PC types - whats the average cost for a decent machine these days? -- also PC death content

PolarityMan

I think my main pc might be on its last legs, another inaccesible boot device error, last time i needed a reinstall to get rid of it. COuld jsut be a disk but the disk is only 18 months old. I bought it in Jan 2010 so its done alright and has been creaking a bit anyway.

So PC types whats the current budget for I guess what most peoplle would call a mid range machine. Needs are in priortiy:

Running reaper - 16 channel simultaneous recording with 4-8 channels of low latency ampsim vsts running live.
Quiet
Ideally able to play total war warhammer, dawn of war 3 and elite dangerous, neither of which my current machine can do


Ive always gone for desktop in the past and am comfortable building as well as buying barebones / upgrading etc but this time round im wondering if i should jsut spend the extra to get a laptop so I can use it for mobile recording too,

Any thoughts?

Lestratcaster

In a similar situation, mine's just sluggish and could do with a faster processor/more memory. Had it since 2011.

Not been over impressed by WIndows 10 reviews however so not sure to make the big plunge and upgrade.

Desktops aren't going for much these days, for my needs (internet, word processing, some recording software and a couple of other programs) I can probably get away with spending £350 approx.

For your needs though I'd expect it to be more though can't put an exact figure.

Myranda

For running games upto and including current AAA titles... I'd think something like an
i5 CPU (and you can go second-hand and get something like a 4570, 6500 or new with a 7500) £100-£180
Motherboard appropriate £100-£200
8GB of suitable RAM £65-£100
GTX 1070 £370
PSU ~500W(ish) £75up
128GB SSD £60
1TB HDD £40

£800 ish... 

Presumably you have case, and monitor...

Now, you can trim some fat here and there, maybe a suitable i3 CPU and a GTX 1060 ... no SSD. Maybe you have a power supply... but £600+ is what I'd want to think of budgeting.

Lestratcaster

What about programs that I have on Windows 7 and switching to Windows 10? Will they still work?

Myranda

Lestratcaster said:

What about programs that I have on Windows 7 and switching to Windows 10? Will they still work?

depends on the software but windows 7 to 10 *should* work with your software (XP to 7 or XP to 10 maybe not)... I have had no issues, but some have

Lestratcaster

Just stuff like Sibelius (music scoring software) Neck Diagrams and Ableton. I'm worried if I switch they won't work on the OS.

Myranda

In theory they should be fine, you *could* run them in a Windows 7 virtual machine if they didn't run (can inject latency so direct music processing software would not be so good). 

The way 7 and 10 run software in the back is similar enough that it's not many programs that don't migrate 7-to-10

Might be an idea to check the developers forums to be sure though

Lestratcaster

Hmm yeah, how would I go about accessing a virtual machine? I haven't looked at any new version of the software though I'd quite like not to have to pay for the newer ones.

Emp_Fab

Oooh, you don't wanna buy a Windows machine, you wanna buy a Mac, that's what you wanna do !
(/recentapplefanboi) 

Myranda

Lestratcaster said:

Hmm yeah, how would I go about accessing a virtual machine? I haven't looked at any new version of the software though I'd quite like not to have to pay for the newer ones.

Virtual machines can be downloaded, then using a piece of software, it's not really much more than a double click to open it - it's like a whole new instance of Windows, but rather than running on a PC it's running on your copy of windows which is running on your PC - but that's a road to go down when you know if you need to ...

Otherwise, it SHOULD still just work... ask on their forums if there's any issues when upgrading Windows - most likely you'll get a "nope it's fine" or "I had to do X, Y and Z to make it work, but after that it was fine"... and only need to worry if the answer is "Yes, lots of problems it doesn't work" .

I doubt you'll need to pay for a new version, unless there's a hinky terms of service

Lestratcaster

Ok cool, thanks for that.

Obvs what you listed in terms of numbers above I probably don't need as high, but in terms of processor speed, RAM and such what would be the ballpark figures to run several apps with lag and such?

Myranda

For a lot of games, the CPU is (largely speaking) the least important part ... the graphics card (also, conveniently for manufactures/retailers the most expensive part for most) is what will denote how well you can run (many) games.

