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| As Extraordinary as Everyone Else  |
Please help me spend my money (wisely). I run a small construction company and as such need a new PC that can handle large files and have several different programs operating simultaneously. My old PC is getting long in the tooth and has only 4 GB of memory which is slowing me down and I am thinking of upgrading to something like this from Dell.. http://deals.dell.com/work/productdetail/nku Any comments pro or con? Thanks. ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | ||
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Wait, what? |
I have been told by a very trusted, long time computer source (since the days of punch cards and room sized PC's) that you cannot go wrong pricewise with one of the Dell OptiPlex series desktops. No frills business computer with a reasonably sized HD; if a really large capacity is needed, buy an external drive for storage...it is obscene how cheap they have gotten compared to just a few years ago. “Remember to get vaccinated or a vaccinated person might get sick from a virus they got vaccinated against because you’re not vaccinated.” - author unknown | |||
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Ammoholic |
Staples has the next up in the series, much cheaper. XPS 8920 Intel Core i7, 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM, Windows 10, NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 Graphics Additional 8GB RAM to match the inspiron RAM $96. Total $775. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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eh-TEE-oh-clez |
Not a fantastic deal. In fact, that computer is pretty much garbage. You've got the right idea going with Dell, but the computer you've picked has a number of shortcomings: 1) You want an XPS series, not the Inspiron series. XPS is their higher end model, which will have better quality power supply and motherboard holding the system together. 2) You picked a computer with a CPU that is 3 generations old. Getting one with the newest i7 (8700) gives you 6 cores and 12 threads instead of just 4 cores. 3) NO SSD. This is the big one. SSD is a major technological breakthrough. There is no reason not to have an SSD as your primary drive. Mechanical hard drives are cheap, and most computers will throw in a mechanical hard drive as secondary storage. Costco has a number of Dell XPS computers for sale. If you can't configure your computer affordably enough hitting the above three requirements, let the CPU be the first to end up on the butcher floor. A slightly slower CPU won't make as much of a difference in most programs as a a slow hard disk. | |||
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Member |
Costco computers also get you 2yr warranties as opposed to the standard 1yr elsewhere. This message has been edited. Last edited by: lkdr1989, ...let him who has no sword sell his robe and buy one. Luke 22:35-36 NAV "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves." Matthew 10:16 NASV | |||
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| As Extraordinary as Everyone Else |
Thanks everyone for their honest opinions. I am running a Dell XPS now so I will stick with one of those. ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | |||
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Better Than I Deserve! |
Highly recommend you check out Costco. They have great deals and I think you get 90 days to return the thing if there are any problems. ____________________________ NRA Benefactor Life Member GOA Life Member Arizona Citizens Defense League Life Member | |||
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| As Extraordinary as Everyone Else |
Thanks everyone for the Costco suggestion. I just pulled the plug on this beast... Processor & Memory: •8th Gen Intel® Core i7-8700 Processor 3.2GHz •16GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM Drives: •2TB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive •DVD-RW (Writes to DVD/CD) Operating System: •Microsoft® Windows 10 Home(64-bit) Graphics & Video: •4GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti Graphics •Monitor Not Included Communications: •802.11 Wireless-AC + Bluetooth® 4.1 Audio: •Integrated 5.1 with Waves MaxxAudio® Processing It was cheaper at Costco than my professional discount at Dell's own website... ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | |||
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| Ammoholic |
As Aeteocles said, slap a SSD in that bad boy when you get it and you will have a nice rig. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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| Needs a check up from the neck up  |
SSD is a must, not an option __________________________ The entire reason for the Second Amendment is not for hunting, it’s not for target shooting … it’s there so that you and I can protect our homes and our children and and our families and our lives. And it’s also there as fundamental check on government tyranny. Sen Ted Cruz | |||
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| Member |
