Im trying to pick out a new pc for the old man. He's currently running a Pentium 4 Dell XPS. I upgraded his ram to 4gb and video card to handle his 2 widescreen monitors.
The sub $1000 budget is decent considering he doesnt need a crazy gpu, i think the current 9800gt is fine.
He needs it to be prebuilt so Im looking at Dell Inspirons and Levenos.
I think any 3.0ghz+ i5 would be enough but i think an i7 would be better in his mind. And ill get at least 8gb ram.
His applications; outlook, occasional basic photoshop, quark, and some youtube type videos.
It should be a good system for 6+ yrs.
So my question: Inspiron i5-4460 (6M cache, 3.4) vs Lenevo i5-6500 Processor (6M Cache,3.60 GHz) vs XPS i5-6400(6M Cache, up to 3.3 GHz)
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EDIT:
I think I've settled on the Inspiron with i7. At $800 it looks good and doesnt require any out of pocket expenses other than the business expense on the system itself.
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4790 Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.00 GHz)
Windows 10 Home 64-bit English
16GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz (8GBx2)
2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
Any comments on this system?
Prebuilt recomendations
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Re: Prebuilt recomendations
Why have an i7? For those kind of uses it doesn't seem like a good use of money. An i5 will be just as fast for normal use.
Why 16GB RAM as well? 8GB will be fine but I wouldn't bother with DDR3. If you are trying to futureproof (which is always risky) go for DDR4 as it will give you a better upgrade path over the years.
As for a hard disk, why not go SSD? HDD is old technology now. How much disk space does he use at present? Take that amount and buy an SSD of that size.
Why 16GB RAM as well? 8GB will be fine but I wouldn't bother with DDR3. If you are trying to futureproof (which is always risky) go for DDR4 as it will give you a better upgrade path over the years.
As for a hard disk, why not go SSD? HDD is old technology now. How much disk space does he use at present? Take that amount and buy an SSD of that size.
Re: Prebuilt recomendations
Honestly, he'd be fine with an i3. Go for an i5 if you want to splurge.
The 4xxx series are nearly three year old CPUs. Yikes..Dell doesn't allow any configurability in their builds.
Here's the stuff I'd look for in a build:
Skylake i3 or i5
8GB RAM (no need for 16GB given his use case)
iGP (is faster/more capable than the 9800 GT and uses 1/10 the power)
SSD for boot drive and programs. 250GB class.
HDD for mass storage (does he even need it? How full is the current HDD?)
The 4xxx series are nearly three year old CPUs. Yikes..Dell doesn't allow any configurability in their builds.
Here's the stuff I'd look for in a build:
Skylake i3 or i5
8GB RAM (no need for 16GB given his use case)
iGP (is faster/more capable than the 9800 GT and uses 1/10 the power)
SSD for boot drive and programs. 250GB class.
HDD for mass storage (does he even need it? How full is the current HDD?)
Re: Prebuilt recomendations
Thanks ill try to find a model with Skylake. But it looks like it's either the Optiplex or XPS lines from Dell.CA_Steve wrote:Honestly, he'd be fine with an i3. Go for an i5 if you want to splurge.
The 4xxx series are nearly three year old CPUs. Yikes..Dell doesn't allow any configurability in their builds.
Here's the stuff I'd look for in a build:
Skylake i3 or i5
8GB RAM (no need for 16GB given his use case)
iGP (is faster/more capable than the 9800 GT and uses 1/10 the power)
SSD for boot drive and programs. 250GB class.
HDD for mass storage (does he even need it? How full is the current HDD?)
His current 500gb has plenty of space so i wont fret about the size of the new drive.
I will not use the dedicated gpu and rely on internal since it looks like they are plenty good for his needs
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Re: Prebuilt recomendations
For what it's worth, I worked in a computer repair shop for the last year and a half and the systems we saw the fewest hardware troubles from were Lenovos.
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Re: Prebuilt recomendations
xev wrote:Thanks ill try to find a model with Skylake. But it looks like it's either the Optiplex or XPS lines from Dell.
Maybe you might also compare them with customized Puget Systems either Echo-series or Obsidian-series (other valid options are either End PCNoise or maybe some selected AVA).