Prebuilt recomendations

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xev
Posts: 217
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:47 pm
Location: New York

Prebuilt recomendations

Post by xev » Sat Feb 27, 2016 6:04 pm

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?

edh
Posts: 1621
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:49 pm
Location: UK

Re: Prebuilt recomendations

Post by edh » Sun Feb 28, 2016 6:38 am

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.

CA_Steve
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Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:36 am
Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Prebuilt recomendations

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Feb 28, 2016 9:05 am

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?)

xev
Posts: 217
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:47 pm
Location: New York

Re: Prebuilt recomendations

Post by xev » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:36 pm

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?)
Thanks ill try to find a model with Skylake. But it looks like it's either the Optiplex or XPS lines from Dell.
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

Fire-Flare
Posts: 422
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:44 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: Prebuilt recomendations

Post by Fire-Flare » Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:33 pm

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.

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Prebuilt recomendations

Post by quest_for_silence » Fri Mar 04, 2016 12:24 am

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).

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