When adding an SSD, how to transfer Operating System to new SSD drive ? Is there a trick for taht ? "Crom is strong! If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, 'What is the riddle of steel?' If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me." | |||
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| Raised Hands Surround Us Three Nails To Protect Us  |
Bunch of different software options. Many SSDs have it bundled with the purchase. ———————————————— The world's not perfect, but it's not that bad. If we got each other, and that's all we have. I will be your brother, and I'll hold your hand. You should know I'll be there for you! | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
Many SSD's purchased in retail packaging will ship with software for cloning or transferring an old drive to a new one. However, with a brand new computer, I would consider simply downloading a fresh copy of Windows and a copy of the latest networking drivers from Dell onto a USB thumbdrive, swapping the new SSD for the old drive, and just installing Windows fresh onto the new SSD. Once Windows is running and you have the networking drivers installed, you can navigate to Dells website, and download Dell's update manager and just let it update and install all of the latest drivers for all the rest of the components, any firmware updates, and then lastly do all of the Windows updates. | |||
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Member |
And here I thought SSDs were required for gaming. Now they are required for office use? Jeez I'm getting old. | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
SSD is the best money spent of any computer upgrade. For 99% of daily use, especially office tasks, the hard drive speed is going to be the bottleneck. Everything from turning on the computer, starting programs, opening documents, and viewing files is dependent on hard drive speed. Having lots of RAM let's you work with larger data sets at once, but the speed at which data sets are loaded into RAM are hard drive dependent. CPU power determines how quickly one set of data is converted into another set of data... converting bits of raw video into a finished movie, converting bits of game commands into game play, converting lines of code into compiled software, converting a spreadsheet of data into another spreadsheet of data... But for most office use, the data sets take longer to load onto and off of RAM than it takes to actually run the CPU computations. | |||
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Dies Irae |
I got a new desktop Black Friday. Not as nice as smlsig got; 12 GB RAM, 2TB HDD, i5 7400 Acer. I already decided to install an SSD for boot drive and to that end have one coming today. I did some research and found some videos where someone mods the same PC as I got. From those videos I gather that some pre-built models have the OS configured to make data migration between drives somewhat difficult with included software. The vlogger says that Samsung's Transfer Wizard works well with pre-builts and is probably better for novices (like me). FWIW, he tried an ADATA SSD and Acronis and failed to migrate the drive. I also researched the difference between Samsungs's 850 EVO and 850 Pro lines of SSD. Given how the Pro writes data to the drive, I opted for it, even though I'm not a power user. In my case, I intended to get just a ~250 GB SSD. Given that, the 850 EVO (250 GB) was $90.00 and the 850 Pro (256 GB) was $109. Go larger, and the price difference gets quite a bit more costly for the Pro line. Here's a link worth watching just to get an idea about the drive swap and data migration. LINK I think it's maybe video 3 in the series. | |||
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| Ammoholic |
Damn, a few months ago when I got my new system it was $150+ for 250. I bought the 32 GB optane chip instead at half the cost thinking I could swap later to SSD. I should have waited. I paid $77. For me it doesn't matter much, I don't use the computer for much. It does make it load lightening fast though. Guess I'll see if they drop further and replace it with SSD. When I bought my computer it was one day after vacation and one week after needing to replace my phone and I wanted something I could pay for before interest accrued on CC. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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| As Extraordinary as Everyone Else |
The wealth of knowledge here on SF is truly amazing. Can anyone suggest where and which SSD to get for my new PC? ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | |||
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| Yew got a spider on yo head  |
Samsung evo. Great deals on them right now. | |||
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| Member |
Newegg has Samsung 850 Evo 500GB for 140. Do yourself a favor & go Samsung. 500GB is the sweet spot for speed, size & price right now. <240GB will not be as fast (due to fewer controller channels) Macrium Reflect can clone your current HDD to the SSD. It free & has worked fine for me numerous times. I have an ~$10 USB3->SATA cable that I use to clone. If you're going to keep the 2TB HDD, just add the SSD & then clone. Once cloned, change the boot settings to the SSD & wipe the HDD. | |||
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