool & efficient.
 
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You should also consider building one if it's another desktop you want, most components come with a one year guarantee, its not difficult, I have built my last three, also means you can upgrade components when required rather than replacing the whole thing. Scan and overclockres both sell everything you need, only tools you need are a screwdriver and some glasses....

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My last Business desktop was built by PC Specialists...... https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/desktop-pc/
I had hours of fun choosing everything from mother board, processer, Graphics Card, SSD drives etc, etc.
The good thing is that the "build your own system" tells you if anything you have chosen will not be suitable, plus they are at the end of the phone to ask.
They do laptops, desktops, plus are into some serious stuff like water cooling and chips sets for gamers, inc over clocking. But for a sensible system that is upgradable in the future, they are worth a look.

For Laptops Dell build your own within your spec & budget is also very good, as is their support and warranty extensions.

LES
 
For the budget you have you should be able to get a serious PC, especially as you don't need monitor and stuff.

You can get a good spec from the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo. Inevitably such machines come with a lot of bloatware but easy enough to spend half day cleaning out. Main issue is these suppliers often have their own components which can make changes and upgrades more challenging. At your budget a beskpoke manufacturer may be better.

Most decent modern motherboards have embedded soundcards. Often these are from the reputed manufacturers. You probably won't need a separate soundcard, especially if you run your sound into an amplifier or headphones.

I'd suggest getting something with a couple of SSD drives (avoid mechanical HDDs as they are now painfully slow), but you won't need the top end PCIe4 as you won't see the speed just look at the capacity. If you are looking to scan, edit, catalogue stuff it will allow you to use one drive for the main data and second for backups, rather than waiting for the internet online backups to keep up with you.

Unless gaming, the more simple graphics card will be sufficient, and unless you are editing precisely a lot of photos and stuff for colour accuracy even the embedded GPU in many of the CPUs will suffice rather than separate graphics.

Unless you have a reason for portability the desktop will be more versatile than laptop where you are paying for the compactness and built in screen. Personally a desktop wins out as you can have a big monitor and decent keyboard so much more comfortable to sit at for lengthy periods.
 
PC performance hasn't improved much for a good few years. Power efficiency has improved, but that's about it. As long as it's got an SSD and enough RAM, you'll be fine.

I'd be tempted to get a laptop. They don't have the performance deficit they used to. Even if you have it plugged into a monitor, keyboard and mouse, it can go portable if you ever need it to.

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In the good old days we used to ask what your requirements were, now its fashionable to capture your use cases


have you got a colour scanner for your photography project or is that to be within the budget? Would you need to buy a printer? how about a reasonably decent chair if you are going to be sat at the computer for long periods?
O, and have you got the programs you need for the project or will you be buying them. eg. will you need to buy a program for touching up the scans of old prints?


As for choice of machine it's as clear as us all deciding which motorhome you must have. Id influence that by understanding what support you might need if things go wrong. Do you want a local shop you can go back to and talk about the problems or would online chat/telephone support by the likes of Dell be ok. If you bought a bargain via Amazon / Currys / Ebay etc chances are you would be restricted to warranty claims only.


Personally I have a fairly powerful desktop I assembled myself which does the business work and my hobby stuff. That has a fairly large disk capacity and is used as a central backup for other PCs, and in turn all the data from that is backed up to a cloud service. (That's the yorkshireman in me coming out as the cloud service charges by the number of machines backed up not the volume of data)
Ive also got this Dell laptop which at home I can use to remote control the desktop if I need something and cant be bothered to rush up & down stairs. It comes with me when away partly so I can keep up with business emails / bookings etc but also because I prefer a reasonable sized screen for sites such as motorhomefun!

Sorry Ive not directly answered your question but home some of this helps
 
I have a large iPad, I haven’t used a laptop or computer for nearly ten years…

When I’ve tried to it seems like a steam engine….
 
Stealaway said:
Dell will last a lifetime
They are also going to have some Black Friday deals

Inspiron 3910 Compact Desktop : Inspiron Desktop Computer | Dell UK

Shop Dell Inspiron 3910 Compact Desktop features 12th Gen Intel processors & expandability options with optional optical drive. View all Inspiron desktops at dell.com
www.dell.com
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Agreed.

Although it is worth checking out their outlet pages for cheap deals.

 
Hi All. Thanks for the great feedback. Always helps getting input from people who have actually used specific suppliers along with suggestions from those with a more detailed technical understanding of what is and isn't important.

I've had a look at the sites of the majority of the custom builders suggested along with the more familiar ones. It's good to see there are a number of machines that look as though they fit the requirements within my budget. The main item that seems to be omitted, is that most of them have an onboard, rather than dedicated soundcard, although it seems fairly easy to add this option on most custom build sites. Also, some have integrated Graphics rather than a dedicated card. I know I have no interest in gaming, but assume for the relatively small additional cost a dedicated card would be better.

Interesting comments about the Solid State Drives. Would I be better with a smaller one (250GB) for Boot Up and a larger one (500GB) for storage, or would a single larger one be a better option on the basis that I use One Drive to store my main files. I suppose at some point I would have to start paying additional storage costs on One Drive once I start scanning in boxes full of old Photos.

I already have a Laptop (about 5 year old) and a Tablet so am definitely looking at a desktop to use in my small home office (spare bedroom). Hopefully place an order this afternoon.
 
