All in one PC

pappa_golf

bought a intel "nuc" about 4 yrs ago , intention was for an openelec/kodi box , however my "tower" gave up the ghost , nuc mounted on the vesa bkt of a nice 27 (or 28) inch monitor , short hdmi cable to feed it , wireless keyboard and mouse and a generic USB hub sat on my table , , all the bells , wifi (duel band) bluetooth etc etc , no intention of buying another "noisy" tower , the power consumption on this thing is low , although an early i3 model it does most things I want , has a internal 128 g m.2 drive and I have a large nas drive as well ,

flapjackboy

If he's not going to be looking to do much in the way of gaming on it, I've priced up a MiniITX system that comes in under £500 that includes everything he'll need (23" monitor, keyboard and mouse) and includes a 120GB SSD, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 1TB HDD.

thescouselander

I don't see anything wrong with an All in One. They're very neat and in reality most people don't bother upgrading their PCs unless they went for something high end in the first place. Reliability should be no worse than a laptop and in fact it's probably better as there's no battery to worry about.

The problem is going to be that choice is limited at £500 so the best thing to do would be to go in to PC world or similar and find one with the best screen.

flapjackboy

thescouselander wrote: »

I don't see anything wrong with an All in One. They're very neat and in reality most people don't bother upgrading their PCs unless they went for something high end in the first place. Reliability should be no worse than a laptop and in fact it's probably better as there's no battery to worry about.

The problem is going to be that choice is limited at £500 so the best thing to do would be to go in to PC world or similar and find one with the best screen.

The problems with AIOs are the same ones you have with laptops. The main problem with both AIOs and laptops is adequate cooling for all the components. Because you only have a limited amount of space to work with to mount all your components, that leaves very little room for good airflow. This means that the components for both laptops and your standard AIO have to be designed to produce as little heat as possible. Since power = heat, most mobile processors are drastically under powered compared to their desktop equivalents.

The other problem is that because both laptops and AIOs use non-standard components such as motherboards in them, with everything integrated onto them, if one component goes on that motherboard, the whole thing needs replacing.

Really, if space is a consideration, OP should look at a compact MiniITX or MicroATX system.

AndyPix

thescouselander wrote: »

go in to PC world .

#Shudder


Worst advice ever

grumpycrab

thescouselander wrote: »

go in to PC world or similar

AndyPix wrote: »

#Shudder


Worst advice ever

Nothing wrong with going in for a play - just make sure you don't have your wallet with you :-)

AndyPix

^^ Yeah i suppose thats ok ..
Sort of using them as a showroom for stuff you intend to buy elsewhere ..


If you are approached by a sales droid, just put out your hand and tell them to go away.
Dont let even one word of their useless poison enter your ears

thescouselander

flapjackboy wrote: »

The problems with AIOs are the same ones you have with laptops. The main problem with both AIOs and laptops is adequate cooling for all the components. Because you only have a limited amount of space to work with to mount all your components, that leaves very little room for good airflow. This means that the components for both laptops and your standard AIO have to be designed to produce as little heat as possible. Since power = heat, most mobile processors are drastically under powered compared to their desktop equivalents.

The other problem is that because both laptops and AIOs use non-standard components such as motherboards in them, with everything integrated onto them, if one component goes on that motherboard, the whole thing needs replacing.

Really, if space is a consideration, OP should look at a compact MiniITX or MicroATX system.

I really don't see the concern. Computer components are very reliable and the likelihood of a failure is slim. The most likely thing to go is the hard drive and these are usually replaceable. Heat dissipation isn't really a problem for light to moderate use either. Not everyone wants to deal with a cumbersome tower system with the trail of wires that come with it.

flapjackboy

thescouselander wrote: »

Computer components are very reliable and the likelihood of a failure is slim.

I'm an IT tech. I build and fix computers for a living and I can tell you that computer components are not as reliable as you like to think they are. All it takes is one bad batch of capacitors and you've got a sea of RMAs to process and systems to fix.

The most likely thing to go is the hard drive and these are usually replaceable. Heat dissipation isn't really a problem for light to moderate use either. Not everyone wants to deal with a cumbersome tower system with the trail of wires that come with it.

Actually, the most likely thing to go in my experience are caps/VRMs on mainboards and graphics cards. On an AIO/laptop, that's a complete logic board replacement. On an ordinary PC, you just replace the faulty component and away you go. An ordinary PC is easy for the end user to maintain and fix/upgrade with a minimal amount of research, but an AIO/laptop? Not so much.

thescouselander

flapjackboy wrote: »

I'm an IT tech. I build and fix computers for a living and I can tell you that computer components are not as reliable as you like to think they are. All it takes is one bad batch of capacitors and you've got a sea of RMAs to process and systems to fix.



Actually, the most likely thing to go in my experience are caps/VRMs on mainboards and graphics cards. On an AIO/laptop, that's a complete logic board replacement. On an ordinary PC, you just replace the faulty component and away you go. An ordinary PC is easy for the end user to maintain and fix/upgrade with a minimal amount of research, but an AIO/laptop? Not so much.

I don't agree with that but in any case a cap failure is no reason to scrap a logic board as they're usually easy to replace.

Also if a failure is going great to happen it's more likely within the warranty period and as a consumer there are better protections Vs a what a business gets so it needn't be a problem.

Where I work we have over 250,000 devices in circulation and if something goes wrong it's usually mechanical like drives and fans. Electronic failures are virtually unheard of unless its major infrastructure equipment which is on 24/7 and gets a hammering heat wise.

At the end of the day there's not much difference between an AIO PC and a Smart TV or a Smart phone but no one gets excited about these devices not being maintainable. In fact a £500 PC is a good bit cheaper than a TV or top end Smart phone and can almost be viewed as a disposable device.