new pc

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ed
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#1 new pc

Post by ed »

Very reluctantly I'm going to have to upgrade/replace my trusty windows/internet pc, it's circa 2009 and wheezing.

It will be dual boot but has to have a windows presence due to legacy development/support, Delphi/C++ and atmel studio.

I'm currently looking at MSI z490 mobo with an I5 10400 and 8gb DDR4.
I can try and use the existing case and PS and attempt a win10 transfer via existing ssd.....
but may have to bite the bullet and buy a new case, PS and DVD. This way I can keep the old m/c intact and still use clio.

I mention this in case anyone has a suggestion for anything else I should look at. I'm quite keen to stick with Intel cos it's the devil I'm familiar with, but I am aware that AMD have been busy in this area.
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#2 Re: new pc

Post by pre65 »

ed wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 9:22 pm
I'm currently looking at MSI z490 mobo with an I5 10400 and 8gb DDR4.
Do you know if these would be compatible for when Windows 11 becomes the norm ?
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#3 Re: new pc

Post by jack »

Nice motherboard - I really like MSI and this board also has native USB C as well. Bit of a power hungry so-and-so, so check your PSU...

16GB. 8 is ok but can be a bit tight if several large apps are open. Go for 16 as 1x16 or 2x8 - relatively cheap win.

You already have an SSD, so the next best thing is a decent amount of ram. Is your SSD SATA 3? If not, consider moving to a newer SSD as a boot disk to take advantage of the mobo's capabilities.

An i5 is absolutely fine for most stuff, but do make sure the overall setup is W11 capable - not all i5s are...

After that, decent video card and monitor...

Then keyboard and mouse! I recently switched to the the Logitech MX Keys series stuff which allows switching between up to 3 different setups. Really useful if you're doing development...
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#4 Re: new pc

Post by ed »

thanks chaps..
ironically I built Seb(youngest son) the same spec almost exactly 2 years ago, but used 10400F(edit, maybe it was 9400F z390 mobo)together with a gaming video card. I don't need such luxury so I'll go for bog standard graphics which are on 10400.

Unbeknown to me, he(Seb) upgraded his machine to win 11 some time back. I'm still trying to fathom how he did that without admin priv.

@Nick
thanks for that but I'm on top of all that. What I was fishing for mostly was some feedback on AMD as I have no experience whatsoever.....and also the teaser about transferring an existing win10(licensed installation from free win7 upgrade) to a new cpu/mobo, and the difference/changes going to the new uefi bios.
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#5 Re: new pc

Post by chris661 »

Ed,

Depending on your budget and use case(s), how about a laptop? I came to the conclusion a while ago that a cheap-ish laptop is "good enough" in terms of processing power for a lot of stuff. You gain portability, all the parts compatibility is taken care of, etc etc. Just a thought.

FWIW, AMD and Intel are still pretty competitive. AMD has gone for more CPU cores, while Intel has fewer cores running at higher power. They end up "beating" each other at different tasks. I suspect that software will gradually be optimised for more and more cores (since Intel is starting to move in that direction too), so it might be worth considering AMD. Full disclosure, though, I bought a laptop this year with a 4-core Intel CPU and I'm not particularly worried.

For moving Win10 to a different machine, you might need the bitlocker code to unlock the storage drive on the new machine. You'll need to log into the Microsoft website to find the code. I recently upgraded the SSD in my laptop and used cloning software (Acronis) to move everything to the new drive (including the Windows installation). Couldn't boot without the bitlocker code.

Chris

PS - Definitely go for 16GB of RAM. 1x 16GB stick would mean an easy upgrade path to 32GB if you ever fancied it, but 2x 8GB sticks will run a little quicker because you'll be on dual-channel mode.
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#6 Re: new pc

Post by Nick »

Unbeknown to me, he(Seb) upgraded his machine to win 11 some time back. I'm still trying to fathom how he did that without admin priv.
It's simple if the disk isn't encrypted to give yourself admin privileges. Just needs a Linux boot usb stick.
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#7 Re: new pc

Post by ed »

Nick wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 10:58 am
Unbeknown to me, he(Seb) upgraded his machine to win 11 some time back. I'm still trying to fathom how he did that without admin priv.
It's simple if the disk isn't encrypted to give yourself admin privileges. Just needs a Linux boot usb stick.
I'm pretty confident that's out of his reach at the mo.....although....I'm going to have to keep a closer watch.....I'm dreading the time he gets a shed
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#8 Re: new pc

Post by pre65 »

ed wrote: Thu Dec 30, 2021 11:13 am ....I'm dreading the time he gets a shed
That made me laugh Ed. :lol:
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#9 Re: new pc

Post by jack »

I'm having to upgrade now...