BillyBeckers said:
I've had a look at the sites of the majority of the custom builders suggested along with the more familiar ones. It's good to see there are a number of machines that look as though they fit the requirements within my budget. The main item that seems to be omitted, is that most of them have an onboard, rather than dedicated soundcard, although it seems fairly easy to add this option on most custom build sites. Also, some have integrated Graphics rather than a dedicated card. I know I have no interest in gaming, but assume for the relatively small additional cost a dedicated card would be better.
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On board sound has improved dramatically over the years. There is very little to be gained from going for a better sound card unless you have specific requirements (Sound studio etc) For just listening to music then pretty much all motherboards these days use high quality caps around the sound card and have good isolation from the high frequency components.

If you are not doing games at all. Then a dedicated graphics card will give you no benefits except a bigger electric bill. Integrated graphics in the latest AMD and Intel CPU are perfect for desktop and media view tasks. In fact they even work for low end games perfectly adequately.

BillyBeckers said:
Interesting comments about the Solid State Drives. Would I be better with a smaller one (250GB) for Boot Up and a larger one (500GB) for storage, or would a single larger one be a better option on the basis that I use One Drive to store my main files. I suppose at some point I would have to start paying additional storage costs on One Drive once I start scanning in boxes full of old Photos.
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I would look for a 500GB or 1TB NVME boot drive. If possible look for one that comes with PCIe V4 rather than V3 although not critical. If you are doing stuff with media, videos, etc. Then an additional mass storage drive would be advisable. 6TB ones are the sweet spot at the moment with respect to size vs capacity. But only you can decide how much space you want/need.

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PS: I was using internal graphics until recently playing world of warcraft. I only bought an add on card when I upgraded to a 1440p monitor as it struggled a little at that resolution in highly populated areas of the game.

So the built in graphics are pretty good these days.
 
Gromett said:
PS: I was using internal graphics until recently playing world of warcraft. I only bought an add on card when I upgraded to a 1440p monitor as it struggled a little at that resolution in highly populated areas of the game.

So the built in graphics are pretty good these days.
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Don't believe that that was the only reason! It's so you can get the most enjoyment out of watching Twitter cat videos! :LOL:
 
Guigsy said:
PC performance hasn't improved much for a good few years.
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If you had said that 3-4 years ago you would have been correct. But the competition is back on between AMD and Intel in the last few years after well over a decade of Intel being the sole performance driver. Intel relaxed and didn't need to compete.
But that Changed with Ryzen from AMD. Especially since the 3000 series where they started competing with Intel head to head. The 5000 series they beat Intel for a while and now the 7000 series is ahead of intel again for a short while.

They are really fighting for performance leadership again and the difference between a CPU from 5 years ago and today is night and day. Even from 3 years ago the difference is massive.
For instance I bought my Ryzen 3600 2 and a half years ago. The new 7600x is 45% faster on average. That is one hell of a bump in 2 and half years.
 
Gromett said:
If you are not doing games at all. Then a dedicated graphics card will give you no benefits except a bigger electric bill. Integrated graphics in the latest AMD and Intel CPU are perfect for desktop and media view tasks. In fact they even work for low end games perfectly adequately.
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The integrated graphics on the Ryzen 5600G is very good and guess it would be a few hundred pounds to beat with a dedicated card.
 
Why a PC why not a Mac 😎👍

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dna said:
have you got a colour scanner for your photography project or is that to be within the budget? Would you need to buy a printer? how about a reasonably decent chair if you are going to be sat at the computer for long periods?
O, and have you got the programs you need for the project or will you be buying them. eg. will you need to buy a program for touching up the scans of old prints?
Click to expand...

I have a scanning function on my Printer but doubt whether it will be good enough quality for scanning old photos. I have previously tried taking pictures of the old photos with a digital camera with some modicum of success. Any suggestions on this appreciated along with any specific software packages

dna said:
As for choice of machine it's as clear as us all deciding which motorhome you must have. Id influence that by understanding what support you might need if things go wrong. Do you want a local shop you can go back to and talk about the problems or would online chat/telephone support by the likes of Dell be ok. If you bought a bargain via Amazon / Currys / Ebay etc chances are you would be restricted to warranty claims only.
Click to expand...

There are quite a few local PC builders in the area but most have a small number of reviews, generally negative

 
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I bought a MacBook Pro nine years ago 250GB SSD and a 1TB backup drive. The backup drive is almost full and there's not a massive amount of space left on the laptop drive now. Not bad for nine years though.
 
BillyBeckers said:
I have a scanning function on my Printer but doubt whether it will be good enough quality for scanning old photos. I have previously tried taking pictures of the old photos with a digital camera with some modicum of success. Any suggestions on this appreciated along with any specific software packages
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A number of printer \ scanners have photo quality settings that my give you an acceptable scan. Might be worth a look on your current machine.

As for software IrfanView is an excellent picture \ photo package that gives you scan and batch scan functionality. It's free so worth a try.

For dedicated scanning software try Not Another Print Scanner (NAPS), also free, and gives very good results.
 
For all my scanning and cataloguing of slides I use a Nikon slide scanner, which although is now fairly old works perfectly with VueScan software. This software works with probably every scanner and pc operating system out there, so maybe worth a look!
https://www.hamrick.com/ for full information on the scanner software. I use the professional 1 off licence, but they now do short term licences. Also use Irfanview which is free and I find useful when going through catalogues of hundreds of pictures!
Hope you are able to achieve your aims!!

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