As for a minimum spec...
2 cores with Hyperthreading, or 4 cores without (so i3, or i5) and up... (anything over 6 cores will be wasted in gaming for now) running at 3.5Ghz and up (current gen chips in the i3 or i5 range will be around 4Ghz to 5Ghz so much whizziness)
8GB of RAM should be plenty (16 would future proof for gaming)
CPU and matching Motherboard expect to spend a minimum of £200 - unless you go second hand, which I did for my gaming PC... made some good savings (Though, since then I supplemented and added higher spec or newer bits). 

I'd advise a lot of shopping around... as minimum baseline...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/intel-core-i3-6100-3.70ghz-skylake-socket-lga1151-processor-retail-cp-590-in.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/asus-h110m-k-intel-h110-socket-1151-ddr4-micro-atx-motherboard-mb-684-as.html ;(can't overclock on that board... but it is cheaper than my initial estimate).
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/kingston-fury-red-8gb-1x8gb-ddr4-pc4-17000c14-2133mhz-single-channel-module-hx421c14fr2-8-my-26r-ks.html
£225.97 for CPU, Motherboard and RAM ... and there may be cheaper online shops.

Graphics-wise 
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-570-pulse-itx-4096mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-37u-sp.html (£199.99) 
or
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/evga-geforce-gtx-1060-3072mb-gddr5-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-30d-ea.html
(£169.99)

And if you don't have an SSD laying aroung in your old computer

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-green-120gb-2.5-sata-6gbps-solid-state-drive-wds120g1g0a-hd-53l-wd.html
(£52.99)

With something like that, you will need to knock a couple of screen settings down to a lower resolution, or not maximum texture details, but should be able to run the games you're looking at... the more you can spend the better things can be though. I'd aim to spend maybe £200 more on the graphics card and £60 more on the CPU and £100 more on the motherboard if you can... (or aim even higher, say say £1500+ for a really good gaming computers)

Bit rambly, but it's a Sunday afternoon and I'm watching telly

Spanner-in-the-works time - Ryzen AMD processors came out recently and they have similar pricing and similar speed (frame for frame in games pricing is very similar to Intel).. but for other computing duties the process-cycles-per-£ could be better than Intel by a reasonable range

Lestratcaster

I'm not looking to play games on it (was a big Fifa fanatic back in the day but stopped purchasing after 07 I think) so all that fancy graphics stuff isn't a top priority.

It sounds all modernised now though, makes my current 3.20 Ghz Pentium dual core look outdated! I'm guessing my 3GB RAM isn't keeping up too well with numerous apps being open either. Even streaming videos can get stuttery sometimes but that might be YouTube or whatever.

I am looking at a few at the moment but will pay attention to the numbers, with so much choice out there it gets a bit confusing. But cheers for the recommendations!

Myranda

Lestratcaster said:

I'm not looking to play games on it (was a big Fifa fanatic back in the day but stopped purchasing after 07 I think) so all that fancy graphics stuff isn't a top priority.

It sounds all modernised now though, makes my current 3.20 Ghz Pentium dual core look outdated! I'm guessing my 3GB RAM isn't keeping up too well with numerous apps being open either. Even streaming videos can get stuttery sometimes but that might be YouTube or whatever.

I am looking at a few at the moment but will pay attention to the numbers, with so much choice out there it gets a bit confusing. But cheers for the recommendations!

Gah! Confused you with the OP - hence the gaming focus!! 

That CPU/Mobo/RAM and the SSD should do you wonders

Lestratcaster

Lol sorry mate, I know I've hijacked the thread a bit but was in a similar position.

What's an SSD by the way and what does it do? 

Myranda

Lestratcaster said:

Lol sorry mate, I know I've hijacked the thread a bit but was in a similar position.

What's an SSD by the way and what does it do? 

Older hard drives depend on a stack of spinning metal disks, so to access to any data requires spinning, and moving the head to a specific point... this is limited by all sorts of physics...

An SSD (solid state drive) is like computer memory and is made up of NAND logic gates so electrical impulses turn the 0s to 1s and vice versa. Only the speed-of-light-in-copper and the memory bandwidth of the connection limit the speed (and a couple of other factors...).

SSDs are MUCH faster for all sorts of purposes, and often one of the cheaper ways of speeding up a computer (swapping a spinning HDD for a non-spinning SSD)

Lestratcaster

I'm guessing mine is an old HDD, it was bought in 2011. So these Intel Core 3.5 GHz and above should be pretty quick? And the i5 malarky, what does that mean?

Myranda

Lestratcaster said:

I'm guessing mine is an old HDD, it was bought in 2011. So these Intel Core 3.5 GHz and above should be pretty quick? And the i5 malarky, what does that mean?

Yes, the above should be very zippy.. as for what the i5 bit means... 

Intel have divided their consumer stuff into:
Pentium G - low voltage desktop CPUs 2 physical cores
i3 - 2 physical cores with hyperthreading (basically a clever way of alternating processes to effectively double the number of processes running...)
i5 - 4 physical cores without hyperthreading (meaning it should be marginally faster for anything using all 4 cores... because it's not switching between processes, but it's more expensive to make as it's literally twice the silicon chips in one)
i7 - 4 (and up) physical cores with hyperthreading
i9 - new class which goes up to 18 cores with hyper threading and costs all the way up to $2000 for the top end model

A number of factors determine the "instructions per clock" count, ie the number of things the chip does in each of the (example_3.5Ghz cycles (3,500,000,000 hertz or cycles per second)... each generation Intel and AMD manage to increase this instructions-per-clock value, so the current 7th gen (Kaby Lake) is faster than the 6th generation even when both chips might have the same number of cores and running at 3.5Ghz (last generation change betwen 5% and 11% for intel and about 40% for AMD (though they were severely behind so it's not as crazy an achievement as it sounds)).

Both manufacturers are making some confusing naming choices lately so it can be slightly confusing... but the above is a good general rule of thumb

Lestratcaster

I see, thanks for the info. I'm assuming I'll be ok with something like a 3.5GHz processor then, just some desktops I've looked at say i5 or whatever, some don't. Noticeably the cheaper priced ones (The Pentium G perhaps).

PC's have definitely come a long way since I first started buying them, don't understand what half the terminology is apart from the basic processing speed, and memory!

TTony

PolarityMan said:

Any thoughts?

The many times that I've bought new PC through the years, I've spent ~£1000 (without the monitors).

I could have spent less, but probably only £200ish, which never seemed enough to save to justify cheapskating the spec.  I could more easily have spent more, but there was never enough value in the marginal extra processing power, or the top spec video card, to justify probably a 50% price hike.

So £1k has been my sweet spot.

I used to build, but nowadays just go for a prebuilt machine as there doesn't seem to be a massive saving in the DiY option, unless you're looking for a particularly oddball config that the assemblers don't cater for.

I have PCs for desk based work because they're far more tweakable and repairable.  Also a lot easier to run a multi monitor set up, and don't have to worry about battery life / cycles. 

For mobile recording, maybe consider an iPad - there's an incredible range of functional and cheap apps.  You don't have to buy into the whole Apple world to use an iPad.

TTony

PolarityMan said:

Any thoughts?

The many times that I've bought new PC through the years, I've spent ~£1000 (without the monitors).

I could have spent less, but probably only £200ish, which never seemed enough to save to justify cheapskating the spec.  I could more easily have spent more, but there was never enough value in the marginal extra processing power, or the top spec video card, to justify probably a 50% price hike.

So £1k has been my sweet spot.

I used to build, but nowadays just go for a prebuilt machine as there doesn't seem to be a massive saving in the DiY option, unless you're looking for a particularly oddball config that the assemblers don't cater for.

I have PCs for desk based work because they're far more tweakable and repairable.  Also a lot easier to run a multi monitor set up, and don't have to worry about battery life / cycles. 

For mobile recording, maybe consider an iPad - there's an incredible range of functional and cheap apps.  You don't have to buy into the whole Apple world to use an iPad.