Using https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ - very helpful folk and reasonably priced. Not sure I could build the same system much cheaper - it would certainly be more aggravation to do it myself plus they give a 3-year warranty on labour & 1-year on parts. My brother (and business partner) has had several systems built by them and is very pleased.

This is for a company workstation for processing large documents (books of several 100 pages), so will be an i7-12700KF and 32GB of DDR5 using a Gigabyte Z690 UD motherboard.

I'll keep my current Nvidia Quadro P400 graphics card as it's multi-screen and easily fast enough for work use, plus there's a fairly new BX500 1TB SSD that will also move. New CoolerMaster silent case though, and new quiet PSU. Also putting W11 Pro on a 512GB M.2 drive and all data on a different 2TB M.2. Good Lord! they're fast...

I invested in a Logitech MX keyboard and mouse recently, and absolutely love them, so they'll stay as will my zero-bezel monitors (currently 2, but may add a 3rd).

Even for document heavy lifting, it's way over spec, but it has to last 5-10 years.

No LEDs though 8)
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#10 Re: new pc

Post by izzy wizzy »

jack wrote: Thu Feb 24, 2022 7:02 pm No LEDs though 8)
After putting together a mini itx i5 10 recently, the only comment one of our young humans made was "where are the leds".

I don't get it but hey, I'm old. I only wanted small, quiet and fairly fast. His machine would put some night clubs to shame.
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#11 Re: new pc

Post by ed »

I haven't sorted mine yet, covid got in the way.

I'm currently thinking i5 11400 will be the one. Nick's choice is more than way OTT for me as I just looked at userbenchmark and that cpu is currently 3rd fastest on the planet...my humble choice is somewhere like 50th for sheer speed, but userbenchmark does say it's the best choice by far for anybody other than the most anal gamers..

I'm thinking if my replacement lasts anywhere nearly as long as the current one it will outlast me. It might be good to be proved wrong.
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#12 Re: new pc

Post by izzy wizzy »

Sounds a similar reason as to why I went for the 10400 when I did mine. Kinda like the i5 VFM/performance sweet spot.
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#13 Re: new pc

Post by jack »

TBF, if it wasn't a work machine I would go further down the list, but the gen12 stuff is not that different in price from the gen11 plus I get the VAT back on this when it's done. As a result of the G12 choice, I'm also using DDR5 memory, which is pretty new and thus not as cheap as DDR4. i9 is the obvious next step, but all that gives me is a few more cores and a bit more cache - there's already more than enough of both in a decent i7.

Total cost for the new box will be around £1,250 ex VAT, which for a box with very high IOPs as well as being a decent compute engine is pretty reasonable.

Also, what is a stonking processor this month will be slightly further down the list next month and by next year will probably be passé.

In 5 years' time, who knows?

This is not a mad gamers box. For a start, it has NO extra LEDs... and a distinctly average video card. It's designed to do a job for customers and to do it well... 90% of the time it'll be essentially idling, but when I need to OCR and index a 300+ page document (as I did on Monday), I'd rather it went a bit faster than 45 seconds to a minute per page - high quality OCR on old documents is very compute intensive - loads of stuff going on as well, e.g. dynamically selecting modern fonts that are a best match to what's currently being scanned.
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#14 Re: new pc

Post by ed »

Nick, you do not need to justify your purchase imo, and certainly not to me. You had already stated your reasons for chosing that cpu/mobo.
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#15 Re: new pc

Post by ed »

I just did a Belarc update to see if there was stuff I could clear out before the impending upgrade and check what I have to re-install.

I was reminded that I'm still using office 2007 on this machine and there maybe security issues. I think I use office on this machine because the mem sahib uses(is used to/familiar with) it for email and word and powerpoint teachery stuff.

I'm not going to shell out for any new version of office but was wondering if I could put libre office on the new machine without the boss noticing/complaining.
any thoughts anyone?

I would also have to get another email client, again any thoughts anyone?

I will have to keep an offline copy of outlook in order to read the pst archives that go back 20 years. I'm always being asked for copies of emails form years back....unless other clients can read the old pst files.
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