My dad needs a new PC and I have no idea what to recommend for him. He really only uses it for Facebook, Youtube and things like that but the computer he's using right now is ancient and he needs something a little quicker. I'm thinking pretty cheap because it doesn't need to be anything special, other than putting an SSD in it. Any ideas? I can build a gaming PC but I have no idea what to look for when it comes to low budget stuff like this. I'm thinking ideally under $4-500 including Windows? Even cheaper if possible. Not sure how realistic that is.
Ancient computers work just fine for that, if it has 4GB ram and an SSD he should be happy. Can you upgrade his? An SSD is like, $40 now. Windows 10 is free. Do a clean install and it would probably be fine. I guess that depends on how ancient. But I even did a Core2 Duo recently and it boots fast and has no problem with basic web stuff.
Does he really need a PC then? Would a tablet (iPad, Fire,...) work?
He likes his 27" monitor, otherwise that's probably the direction we would go.
The one he's using now is a 2009-10ish Dell all-in-one thing. Maybe just an SSD and a clean Windows install would be enough to make it work, I'm not sure. All I know is right now, it's slooooooooooow.
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I'll try an SSD. 250GB Samsung on for $65 at Best Buy right now. That's the SSD I put in my mom's laptop and it made a huge difference, but that laptop is also like 8 years newer than this thing so I wasn't sure if that would be enough.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
Before you call me a pessimist or a downer, the Flames made me this way. Blame them.
My dad needs a new PC and I have no idea what to recommend for him. He really only uses it for Facebook, Youtube and things like that but the computer he's using right now is ancient and he needs something a little quicker. I'm thinking pretty cheap because it doesn't need to be anything special, other than putting an SSD in it. Any ideas? I can build a gaming PC but I have no idea what to look for when it comes to low budget stuff like this. I'm thinking ideally under $4-500 including Windows? Even cheaper if possible. Not sure how realistic that is.
If he just needs simple web browsing and his monitor supports HDMI, just grab one of these
Starting to plan a build for the new AMD processors.
Trying to decide between a B550 motherboard and an X570. I'd go with X570 almost no question except I found out most of the boards have chipset fans. I usually build as silent as I can, so a bit worried about a whiny little chipset fan.
Though some of them it appears you can set it so the fan is stopped at idle, and if it spins while I'm gaming I don't care as much as I'd have my headphones on anyway.
I'm not going to be extreme overclocking.
From what I can see the only real immediate downside of a B550 would be that the chipset runs on PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0, which means my 2nd (or more) m.2 slots would run at PCIe 3.0 speeds. But I think I'd be ok with that, my 2nd SSD currently is a SATA drive for storing some less played games.
And the B550's are a bit cheaper.
Any other things I should be aware of?
I went through the same decision process and chose the MSI x570 Tomahawk board. The default chipset fan profile in BIOS didn't have the fan start until something like 65 - 70 degrees, so in normal computing it was never running. Perhaps it did while I was gaming but with a headset on you'd never hear it over the other fans that ramp up with temperature.
Unfortunately that board was a struggle from day one. The onboard wifi/bluetooth often wouldn't be recognized in BIOS (and therefore Windows) and then it stopped recognizing my VGA card. Each time I'd have to clear CMOS and even then no guarantees BIOS would find attached hardware. I don't know if I just had a bad board, or being new-ish to market had buggy BIOS. Exchanged it for a Asus TUF X570-Pro that I'm installing this weekend.
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I have a 42.5" 4k monitor and even that is a bit much in 16:9. I can't imagine what 48 would be like.
My work monitor is a 49" curved display but when it's 32:9 it is a completely different animal and doesn't feel too big at all.
I'd stick with the Odyssey g9.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
New benchmarks for the AMD 5600x leak. We now have a new single thread and gaming performance king... one has to wonder how the 5700/5900 series chips will look like since this gen seems to be a huge leap in performance over the last.
I'm torn on upgrading... not sure if I want to bite the bullet on a B550 board and DDR4 or wait till DDR5. B550 might be a dead end upgrade since the Ryzen 6000 series is supposed to be a socket change to AM5? Would be going from a 2600 and a B350 mobo.
