Need help buying a new rig

[Rosseau]

Been here at Matrix since the beginning, and you guys are the only ones I trust to get this kind of advice.

(I have a nine-year-old Dell i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz, 16 GB ram and a 700-series GeForce card and 24" monitor with a hard-wired fast connection. Also running Win10, so Win11 is going to confuse me a lot. )

Looking for a desktop and larger monitor. What, when, and where should I buy?

[Edmon]

Give me a budget and location and I'll see if I can help you out .

Was a Senior Computer Engineer in a past life (11 years).

Edit: Are you comfortable building from parts, or do you require a pre-build?

[mainsworthy]

can we make a fantasy PC

for a wargame PC {
do we need an RTX to play wargames?
do we need more than 8GB ram to play matrix games?
do we need win 11?
I like SSDs so much, thats a definate inclusion
can we use a windows tablet instead of a desktop?
}
for a siming PC same questions, but maybe diff answers?
whats cheapest and whats average price gona be?

[GaryChildress]

If you're looking for a build-it-yourself project, this website has been a lot of help to me. I've built two machines using the suggestions from this site and both machines turned out great! I'm still using this one that I built about 5 years ago and it still runs pretty much everything that Steam has thrown at it so far.

The site takes into account parts compatibility to ensure that your build is successful.

https://www.logicalincrements.com/

This is also a handy site for determining what components to purchase.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/PCBuilder

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a prebuilt machine, then in the famous words of Gilda Radner, "Never mind".

[RangerJoe]

If you are a US Military Veteran, Dell among other companies may give you a discount.

Write down what you use a computer for and any plans for additional usage that you normally do not do such as video editing.

Ask around, come companies may be disposing of slightly older computers that are still good. It may be too much hassle for the company to sell them individually so someone either buys the entire lot or the company wipes them and then gives them away.

[Kuokkanen]

(I have a nine-year-old Dell i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz, 16 GB ram and a 700-series GeForce card and 24" monitor with a hard-wired fast connection. Also running Win10, so Win11 is going to confuse me a lot. )

Looking for a desktop and larger monitor. What, when, and where should I buy?

Unless you want to play Starfield or equivalent, simple graphic adapter change alone would take you a long way. I myself have i5-2500K with 8 GB of RAM. Old GTX 580 started to malfunction, so I swapped it for GTX 1660 Super (was recommended, likely overkill for the processor) and got SATA type SSD to go along. About 450 € purchase bought this rig few years more, and plays all the games I throw at it. Even new first-person shooters, like this one. Starfield would likely be too much though, but such games make only small % of the market.

[Rosseau]

I deeply appreciate the responses and will try to narrow things down to get some recommendations:

1. Budget is flexible and am willing to pay more for a proven company and equipment.
Pre-built desktop only.

2. Can wait until after Christmas, if there are sales.

3. Right now I can't run Panzer Corps 2 comfortably - but that may be PC2.

4. Matrix and Steam are great for re-installing product. However, have two SSDs with HPS and Battlefront CM2 games and other data and wondering if I can really plug them into a new machine and OS and expect them to work?

5. Would love to stick with Win10, but am afraid sticking with an outdated OS will hurt me down the road.

6. Dells are hard to kill, but at nine years old I am always afraid of a hard drive failure, so am not considering installing better graphics cards, etc. for my existing system.

7. I don't want dual monitors, but how big a monitor (and how high a resolution) will increase my gaming enjoyment - from Combat Mission 2, to CMO to Distant Worlds 2?

I owe all of you for any help you can provide!

Mike

[Karri]

Largely depends which country you're living in. For Americans, slickdeals has some pretty good offers to browse:
https://slickdeals.net/deals/desktop/

For example this one seems like pretty good deal:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17002633-lenov ... e-shipping

Though largely an overkill if you're still playing combat mission. Might just and just be able to run PC2 though

[Rosseau]

Largely depends which country you're living in. For Americans, slickdeals has some pretty good offers to browse:
https://slickdeals.net/deals/desktop/

For example this one seems like pretty good deal:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17002633-lenov ... e-shipping

Though largely an overkill if you're still playing combat mission. Might just and just be able to run PC2 though

Lol, and thanks for the link! I always wondered about Lenovo? If anyone can vouch for them, I'd appreciate it. Again, Dell is bulletproof, but they don't come with the best graphics cards, etc.

Any other input is greatly appreciated. Funny, I have always been good buying vehicles, but buying computers, I am going in blind.

[zakblood]

sorry for the later reply,

1st, don't worry about windows 11, it's the same but improved version of windows 10 and what ever worked in 10 will work with 11, and there is no learning curve.

cpu wise go for a 2nd tear i5, don't need the latest or most exspensive. (i5-14600KF)

memory same again, while ddr5 isn't a must, most now ship with it (16GB DDR5 4800MHZ) is ample, 32GB is nice if you with to add to budget.

storage, m2 boot drive for me is a no brainer with a 1TB version with storeage being a 2tb model (gen4 models) 5 if the budget stretches)

and most important part, the GPU (GEFORCE RTX 3060 12GB) 8GB versions cards are now considered entry levels, so plum for a 12 to 16 model, same rule applies, if you wish for FPS level games, then pay more, for me the mid ranged cards are more than enough for out type of games and what's coming out in the next year of so.

and finally i still only play on 1920 x 1080 as it works for all my age of games, go higher and some don't, but i game on a 42" screen as came of dual screen monitors a long time ago for same reason, some older games just don't like it

[RangerJoe]

Largely depends which country you're living in. For Americans, slickdeals has some pretty good offers to browse:
https://slickdeals.net/deals/desktop/

For example this one seems like pretty good deal:
https://slickdeals.net/f/17002633-lenov ... e-shipping

Though largely an overkill if you're still playing combat mission. Might just and just be able to run PC2 though

Lol, and thanks for the link! I always wondered about Lenovo? If anyone can vouch for them, I'd appreciate it. Again, Dell is bulletproof, but they don't come with the best graphics cards, etc.

