PC Tech Thread

Online is probably the easiest place to compare.

If going new then get an 8th generation i5 or i7 (i.e. something that starts i5-8xxx or i7-8xxx)
at least 8GB RAM
at least 256GB SSD
at least Full HD screen

E.g.
https://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/SecondaryInventorySearch.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh&sign=PXhcOSHtr1T4IOw%2fPR7Udae3doOoTNzPpwlsK9tBf3F0jfibfYfV5vWWFryeFWbZePAX85%2bFkt52AhWio2mpw1eyTk4yO9Xgfy0fAtro1h1McFgxRRinXTF2WmPG4IpsR%2bYKhEVEWmIgMdw4LYUDKwL7UM8gEwEivAzF9rWWWba596dAPG9jt%2fThZwO4E7a%2bgAjDbDr5KuRrn3l%2b2K74NxOWQd7jP9XRD9pxPKaPoC0zt5fq6EecjHYbeIWf%2fX1I

I got a Dell Inspiron 7373 with pretty much the above spec. It's been great, although I don't use it much at the moment. I should sell it tbh (I'll ponder that and offer it up if I decide to)

Great, will have a look.

Quite possibly, if it doesn't need a new power supply ...have a GTX 970 which is struggling with only 4 GB.

Are you e member of Costco?
The Hayes depot normally has 4 or 5 laptops on display so you can at least see the quality of the screen and try the keyboard.

ThinkNipple

What ya packing? 970 is around 180 tdp and Vega 210.

I was actually thinking my PCI-E connectors had insufficient pins. But looks like I do have 2 x 8 pins.

500 W should be fine.

Indeed, I consulted that before formulating my comment

I feel the need to come up with a special LFGSS epithet way off to the right of that scale...
The frozen sausage tip?

Yeah you'll be good with that I think... depending on CPU and other gubbins...

Aint using it for a month or two so may as well shift it.

Plus I have Amazon vouchers burning a hole in my pocket so going to grab a 5700 xt...

Ordered a NAS (https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/qnap-ts-431p-1gb-ram-4-bay-turbo-nas-2x-1gbe-lan-ts-431p/version.asp) for backups and to run a few pet projects (that don't need a whole VM on the ESXi box).

Also means I can go through my box of old HDDs and old computers, pull off any important data, and then get rid of the old stuff.

(Will sell the old Quad G5 PowerMac as someone might be interested in running Linux on it.)

NAS

That looks good. I keep looking at NAS as my Mrs.H is not keen on cloud storage (cost, risk, longevity) but always think it's overkill.

What do you reckon is the cheapest you could set one up for?

The cheapest is probably a Raspberry Pi and external HDD or an old PC you have lying around (although that may not be the cheapest in terms of energy consumption).

I'd be tempted to spend a bit more though to get something a bit more robust. I've been running my HP ProLiant N40L pretty much 24/7 for the past 8 years and it's still going strong. I paid about £150 for that so still not a huge amount. Storage can be the bigger cost depending how much you want to put in, redundancy, etc

Set up a raspberry pi as a file server/NAS. Lots of resources to help with this, even an old fogey like me can accomplish it.

I have one of these that I use for as a PHP dev box. Quite pleased with it.

https://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/novatechpockithdnpi39.html

Cheers. All.

This gives me an excuse to finally get a RP!

This will be £400 with 4x1TB NAS drives (in RAID5 so 3TB usable storage and it can handle one drive failure at any point - will order a spare 1TB drive next month).

3TB is way more than I need (I need 500GB max for my own photos/docs/data) and I have a 1.5TB external HDD as a separate backup. The other space will be future proofing, scratch space and a chunk for my brother to rsync his backup to (I'll be doing the same to the NAS at his house).

NAS = main backup with redundant disks
external HDD = on-site backup in case NAS dies
rsync to brother's NAS = backup in case house burns down

Most useful thing is that I can run other stuff on the NAS (it even supports Docker images) which means I have a single place for a git repo, temp/humidity monitoring server/logs, etc that's all nicely backed up.

Once I've sorted out my old drives the next thing I need to do is to get all of my personal stuff (emails, photos, data) off my work laptop so that can just be for work. I'll probably put a Windows 10 VM on my ESXi box and just remote desktop into it when necessary.

That is tiny! So are you files then stored on that?

That is tiny! So are you files then stored on that?

I use it as a standalone box for testing PHP scripts so no need to store files on there. That said, when I have compiled C on there it has performed admirably.

I did try windows on there when I first got it (three years ago, lower spec back then) and it wasn't bad at all.

This is making the 27TB I have on my NAS look a bit excessive.

This will be £400 with 4x1TB NAS drives (in RAID5 so 3TB usable storage

Why not 3 X 2 TB? More storage and slightly cheaper. Probably.

Edit: perhaps not cheaper if you price in your spare.

You can get some really good mini PCs now. I'm like to replace my Plex server with one of these some time https://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc-kit-nuc8i3beh-i3-8109u-ddr4-m2-25-sata3-iris-plus-graphics-655-usb31-gen2-thunderbolt3-bar but can't really justify the cost just to get something a bit smaller.

Or two 4TB mirrored cheaper still.
But I assume 4x1TB would be fastest if that's the main consideration?