Try to get a faster Desktop PC

[Hotto80]

Hi All
I am now in a situation were my eight year old desktop has to be replaced - you would think " Simples" but not so, I require a desktop PC to do office work Excel Word Etc, emailing and net brousing, with just the odd film and picture storage. Not interested in Gameing or gaming machine, its more the speed of loading, and just general speed I am after.
I was hoping for some guidance from you Techies..
Looked into Intel and AMD CPU's and the AMD will fit the bill as its much cheaper, Whats the best thing to give me the Spec I require , A good CPU or more ram, or a small SSD Cache drive which adds about £ 70 ( ouch!! ), the more I look into it the more I keep changing my mind on what's best to give the computer the speed I require..
my budget is in the £450 ball park but would push it a bit for the right spec:

Come on you Guy's help me out struggling here ???

 

[Wozza63]

Do you require a monitor, keyboard, mouse?
If not heres a proposed spec


Case
STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA MICRO-ATX CASE + 2 FRONT USB

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i3 Dual Core Processor i3-3240 (3.40GHz) 3MB Cache - powerful, more than enough for office PC

Motherboard
ASUS® P8H61-MX USB3/SI: uATX, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 4GB KIT) - plenty of RAM, perfect for multitasking

Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)

Memory - 1st Hard Disk
1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) - you could swap this out for a 120GB SSD which will be much faster but obviously a lot less space, if you have an external hard drive or a fairly large one in your current PC you could swap it over for larger files like video, whilst leaving programs on the SSD which means they open much quicker and are usually more responsive. Of course if you could afford maybe a 120GB SSD and 500GB HDD then that would be ideal solution

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply
350W Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER

Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs

USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS

Power Cable
1 x 2 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)

Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365

Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days

This comes to exactly £450

 

[Hotto80]

No dont require keyboard or Monitor, you think that the 3i intel with the 8Gb ram will do the trick with my speed issue thats spot on for price.. Just thought the SSD cache would speed things up more but the price on these SSD's is a bit over the top. I have a 500Gb Hard disc but only just go over half full with it.
Just looking at the Spec of your Machine its a real belter, Not going to ask how much that cost well out of my range.

Thanks for your help Notice you run the AMD FX8150 any reason other than cost ??

 

[Rakk]

Just thought the SSD cache would speed things up more but the price on these SSD's is a bit over the top. I have a 500Gb Hard disc but only just go over half full with it.

Though if you look at the prices the cache drive is almost as expensive as just adding a 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K drive anyways

 

[Hotto80]

I have just checked and useing the spec you gave me and useing a 500 GB WD Caviar WD1002 HD - if I could Add an Intel 120GB SSD 313 series SLC Cache drive system for the 1st Hard drive, this would cost another £83. Brining the overall cost to £533 but would it be worth it for the increased speed or would I not see much extra speed for the added SSD drive ??

 

[Wozza63]

No dont require keyboard or Monitor, you think that the 3i intel with the 8Gb ram will do the trick with my speed issue thats spot on for price.. Just thought the SSD cache would speed things up more but the price on these SSD's is a bit over the top. I have a 500Gb Hard disc but only just go over half full with it.
Just looking at the Spec of your Machine its a real belter, Not going to ask how much that cost well out of my range.

Thanks for your help Notice you run the AMD FX8150 any reason other than cost ??

Yeh it cost a lot, excluding extra equipment like keyboard etc, was about £1000. The i5 was slightly out of my price range and could get a better spec with the FX8150. Plus I personally thought it would be more futureproof seeing as rumours at the time were the Xbox One using an AMD 8 core chip, so I thought it would be better as it would port straight over to all 8 cores. I'm happy with it though, it does more than what I need and when it starts to struggle a little I will overclock it as its apparently easy to get to 4.5GHz which is a big improvement

 

[Wozza63]

I have just checked and useing the spec you gave me and useing a 500 GB WD Caviar WD1002 HD - if I could Add an Intel 120GB SSD 313 series SLC Cache drive system for the 1st Hard drive, this would cost another £83. Brining the overall cost to £533 but would it be worth it for the increased speed or would I not see much extra speed for the added SSD drive ??

The WD Caviar blacks are very snappy anyway, obviously no where near the speed of an SSD, but the only differences would be loading the OS and a few large programs, like photoshop. Other than that you wouldn't really notice the difference, folders and even large files should load without any lag

 

[Hotto80]

Thanks for that Wazza, Just as a by the way ? I was thinking of just up grading the Ram from 2 GB to the motherboard Max of 4MB but not sure I would be wasting my money putting off replacing the PC

 

[Wozza63]

In the spec I suggested there is 8GB of RAM, its more than enough

 

[mitchell65]

I would definitely put an SSD at the top of your list. My needs are much like yours and wouldn't do without an SSD now. Mind you for an old boy I love the speed, I consistently get 74 meg download with BT infinity! Trouble is my brain can't always keep up!:yes:

 

[Hotto80]

Thanks for that Michell, the trouble is they are so expensive I am thinking of getting a standard 500GB HD with a 2nd 120 GB SSD a 250GB SSD costs arround £125 more than a compatable 500GB standard HD and - will I get that much more happyness my friend ??

 

[mitchell65]

The short answer is YES
The long answer is definitely YES

 

[Hotto80]

Thanks for that Michell, The problem I have with it is cost a machine with 500Gb HD and a second 120GB SSD costs around £525 a machine with just one 240GB SSD costs £ 520 you can see the storage differance, but would this give me as much happyness my friend :yes:

 

[keynes]

Thanks for that Michell, The problem I have with it is cost a machine with 500Gb HD and a second 120GB SSD costs around £525 a machine with just one 240GB SSD costs £ 520 you can see the storage differance, but would this give me as much happyness my friend :yes:

I'd go with the first option, first drive 120gb SSD and 2nd drive 500gb or 750gb Scorpio black for additional storage.

 

[mitchell65]

That would be a good choice.

 

[vanthus]

With the budget you have I would go for a Caviar black instead of an SSD as suggested by Wozza,it will probably be a a good bit faster than what you are used to,I know mines is very fast at loading applications, and the storage space will also be beneficial for your what you intend doing.

 

[bigben]

I would definitely get the SSD IF you can afford it, they are so much quicker than normal hard drives for booting. My laptop only has a 120gb SSD (no proper hard drive at all) for my uses it's plenty. If it isn't then memory sticks are really cheap now - like this one. Yes I realize it's 45 quid, but they also do a 64gb for £25

I wouldn't go back to not having an SSD having had one for just over a year in my desktop.
edit: however the Caviar Black is also very quick