Any other input is greatly appreciated. Funny, I have always been good buying vehicles, but buying computers, I am going in blind.

Lenovo is a Chinese company with headquarters in Beijing (PRC) and Morrisville (North Carolina, USA) if that will help you. I suggest that you read reviews about any computers and the specific models that you are looking for.

If you like Dell, I think that they will match the price for other similar computers from other vendors. They may even have computers sold by retailers that they do not offer themselves but as always, read reviews.

Zakblood has good advice, the latest and greatest technology is much more expensive and may be (but not always is) prone to have problems.

[Rosseau]

Thanks Zak, and all of you, for the info. And yes, Ranger, not sure I want to support Lenovo. It used to be "made in Japan," and now it's made in the PRC.

Anyway, not sure what an "M2 boot drive" is, but will look for a 2TB hard drive if they are reliable. I see the 16GB graphics cards are very expensive, so hoping 8GB will do for my needs.

I've actually been mounting up my system on storage boxes (instead of a desk) for about four years, so am not a fancy-pants kind of guy. But am willing to spend for quality equipment, and still not sure who to buy from.

Best wishes, and have a great weekend,

Mike

[RangerJoe]

You are most welcome and I hope that everyone has a great and safe weekend.

[OldSarge]

I recently needed to upgrade to a newer and better performing machine, after looking around and pricing everything I settled on a Dell XPS with an I7-13700k Intel CPU, 32 Gb of memory and a mix of 512 Gb SSD for system boot and a 2 TB HDD for everything else, I settled for a RTX 3060 Ti with 8gb as a tradeoff for bumping the memory and the monitors. I caught it on sale so there was a bit of a discount.

So far it has performed very well. I'm able to run everything that I need without an issue. Except the NIC is a 2.5G card and is complaining about the old switch that I have it on being a bottleneck, time to upgrade my network hardware.

I'm not a fan of Win11, they've moved things around, increased the intrusive spam especially for O365 and OneDrive. They really, really, really want you to use a MS account for signing on (I see a paywall in the future), it took me a bit to figure out how to set up a local service account for the other machines on my network to link in. All of this stuff can be turned off or circumvented, but it takes time to ferret everything out and get it properly sorted.

As far as xferring your games, you'll more than likely need to install them so that their registry entries are correct for the new machine. I reinstalled the games and then copied over files and mods from the older machine.

Good luck!

[zakblood]

a m2 is just a form factor or size type m8

Code: Select all

https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/definition/M2-SSD

examples

Samsung 1TB 870 QVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive - Form Factor: 2.5"
- Sequential Read: 560MB/s
- Sequential Write: 530MB/s

Samsung 980 1TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 NVMe Solid State Drive (stick) (gen 4)
- 3500MB/s Read
- 3000MB/s Write

Crucial T700 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen5 M.2 Solid State Drive (stick) (gen 5) at twice the price but also 2 to 3 times quicker
- Sequential Read: 11,700 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 9,500 MB/s

so while both priced at time of writing is the same for the same class type, the difference is massive in returns for speed of boot and access and write times, so is a no brainer on which one to install imo, with the gen 5 only to be used or needed if the board supports it and you feel the extra speed is needed, for me i'd opt for a larger and slower version of the less quicker one, then again that's just me

while i have and use samsung i also use Adata as well and had no issues with either.

for me 1TB is the sweet spot for a boot device, but 2tb is always better, but storage depends on the user, for me 2tb to 4tb is fine for storage but that's just me as i have a rather large collection and don't wish to slow any of the pc down to the slowest part so no longer keep older slower type of drives installed in the system, but do use older driver for storage of films, pictures and very very old games which i no longer wish to have always installed

[Platoonist]

I'm finding this a very useful topic as my oldfangled 111GB internal SSD is becoming a real bottleneck.

[Kuokkanen]

Anyway, not sure what an "M2 boot drive" is, but will look for a 2TB hard drive if they are reliable. I see the 16GB graphics cards are very expensive, so hoping 8GB will do for my needs.

Unless you need 10+ terabytes of storage space, forget hard drives. Time has gone past them. Even cheapest SSD is faster than fastest HDD. M.2 refers to a type of SSD, or more precisely how it connects to mother board. M.2 are faster, but more expensive. SATA type SSD are cheaper, but slower. Still faster than any HDD.

[RangerJoe]

I'm finding this a very useful topic as my oldfangled 111GB internal SSD is becoming a real bottleneck.

The same here and I will be looking for a new computer soon.

I thank everyone for sharing their expertise. My computer knowledge as to how they work is many years old.

[Kuokkanen]

I thank everyone for sharing their expertise. My computer knowledge as to how they work is many years old.

I don't think much has changed. BD drive works the same as CD drive and even reads CDs (and DVDs). SSD has effectively replaced HDD, but using it isn't much different. Just don't run defragmentation on it. BIOS (or whatev called nowadays) setup has got a more graphic and mouse driven interface, but otherwise has much the same functionality as older ASCII variants. New Windows user interface can at least be made to look similar to that of Windows 95 if you care. Network settings are easier and more straightforwad and support wi-fi. USB/Firewire have replaced serial/parallel/MIDI ports. Otherwise, has anything else changed?

[Platoonist]

Otherwise, has anything else changed?

The virtual extinction of the optical disk drive as an integral part of the PC is still what catches my eye. I have a few older but necessary programs that rely on the shiny silver platters to install. Buy myself a standalone ODD and plug & play it in I guess.