That's the only thing in the back of my mind that's saying I should wait to upgrade. I've got a 6700k and a vanilla 2080 and a 1440p monitor, most games should be playable for a while yet, though newer games I would maybe(?) get a decent bump in FPS with a newer CPU.
But I get core count envy when I do encoding and such things, and would like to hand down most of this system to my son who's computer could use an upgrade.
How far away is AM5 though. 1 year?
If I upgrade to a 5900X or 5950X I could ride that for another 4-5 years, upgrade to whatever's after the 3080 if I move up to a 4K or ultrawide monitor, so I'm not sure waiting is worth it either.
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AM5 DDR5 would be 2022?
Waiting an additional 2 years is ok? maybe 20 months. There was news of still using DDR4 only for another year. Consider that the only devices using a variant of DDR5 is Samsung Galaxy S20 and some other cell phones released this year.
also considering the amount of ramp up performance from peak ddr4 (which we probably haven't reached yet) would take at least a year or 2 (so 2024 for noticeable performance gains from ram) and remember the early adopter tax. DDR4 is cheap now. 32gb pc25600 for 160$ CDN. It's a commodity and they are still burning through pandemic stock up. Prices will likely increase next year.
At any rate, until intel provides some better performance (long awaited 10nm next year honest!) there may be a theoretical holding pattern at the moment, and we'll see if AMD will continue their iteration process or hold on for a moment.
Maybe maybe maybe 3080 stock will come in, in November because
everyone will be buying AMD as they'll be more available. As always it's a rumor and not indicative of final performance numbers.
So the other calculation is, is faster ray tracing worth it now, or is the old way of rendering games still viable until there are more software titles using it?
Still consider that the leaked benchmark has whatever the radeon card is as having 96% performance of a 2080ti in ray tracing. So that's not a slow implementation at all and would still offer a considerable amount of performance over a 2060 super.
Last edited by Cliche; 10-25-2020 at 08:18 PM.
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That's the only thing in the back of my mind that's saying I should wait to upgrade. I've got a 6700k and a vanilla 2080 and a 1440p monitor, most games should be playable for a while yet, though newer games I would maybe(?) get a decent bump in FPS with a newer CPU.
But I get core count envy when I do encoding and such things, and would like to hand down most of this system to my son who's computer could use an upgrade.
How far away is AM5 though. 1 year?
If I upgrade to a 5900X or 5950X I could ride that for another 4-5 years, upgrade to whatever's after the 3080 if I move up to a 4K or ultrawide monitor, so I'm not sure waiting is worth it either.
I have the exact same setup and I probably will be doing the 5900X/5950X thing when they drop later this year, though I'm doing a lot of application work lately so the extra threads will be helpful.
And yeah, my wife's PC could use the upgrade too lol.
Ryzen 5950x benchmarks leak. 34% single thread and 16% multi thread improvement over 3950x.
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The Ryzen 9 5950X is reportedly up to 34.4% faster than the Ryzen 9 3950X in single-thread performance and up to 16% in multi-thread performance. For reference, the Ryzen 9 5950X comes with a 3.4 GHz base clock and 4.9 GHz boost clock, while the Ryzen 9 3950X has a 3.5GHz base clock and 4.7 GHz. It was to expected that the Ryzen 9 5950X would be superior chip.
In comparison to its Intel rival, the Ryzen 9 5950X seemingly delivers up to 16.3% higher single-thread performance than the Core i9-10900K. Now, you have to remember that the Core i9-10900K features a 3.7 GHz base clock and a whopping 5.3 GHz boost clock. We're not underestimating Zen 3, but it's a bit hard to swallow that the AMD chip with a 400 MHz lower boost clock would outperform the Core i9-10900K. For now, we'll have to trust PassMark's metrics until we get the chip in our lab for thorough testing.
Yeah... it might be getting close to time to build a new desktop. Unfortunately they're releasing these things so close to Black Friday that I can't imagine they'll even be in stock much less on discount. Might have to wait for boxing day.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno