ASus mini pc advice please

[nickc]

Hi All

I'm planning on buying an Asus pn50 4700U and I'm scratching my head a little when it comes to the SSD storage. There's a 2.5" SATA 6 and an m.2 PCIe option. I'm thinking the SATA would be the boot drive and use the m.2 to store my document files, photos, etc. Would that make sense? And would I really notice the difference with the faster NVMe such as the Sumsung evo? I'd use the machine web browsing, spreadsheets, 2d CAD, photo editing with ps elements and some minecraft.

Thanks

 

[Bhuna50]

This is really personal choice with regard to what you want stored where, but you will see faster boot times for windows and applications if windows is installed on the fastest drive you install (which will be done by default anyway if you dont choose).

Personally any system files / programs you run are better off running from the fastest drive and then any personal stored files on the SATA.

 

[nickc]

Hi All,

I've quite a confined desk space at home and I'm also quite fed up with the noise my current pc is making so I'm planning on buying a mini pc, my only anxiety is the question of how well it will perform for me.
I'm looking at an Asus pn50 4700u and would install 16gb ram. I do some photo editing in ps elements, use 2d CAD mostly and my son plays some minecraft. Looking at various reviews it seems I can run games at lower resolution with this set up and I think that'll be fine. The question is will it handle photo editing okay and not not talking about huge RAW files here either.

Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[Bhuna50]

Nick - can I suggest that you have a read of this:

Please read before posting:- Collaboration of Helpful Hints

NB: These forums are not an official support channel. None of us work for PCS, we're all either customers or techies who just like to help out where possible. For any official support, you need to contact PCS directly either through your PCS account, or via the contact details on the main...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

and then post your configurator spec and all your questions in one thread rather than open a thread for each individual component.

 

[nickc]

Great. Thanks

 

[nickc]

very useful reading..

I couldn't transfer the spec directly as the Asus pn50 is out of stock, so I'll paste it in. I don't mind waiting if it's the right machine for me.

AMD Ryzen™ 7 8-Core Processor 4700U (2.0GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
PN50 Ultra Small Form Factor (HDMI/USB-C/DP1.4, USB 3.1)
RAM - 16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
1st Storage Drive - 512GB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive - 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W)

The monitor I have is a Dell u2412m 24" 1920x1200 60hz

Uses are mostly 2D CAD. Techsoft DesignTools, it's no Autocad. Photoshop Elements, editing mostly jpeg files around 5mb, occasionally processing RAW images in Lightroom. Spreadsheets/word processing. And my son plays Minecraft, sometimes on line with friends.

Budget is £650 to £750

I'm choosing a small low power pc to free up space in my desk area, but also due to noise level. Currently, I have a mini itx and I see that the small form factor PCs are even smaller now, which is attractive, but the fan noise is really bugging me. I even replaced the original fan with a 'quiet' one, which didn't help much and since putting in extra memory on HDD I just find it distracting.

I read in the article that single threaded tasks on the AMD 4000 series is now improved upon so I'm hoping this set up will be good for photo editing. And I've no problem adjusting minecraft resolution down to get it to work okay if need be, so I'm really hoping this set up will suit me.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Nick

 

[Bhuna50]

Without a link to the spec, it makes it difficult for anyone to advise / make adjustments as its so time consuming to try to recreate your requirements.

I cant even find the 4700U processor in any of the lists at the moment - but then I gave up looking sorry.

 

[nickc]

Okay, thanks for trying

I’ve pasted a link here, but whether my spec will be on it I’m not sure. If not I’ll wait till there in stock so I can click ‘proceed’ then I think I can send the spec directly to the forum

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