New PC

Thanks, doggit. No, not planning on watching 4K.

Films in general, but not specifically 4K.

Pip, long time no chat! Hope you are keeping well.

Yeah, I know Scan. I bought a £500 laptop for my son from them. It went faulty outside warranty but they took it away and fixed it. They replaced a faulty hard drive and the battery pack that was not charging. There was something else (I forget what) as well, but that was swapped out and the whole thing tested on a rig and sent back.
Fantastic service!

So, it is well worth a look, cheers!
 
Last edited:
Sponsored Links
Alright here SS.
Better ration the movies - reckon I have done pretty well all the ones which appear likely worth the watch.
Scraping the vloggers on YT these days fills some time.

Getting old is not for sissies !!

-0-
 
Scan has cracking stuff but sadly are outside my budget.

My starting point is my regular PC repair guy who says these days you need a minimum of a 2.4 Ghz quad core, with 4 meg of ddr4 ram and an ssd on which is stored the OS. I will have a 4TB external HDD for storage.

As Asus have a well-thought of range of mobos, and that is your starting point when considering a PC build or spec, I thought about a 200 series board that runs 7th gen Intel (Kaby Lake). Apparently the 100 series mobo (Sky Lake or 6th gen) will run 7th gen, but only with a BIOS update.
But there are so many 200 series Asus mo-bos. Ebuyer list 13 models just in the B, H and Z ranges.
I am finding it bewildering sifting through their specs and trying to work out what I need.
The choices run from B250 M-K at £59 to Z270 A at £142. I'd like the mobo to be upgradeable in the future not a dodo within a few years. Which mo-bo do I need?
 
I'd go for 8Mb ram, but just to say 2.4Ghz, is a bit techy and non informative. If you not going for a ready built PC, then I'd look to build your setup round and i7 core processor, but you can't guarantee what either Itel or AMD are going to do, so buying a future proof motherboard is often a waste. It may wel be upgradable for the next processor, but you'll very likely not change it till another two have been released, then you'll start from scratch again.

I'll flick through a few of my recent pc mags, and see what I can come up with. How is your hard drive plugged into the PC, as you may be better of having it fitted inside, and running off the bus controler.
 
Sponsored Links
Hi doggit

Yes, sorry, that should have read 8 GB.

Not sure about the internal SSD... possibly via Sata III.
The external HDD will probably be plugged in via USB 3.1.
The i7 will be a chunk dearer than the i5, I fear!
Thanks for all your help.
 
Sorry Sparkight, I meant the external hard drive. Do you have an external SATA conncetor, or is it via USB. If the latter, then you'd be better off fitting it internally. It's a bit tricky setting up an SSD for the operating system, and then having an internal drive for data storage, otherwise you have an internal SSD, and an external drive for backups, or file history, but yu wouldn't have an external drive for data storage (unless connected to the hard drive controller, as it would bottleneck the system.

The cost difference between the i5 and i7 shouldn't be more than £200, but you might find it better to go with an HD 28", and put the extra costs into the processor. If you're going for an SSD, then you won't get the best out of a PC that has an i5 processor in it. This is why I said that 2.4Ghz is immaterial, as you can sometimes do better with a slower i7, than a faster i5, but it'll depend on the applications you're running as well.

You're either going with a 4gb i5 system, and a 32" screen, or a 28" i7 with 8gb, and you can then upgrade the screen later if you need to.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Reasonable source:-
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/motherboard-buying-guide,4596.html
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-motherboards,review-33591.html

Don't worry about high end stuff if you do not have a need for it.
A decent mid range motherboard will be as out dated as the the rest when a new, must have, processor is produced requiring a different socket !!

I used an Asrock Z77 Pro4 - with i7-3770K Ivy Bridge processor - within no time comes Haswell processors - different socket and probably more.

The i7-3770k is pretty quick, the stuff I have tried with later processors just do not feel that much faster - maybe the curve is flattening for the stuff I do anyway, ie. a lot more dosh for not much increase.
-0-
 
Cheers, pip!

I must be being thick again.

Looking at prices for 1151 Pro 4 mobos, ie Kaby Lake, they are cheaper.
The Kaby Lake i7 7770K (3.6Ghz) is a similar price.
What am I missing?
 
Well, around £400 excluding monitor.

I was thinking of a 27/ 28 inch QHD monitor for around 200.

I was initially looking at the tower linked to at the top of the thread.
 
Sorry Secure, can you give a specifi link: can't spot it at the minute.
 
It's a good all round spec, but how much for the operating system, or I assume you can deal with that. There's no wifi on the mobo, and I suspect the ssd will be an old style, but it should be okay. I'll look around later and see if there's anything else for you to consider.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sponsored Links

Similar threads

securespark
Monitor
Replies
14
Views
2K
securespark
securespark
Back
Top