Pre-built or build your own?

Fakman87

Hey guys,

My friend wants to buy a pc for college. He won't be gaming on it. He was thinking of buying this:

http://www.pcworld.ie/product/aspire-z1611-allinone-pc/329017/397.0.0

I told him it would be much better to build his own but I'm wondering what you guys think and what would be the best specs he could build for 400-500?

Thanks.

Asmooh

Just take the most expensive that's always good, this is what I took as cheap Base


Asrock Z170 extreme 4 € 140.00
Crucial CT2K8G4DFD8213 16gb € 84.00
Intel Pentium G4400 € 65
NZXT Hale82 V2 550W € 96.00
NZXT H440 New Edition Zwart/Rood € 124.00

Digital Solitude

i3 4160 €120
H81M board €50
300w PSU €40
8gb RAM €40
2tb HDD €70
120gb SSD €60
Total €380

And as much as he's willing to spend on a case. No comparison.

Sonics2k

Fakman87 wrote: »

Hey guys,

My friend wants to buy a pc for college. He won't be gaming on it. He was thinking of buying this:

http://www.pcworld.ie/product/aspire-z1611-allinone-pc/329017/397.0.0

I told him it would be much better to build his own but I'm wondering what you guys think and what would be the best specs he could build for 400-500?

Thanks.

My only advice would be stay away from that particular machine, it's specs are awful, even if it is cheap.

TerrorFirmer

Asmooh wrote: »

Just take the most expensive that's always good, this is what I took as cheap Base


Asrock Z170 extreme 4 € 140.00
Crucial CT2K8G4DFD8213 16gb € 84.00
Intel Pentium G4400 € 65
NZXT Hale82 V2 550W € 96.00
NZXT H440 New Edition Zwart/Rood € 124.00

That's totally unbalanced, Digital's machine is much more powerful and includes an SSD and HDD.

Asmooh

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

That's totally unbalanced, Digital's machine is much more powerful and includes an SSD and HDD.

Because this is the base.
From here you can change things, like adding a ssd or hdd or anything you like.

Also this is a skylake cpu, my own personal setup also included a 512GB Samsung 951, that ssd is already more worth than the OP is willing to spend.

Also did I included the pentium as base, but myself will get the newest i7 instead.

I don't play games or do anything interesting.
This is just a computer to check Facebook and emails

tadcan

You can go cheaper if the PC is just for basic tasks, like browsing, or writing documents, watching movies etc. And you don't store lots of movies/photos that require extra harddrive space.

CPU €66.12
Motherboard €50.31
RAM €40.74
Power Supply €39.85
Harddrive €63.34
Case €38.84
Which adds up to €299.20
Plus postage of around €30ish
A windows 10 licence off reddit for $35. Or if your friend doesn't need windows specific programs use Ubuntu instead.

And you have a complete box for around €350

Asmooh

tadcan wrote: »

You can go cheaper if the PC is just for basic tasks, like browsing, or writing documents, watching movies etc. And you don't store lots of movies/photos that require extra harddrive space.

CPU €66.12
Motherboard €50.31
RAM €40.74
Power Supply €39.85
Harddrive €63.34
Case €38.84
Which adds up to €299.20
Plus postage of around €30ish
A windows 10 licence off reddit for $35. Or if your friend doesn't need windows specific programs use Ubuntu instead.

And you have a complete box for around €350

Based on those prices the quality won't be good

TerrorFirmer

Asmooh wrote: »

Based on those prices the quality won't be good

Based on your advise, you honestly don't really know what you're talking about.

Just take the most expensive that's always good, this is what I took as cheap Base

Also did I included the pentium as base, but myself will get the newest i7 instead.

I don't play games or do anything interesting.
This is just a computer to check Facebook and emails

That's the advice you had to offer! If you didn't have so many posts I would have assumed you were trolling.

Digital Solitude

tadcans CPU doesn't have a cooler with it, so that link isn't suitable, the rest of his are fine. I'd go with whatever the rest of his links are, a Pentium G3320 or similar, and a 120gb SSD.

Base level motherboards will do the job for an easy 90% of people. Motherboard quality scales up, now down.

tadcan

Opps, I didn't check if the CPU had a stock cooler. Thanks for catching that error DS.

Asmooh

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Based on your advise, you honestly don't really know what you're talking about.





That's the advice you had to offer! If you didn't have so many posts I would have assumed you were trolling.

If the computer would only be used for facebook and email, a raspberry pi for 30 usd would be more than enough. why does anyone needs a ssd and 2TB HDD for email and facebook? doesnt make sense does it?

Or why does anyone needs windows 10 for facebook and email? linux can handle that.

But yes, I like to buy the most expensive and fastest.. even tho i dont do anything with the hardware

TerrorFirmer

Asmooh wrote: »

If the computer would only be used for facebook and email, a raspberry pi for 30 usd would be more than enough. why does anyone needs a ssd and 2TB HDD for email and facebook? doesnt make sense does it?

Or why does anyone needs windows 10 for facebook and email? linux can handle that.

