Reply With QuoteLast 2 or 3 I have bought have been from PCSpecialists
Good machines with good QA, and lots of 'standard' machines or with several options
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/custom-pc/
It’s been a good while since I bought me last desktop, so I’m rather out of date in terms of deals and places to buy.
I use it for writing, music library, streaming tv, some video editing- but not gaming.
Changing desktops is a bit of a faff, so I’d want it to be good for at least five years. Ideally I’d want a decent spec processor, decent size SSD, up to 8tb HDD (I can’t be bothered with external drives) but min 4tb, and must come with windows 11. It must also be a smallish tower case to fit in my desk. I don’t want a gaming machine disco light show. A blu ray player would be nice but not essential, and front mounted usb ports.
Last time I bought was from an online company that allowed you to fully configure your own machine - but I can’t remember who it was. Having had a quick look most of them seem to be prioritising gaming machines and am I right in thinking prices have gone way up? (My last desktop was about six years ago and was an i5, 128gb SSD, 4tb HDD, Blu-ray and nice ITX compact case with windows all for about £550 as I recall).
I’m flexible on price but feel I shouldn’t need to spend more than a grand or so. Or do I?
I only needs the pc itself- no peripherals.
Any advice and/or links most welcome!
So clever my foot fell off.
Last 2 or 3 I have bought have been from PCSpecialists
Good machines with good QA, and lots of 'standard' machines or with several options
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/custom-pc/
Have you thought about a laptop with docking station? Recently persuaded my mother to go laptop with a dock and she loves the flexibility.
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Thanks, I have a MacBook Air for portability, definitely don’t want another laptop.Originally Posted by eletos
I appreciate your suggestion though. 👍
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They look quite good - up to two week build time though which is pushing it a bit as I think my current might be on the way out.
So clever my foot fell off.
Have a look at Palicomp, I bought my son's gaming Pc from there. They have a fully customisable set up and the service was excellent.
That kind of spec sounds like a off the shelf dell/Lenovo system assuming the video work isn’t significant 4K.
I’d get a intel gen 12 or 13 i5 or i7 if there were close on price. 512-1Tb m2 ssd, 16Gb ram & add the storage drive myself. I’d also see what was in there refurbished stores.
Another point as you said you can’t be bothered with external drives how are you backing up your data currently?
Writing music and streaming will all make do with the most basic processor you can get by on. What type of video editing do you do? What software do you use? That’s the highest use case.
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Yes - Adobe Premiere mostly.
So clever my foot fell off.
Thanks- I do back up to externals, what I meant was I don’t want to be using them as just additional hard drive space day to day.
So clever my foot fell off.
Another vote for these guys. I have one of their laptops which arrived swiftly with very little fuss. They were pretty helpful with a few queries I had. Seven years on it is still going strong.
I dident want a PC with a tower taking up room so I bought a Lenvo all in one from Currys a few years back and it hasent missed a beat, perfect buy for my needs.
https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/p/deskt...md/len102d0016
Thanks all, I’m looking through the links and appreciate the advice and experiences.
So clever my foot fell off.
Yet another vote for PC Specialists here.
Andy
Wanted - Damasko DC57
How confident are you at perhaps putting one together by yourself? It’s mainly like a cross between ikea furniture and Lego, if you’re good with a screwdriver in small places it’s not too hard. I’ve built a few now for probably 2/3 the price that it would be if I got one off the shelf
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Out of curiosity, since you use a MacBook Air have you considered a Mac Mini or Studio?
I've bought quite a few from PC Specialist for people who asked me to recommend them a desktop system. I've never had any problems with the hardware or their service.
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Is the MacBook Air you presently have powerful enough to do the occasional video edit on iMovie or premiere pro? I used a 2017 dual core i5 with 8gb ram to make a bunch of videos once, when the video is finished and set to encode it took 5x longer to save it into a file than a more powerful machine would have done, but it worked fine.
I would consider using your budget for a decent laptop dock, and a nas that way you can become laptop/desktop/pc/mac agnostic and it meets your criteria?
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PCSpecialist I have a love hate relationship with them, after being supplied a PC with an issue they swapped it for another with the same issue, spoke to the help desk who sent a replacement part, fitted it myself and it worked, for three months then the SSD went whilst my son is as at uni luckily he didn't lose anything important as he listened to me for once and backed it up.
They sent a new SSD and it's working great again.
Whilst I've had lots of issues and with my son having ASD issues are not what I want, the help desk have been nothing short of brilliant.
I'd buy from them again based on the support from the help desk.
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Some more interesting thoughts and ideas here -thank you all.
I'm going to speak to a couple of companies mentioned tomorrow.
So clever my foot fell off.
I’d definitely build it yourself . I’ve never had a prebuilt desktop that I didn’t have to completely rebuild to get configured well anyway. Usually you can keep upgrading for years rather than buying a new machine every 5-10 years .
Building yourself is pretty easy. Just use pcpartpicker to work out the spec and make sure it all aligns. But don’t over spec cpu vs gpu and visa versa. Having said that and given you already have MacBook Air the new Mac Mini M2 is a very powerful system for the money if you don’t need gaming.
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