Desktop Help Please 🥴

Bonhomie

Lizbetty said:

Heedtheadvice said:

Given your predicted use most requirements will be met with a medium power machine.

Business use is fairly basic in demands.

Photo editing a bit more demanding in that good high(ish) reduction monitor is desirable.

Music production/DAW really depends upon the chosen DAW. Some of the common pro daws are quite demanding in terms of cpu power, ram and disk space and are costly to buy. Others that are particularly good (and cheap) -Such as Reaper- are not as demanding  but nevertheless powerful and used semi pro and pro. That decision might impact significantly on your budget and machine spec!

If photo edit includes video then speed and more particularly drive space is more demanding.

As it is business use (husbands or daughters) backup facility is important so allow for that in your budget ( such as  couple of external drives - in the order of £100 maybe from your curry's card?

If your daughter is serious about music aspects then a second monitor could become invaluable for good functionality. Your machine should have that capability. You can then get a second  monitor at a later date if desired.

All in  all that might push your budget. That in mind(cost) for flexibility  and ease of upgrade plus better ergonomics I would steer clear of a laptop, definitely not get an All-in-one and go for a desktop or tower machine.

Several years ago I got  Dell refurbished tower  not the fastest machine even in it's day (i5 3xxx) SSD and hard drive for storage plus 16GB ram and it is still fine for all those tasks you mention. A more up to date similar model ( that can cope with win 11 - I am still on 10) should be fine. I use a 22" monitor but would love to get a second for DAW use and have three external backup drives.

I expect other posters will have more specific detail on up to date hardware but I would firmly advise much of what I have written (obviously!).....and you might note I am  big fan of Reaper, p.m. me if you want more info on it.

Not a fan of Curry's to buy a main machine from. You will get other posters agreeing  with that!!!

Thanks so much for this. That'd probably be my next question, which DAW so that's really useful thanks 😊 

The replies have made me realise Currys probably isn't the right place. We have two local computer companies, both with offers I'm just looking at. I'm thinking too we'd get better support if needed if we use them too.
I'm not sure how reasonable these offers are but probably better than the big shops? 

Allocate £400 for PC as suggested by Cisco001 and up to £200 for monitor. 24" minimum with a wide colour gamut. Not all monitors are the same; some will be better for video and photography and you'll still need to compromise, even at that price level. PC; Cisco001 will be likely be able to find you an i5 12th Gen or Ryzen 5 that fits the bill.

Cisco001

£450 with Ryzen 7 5700G + 16GB RAM + 480GB SSD + 1TB HDD
https://www.palicomp.co.uk/amd-vishera-450-gamer-amd2

P.S. PC above picked based on price. I can't comment on customer service as I built my own PC

You could consider buying monitor from currys if they are in the right price, but I have no knowledge on the requirement for photo editing monitor...

TerryTeacake

Bonhomie said:

Lizbetty said:

Hello everyone!

I've deliberated a bit too long and our desktop PC (essential for my husband's business but running on Windows 8. something) is starting to fail, it looks like it has days if we're lucky. 

I'm lost. I've googled and I am so confused. 

Budget is about £600 ish. We have decided on a desktop -

Needs to be Microsoft/Windows
For photo editing and music production/DAW use (daughter is a musician/photographer, now left college and so needs home facilities for earning some pennies)
Also for office use for my husband's business/admin

No gaming or anything like that. 

It needs to be reliable, mainly. Can anyone help with the sort of spec I should look for please? 

We do have a £360 gift card (for a faulty item we had under warranty) for Currys so are drawn to them, although their selection seems a bit limited. The spec google suggested is coming up with 1 pc at Currys which is £1k plus and out of stock anyway!

I would really appreciate any help, I'm so stressed! Many thanks 😊 

Failing in what manner? If it's just the HDD failing; if you are quick you can clone it to an SSD and be up and running very quickly. Faster than before. 

This is what I was thinking.

Heedtheadvice

There you have two options

1. Effectively a repair/ upgrade

2. A good new PC recommendation

Option one will show a good speed improvement for very little cash leaving plenty pennies left over for  a new 22" monitor, ram upgrade ( and more ) but does have downsides. You will still be running on win 8 unless you upgrade and (assuming PC is of same date or earlier than win 8) still getting  on a bit so there could be a risk to other parts and I wonder if it is capable of supporting a quality monitor or even a  second optional one for DAW use. It would probably leave enough out of your budget plus Currys card to also buy budget monitor speakers  for audio ( virtually essential for music work ). Maybe cannot support Win 11 (?) when you need to upgrade for security reasons. (Win10 might be an intermediate step)

Option two gets you a very good new machine, at least as fast as you need and lots of storage with money left over for a monitor and external backup drives. Nothing much  left over for a semi/pro DAW and speakers, Windows 10/11, second monitor ( desirable only for DAW use)

Neither is optimal and depends upon your priorities. I would ( being biased and happy to do DIY work on PCs) be happy to have a slightly older machine (and hopefully cheaper) with with more devices that seem to be needed. As an example  you cannot do semi/ Pro music generation mixes without decent monitor speakers (good headphones a  pinch) and including decent 22" hi res (example) video monitor and backup drives.