But yes, I like to buy the most expensive and fastest.. even tho i dont do anything with the hardware

If you want to flush money down the toilet that's fine, at the end of the day it's your money so it's yours to do with as you see fit.

But advising other people to do the same is where the issue is.

Asmooh

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

If you want to flush money down the toilet that's fine, at the end of the day it's your money so it's yours to do with as you see fit.

But advising other people to do the same is where the issue is.

so you rather advice people to buy a cheap pc for 400 euros that they can throw away in 1,5 years?

Lu Tze

Asmooh wrote: »

so you rather advice people to buy a cheap pc for 400 euros that they can throw away in 1,5 years?

For Facebook and email? I didn't realise they were about to become so resource hungry.

I have a low end pc built in early 2012, still operating as a media centre, sat tuners, perfectly capable of Internet, email even Facebook nearly four years on! And I don't see that changing in the next couple of years. Even have a hd7770 in it for the odd bit of 720p gaming on the telly

Asmooh

Lu Tze wrote: »

For Facebook and email? I didn't realise they were about to become so resource hungry.

I have a low end pc built in early 2012, still operating as a media centre, sat tuners, perfectly capable of Internet, email even Facebook nearly four years on! And I don't see that changing in the next couple of years. Even have a hd7770 in it for the odd bit of 720p gaming on the telly

There is a difference between working and fast without getting annoyed about waiting times, I could use a old pentium 4 for facebook.. doesnt mean its fast enough for me to handle it without throwing the computer at the wall.

for me things that slow very quickly thats why i buy a new phone every year and keep my hardware up-2-date.

tadcan

Asmooh wrote: »

so you rather advice people to buy a cheap pc for 400 euros that they can throw away in 1,5 years?

I built a PC for €350 in 2010 which still did web browsing even on 2GB of ram relatively quickly. This year I put in some more ram and an ssd, and it will keep going until Facebook is unusable.

Edit. There is a big difference between an old pentium 4 and recent pentium based off the new i core technology.

Lu Tze

Asmooh wrote: »

There is a difference between working and fast without getting annoyed about waiting times, I could use a old pentium 4 for facebook.. doesnt mean its fast enough for me to handle it without throwing the computer at the wall.

for me things that slow very quickly thats why i buy a new phone every year and keep my hardware up-2-date.

It's plenty fast, no real difference between it and my workstation for these kind of tasks (they aren't cpu heavy) . Once you have any kind of ssd in there at all. The Base spec when I built is a pentium g630, 4gb ram, h61m board, 60gb ssd/2tb storage. Explain to me the huge gains I would have make in Facebook by upping the spec to 1000 euro pc?

I just don't see the point in spending extra with no noticeable benefit. Built for purpose, still easily fulfilling that purpose after nearly four years on. If the purpose was for some of the numerical modelling, CAD and GIS I do it would no longer be fit for purpose, but it isn't.

I would laugh at anybody dropping a grand on something that will only be used for in essence browsing the Internet, but that's their prerogative, its their money. The issue arises when somebody is telling somebody else to do this and passing it off as good advice

Asmooh

Lu Tze wrote: »

It's plenty fast, no real difference between it and my workstation for these kind of tasks (they aren't cpu heavy) . Once you have any kind of ssd in there at all. The Base spec when I built is a pentium g630, 4gb ram, h61m board, 60gb ssd/2tb storage. Explain to me the huge gains I would have make in Facebook by upping the spec to 1000 euro pc?

I just don't see the point in spending extra with no noticeable benefit. Built for purpose, still easily fulfilling that purpose after nearly four years on. If the purpose was for some of the numerical modelling, CAD and GIS I do it would no longer be fit for purpose, but it isn't.

I would laugh at anybody dropping a grand on something that will only be used for in essence browsing the Internet, but that's their prerogative, its their money. The issue arises when somebody is telling somebody else to do this and passing it off as good advice

I used a newest AMD FX laptop with 8GB ram and SSD and when I click somewhere the waiting time was too long, also when opening programs.
Thats why I want something fast, when i click it should be almost there directly.

Xenoronin

Somehow I doubt that laptop was working as it was supposed to then. A new laptop regardless of spec, shouldn't take long to boot or open programs. Perhaps the processor was slow, maybe it didn't actually have an SSD and instead one of those hybrid drives, or there was something going on in the background like a virus scan. I've seen laptops run slow for all kinds of reasons.

Getting back to the original point and why people got a bit riled up by your original build suggestion, it was a fair one, but ultimately unbalanced as Terror said. You have really high end components, and then a processor that is not great. The build you suggested allows for upgrading yes, but that is something an experienced PC builder would do. Why not just get the best for their budget now? We can't foretell every use of a PC for every person for the next 5 years so you have to work off of what they tell you initially.

"I want a PC for under 500€ for general browsing. No gaming required." [paraphrased]
You can't then suggest a Skylake build with a motherboard that supports overclocking and 16gb of RAM. It doesn't fit. A Haswell duel core build will perform that service admirably for a good few years to come and with an SSD, will be more than sufficient. How do we know this? Experience mostly. Some people like Terror have literally put these processors to work (I assume out of sheer curiosity) to see what they are capable of.