Edit:

Clearly think to that PC above, good though it is, is aimed at game players.

A similar spec,  a tad slower but still more than adequate for your needs would be the 400 shown on another page https://www.palicomp.co.uk/rookie. I would opt for a similar spec one for the money saved and not necessarily from a supplier aimed at gamers!

Edit 2: something like https://www.dellrefurbished.co.uk/item/dell-optiplex-3070-sff-5fd2b5f0/dell-optiplex-3070-sff/1.html?child=dell-optiplex-3070-sff-000010&p=1, though not as 'special ' might be more like it. Proviso about adding  a second drive etc.

Lizbetty

Thanks so much for all of your suggestions, apologies for the delay (been ill unfortunately). 

I really appreciate the suggestions for the the various machines. I must admit I'm warying of patching up the old one for my husband especially to use for work because it's so old I worry about the next thing breaking 🙈 

I'll definitely have a look at all the links, thanks for the advice on monitors too! We hadn't really thought much about a decent monitor but with my daughter needing it to edit her photographs (she has had a few paid gigs), it makes a lot of sense. 

In all honesty, speed would probably seem better even on a slower machine because all our tech is ancient 😄 Reliability and quality is probably the most important issue. 

Many thanks again, all your replies have really helped a lot, my brain feels far less fuddled now 😊

Lizbetty

Just a quick update! 

The old PC became worse so we took it in to the local PC menders. He said he couldn't upgrade it past Windows 8.1 once he has fixed it, and that the best option to save our data would be a sort of refurbished machine and to move our hard drive across to save the data. He suggested we look online to buy a key for Windows 10 as he can't get involved with Windows 10 now unless he charges us £135 or something to install from scratch. 

We need to tell the man a minimum spec so he can find us the best refurbished machine. I'm getting from the comments that it needs to be 16gb RAM minimum, and either Ryzen 5 or 7 or Intel 5? Have I forgotten anything in my panic? 😄 

We're stuck at the mo without one unfortunately 🙈 My fault for procrastinating! He said that he doesn't think it's just dust in the machine, but he's checking what's over heating, he thinks possibly a power bank but he's unsure until he's run some tests. 

He has said a machine with Intel 5 and a new SSD would be £410 , with all our info transferred over and running on Windows 8.1 for us to upgrade to 10. He hasn't seemed like he wanted to upsell at all so I'm assuming that's reasonable? 

Many thanks again everyone! 

Newcad

Mmm, I've updated Windows 7 and even XP machines to Windows 10 so I'm not sure why he says yours won't go beyond 8.1?

Also, a licenced version of 8.1 will update to 10 with no need to buy a new licence so I'm not sure what he is on about there either?
Unless he intends to put unactivated (unlicenced) 8.1 on there?

However if you are considering a new (refurbished) machine then Windows 11 should be the way to go now.
Although I do realise that budget constraints may be in play here.
Windows 10 becomes end-of-life on 14th October 2025 and although billions of users will continue to use it after that date it will no longer receive any updates.

If he can supply, at a reasonable price, a machine that will run Windows 11 then that would be a better option.
(He may not have one, Win11 requires different hardware to previous Windows versions).

If you do get a Windows 10 machine then from what he says it will not be 'Activated' and you will need to buy a licence for it yourself.
'Oficially' that can be expensive, but as he says you can get one cheaper online (no doubt he will have a recommendation of where to get a cheaper valid licence, he can't do it for you himself though because he is a business).

An alternative is to to save your money and run Windows 10 without activating it. It's perfectly legal to do so.
Unactivated Windows does have a few limitations, but you can easily get around them.
I have a laptop that I refurbished/upgraded from XP about a year ago and it now runs the latest Windows 10 unactivated, It works just as well as my fully activated Windows 10 laptop.
Here's a list of the restrictions in unactivated Windows 10: https://softwarekeep.com/blog/what-happens-if-you-don-t-activate-windows-10
As said you can get round most of those limitations, for example, you can right-click an image in File Explorer and select "Set as desktop background." (Set a light background such as a snowscene and you'll hardly notice the watermark either). You can do the same trick for the lockscreen by right-clicking on an image in Windows Photos app and selecting 'Set as'

Cisco001

Can you just save the all the data yourself? Probably with external SSD/ HHD?

The guy from local shop is ripping you off on windows installation. 
You can fresh install Win 10 yourself without costing a penny. (You do need a usb pen drive and 2 hours of spare time)
Existing Win 8.1 key can be use in Win 10.