"Just take the most expensive that's always good"
That's just bad advice, the same way "Newer is always better" is, but every manufacturer would love everyone to think this way. Skylake is expensive right now unless you are going high end (supply and demand etc.). Therefore it's completely reasonable to look back a generation at the cheaper options that are still in plentiful supply.

Asmooh

Xenoronin wrote: »

Somehow I doubt that laptop was working as it was supposed to then. A new laptop regardless of spec, shouldn't take long to boot or open programs. Perhaps the processor was slow, maybe it didn't actually have an SSD and instead one of those hybrid drives, or there was something going on in the background like a virus scan. I've seen laptops run slow for all kinds of reasons.

Getting back to the original point and why people got a bit riled up by your original build suggestion, it was a fair one, but ultimately unbalanced as Terror said. You have really high end components, and then a processor that is not great. The build you suggested allows for upgrading yes, but that is something an experienced PC builder would do. Why not just get the best for their budget now? We can't foretell every use of a PC for every person for the next 5 years so you have to work off of what they tell you initially.

"I want a PC for under 500€ for general browsing. No gaming required." [paraphrased]
You can't then suggest a Skylake build with a motherboard that supports overclocking and 16gb of RAM. It doesn't fit. A Haswell duel core build will perform that service admirably for a good few years to come and with an SSD, will be more than sufficient. How do we know this? Experience mostly. Some people like Terror have literally put these processors to work (I assume out of sheer curiosity) to see what they are capable of.

"Just take the most expensive that's always good"
That's just bad advice, the same way "Newer is always better" is, but every manufacturer would love everyone to think this way. Skylake is expensive right now unless you are going high end (supply and demand etc.). Therefore it's completely reasonable to look back a generation at the cheaper options that are still in plentiful supply.

3-5 seconds for me is already "too long"


Also, the new pentium cpu's are also skylake.
http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz


The i3 that the other guy told, its not much faster but it is 2 times the price

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-G4400-vs-Intel-Core-i3-4160

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/295/Intel_Core_i3_i3-4160_vs_Intel_Pentium_Dual-Core_G4400.html
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-G4400-vs-Intel-Core-i3-4160/m38086vs2816


another compare: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2634&cmp[]=2317

if you want to go for G4500T: http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_pentium_g4500t-561

So yes, better invest in skylake socket 1151 because those pentiums on 14mm arent slow.

Xenoronin

I've created your build in the build.png attachment below. €535. Budget blown. Edit: I forgot the HDD, so €575~ total if that's included.

There was more wrong with your build than just the processor. The motherboard supports overclocking and is a very high end one at that. The case is complete overkill for a simple system. The RAM is 16gb of which a max of perhaps 6gb will ever be used. 550W is complete overkill without a graphics card.

So lets boil it back. It is very possible to create a skylake build for this budget if all those problems were fixed (i.e. go for reasonable components). Please see the skylake.png attachment for reference.

You cannot boil back a processor to a simple benchmark number to explain why the Haswell i3 is a better processor than the G4400, but go do that if you feel it makes sense.

Asmooh

Xenoronin wrote: »

I've created your build in the build.png attachment below. €535. Budget blown. Edit: I forgot the HDD, so €575~ total if that's included.

There was more wrong with your build than just the processor. The motherboard supports overclocking and is a very high end one at that. The case is complete overkill for a simple system. The RAM is 16gb of which a max of perhaps 6gb will ever be used. 550W is complete overkill without a graphics card.

So lets boil it back. It is very possible to create a skylake build for this budget if all those problems were fixed (i.e. go for reasonable components). Please see the skylake.png attachment for reference.

You cannot boil back a processor to a simple benchmark number to explain why the Haswell i3 is a better processor than the G4400, but go do that if you feel it makes sense.

Now take a 120 euro skylake cpu instead of the i3 haswell and see the difference


Intel Core i3 i3-6100T Boxed, € 122,95

Also this setup was personal, the case ofc is way overpriced including the fpu, but this is my own setup remember I just think its better to invest in a Z170 chipset instead of the H110.

Genghiz Cohen

Next, Asmooh will be telling us that Alienware PCs play games the best because they cost the most.

Asmooh

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Next, Asmooh will be telling us that Alienware PCs play games the best because they cost the most.

Good choice!

Xenoronin

Ah I was going to reply, but since the guy won't actually read my posts, no point in getting trolled.

TerrorFirmer

In real world applications a Haswell i3 is light years ahead of a Skylake Pentium.

Skylake i3 is a good improvement on Haswell, but in practical terms you wouldn't see any difference whatsoever.

It's all rather moot however as you wouldn't see any difference between a €50 Pentium and a €700 Hex Core i7 for just browsing the web and using facebook, not now or years down the line.

Also, by the time a G3220 would become noticeably slow for such uses, years down the line, by that stage, S1150 i3s, i5s and i7's will cost relative pennies.

No matter what way you look at it, it's an absolute utter waste of money telling someone to invest in an enthusiast class motherboard, high-end Skylake processor and ridiculously overkill power supply for basic desktop tasks.

Lu Tze

Genghiz Cohen

Serious answer: Get a laptop.