Who will rid me of this Intel 8th gen PC??

[drogulus]

     To be precise it's not riddance I'm asking for, it's about a new PC I want to have built.

     

     What should be in it? I don't play ultra demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing.* So I can get by with a low to mid level card.

     * I still vividly remember a discussion of graphics and games from near on 20 years ago, something like "Codecreatures!?! That's not a game demo, that's a goddam science project!!"

[DavidW]

Probably mobo, ram, cpu, hard drive, psu, some fans...

[drogulus]

Probably mobo, ram, cpu, hard drive, psu, some fans...

     You can't be Sirius!

     

     On to the topic we go. Some of you have new PCs, and I've been out of the market for a few years.

     My current PC is a Dell. Before that I had custom built PCs. When I bought the Dell I didn't realize it was full of proprietary components that made some upgrades difficult or impossible depending. Don't get me wrong, this PC has performed well over the past few years. But it just seems like it would be better to get a mid tower case that would allow for just about any kind of upgrade path I might want.

     I'm open to suggestions.

[DavidW]

The best hardware reviews come from Gamers Nexus.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/
https://www.youtube.com/user/gamersnexus

And they do have a buyer's guide.

I like to use pcpartpicker to check compatibility.
https://pcpartpicker.com/

If you're not doing anything intensive (gaming, editing, crypto etc.) I wouldn't go crazy on expensive parts.  That will not only eat up your wallet but you might build something loud and hot.

[drogulus]

     Gamers Nexus is very good.

     The most intensive thing I do is video encoding with Handbrake. I'll take a UHD disk down from say 70GB to 35-40 GB to save space on my HDDs.

[DavidW]

     Gamers Nexus is very good.

     The most intensive thing I do is video encoding with Handbrake. I'll take a UHD disk down from say 70GB to 35-40 GB to save space on my HDDs.

That matches what you said about graphics: I've read that any card, even entry tier will do for video processing.  I wouldn't use onboard but you don't have to go higher than an entry level gpu.

[drogulus]

     I might decide to futureproof a little with a mid level GPU just in case.

     For the CPU I'm really torn because Intel and AMD are neck and neck these days.

     The C drive will be a NVMe SSD, 1TB, not because I need the capacity, but rather that size is usually faster than larger and smaller ones.

[LKB]

I bought an MSI laptop in October of 2020, and it's really been a champ running Win10. No issues at all. 

[drogulus]

I bought an MSI laptop in October of 2020, and it's really been a champ running Win10. No issues at all. 

     I just bought an Asus Zenbook 14" for someone on the couch watching a Swedish cop show. It's very fast and the integrated graphics is excellent. I think I paid about $900.

[Holden]

Having reverted back to PC after a few years of Mac use I get the impression that things haven't really moved that far forward in the PC world. It's still the same two chip makers (AMD and Intel) and their chips don't really seem to have gained that much more processing power. It was for this reason that I bought a second hand 'all in one' PC to replace my iMac. It's got an i5 chip with 16 Gbs of RAM. I'm not sure how good the graphics processor is but I don't do the sort of work that requires a big upgrade in this area. For $300 I'm very happy.

[DavidW]

     I might decide to futureproof a little with a mid level GPU just in case.

FYI the next gen of cards is releasing THIS SUMMER, so anything you buy now is not future proof.  Also there really is no such thing as future proof in graphics cards because they release entire new generations every other year, and have mid-generation refreshes on the other years.  That is to say that graphics cards have annual updates.

Furthermore while the gpu market is not the complete disaster it was a few months ago, cards are still expensive.  Buying an overpriced midrange card now, not a good idea at all.  Just buy the cheapest you can.  And if you need more down the line, then at that point graphics cards might be more affordable again.

[drogulus]

FYI the next gen of cards is releasing THIS SUMMER, so anything you buy now is not future proof.  Also there really is no such thing as future proof in graphics cards because they release entire new generations every other year, and have mid-generation refreshes on the other years.  That is to say that graphics cards have annual updates.

Furthermore while the gpu market is not the complete disaster it was a few months ago, cards are still expensive.  Buying an overpriced midrange card now, not a good idea at all.  Just buy the cheapest you can.  And if you need more down the line, then at that point graphics cards might be more affordable again.

     I'm considering that, so I might decide to get the next generation AMD APU and forego a graphics card for the time being.

[DavidW]

     I'm considering that, so I might decide to get the next generation AMD APU and forego a graphics card for the time being.

Smart.  My experience is that even pre-covid new releases are difficult to obtain for months.  But the reward for your patient is to not immediately have deprecated hardware.  Last gen both companies skipped the sub-$300 bracket so I expect they will remedy that this time around.  Many people have been stuck on 1660s for years now, which is a dinosaur in the rapidly evolving graphics card market.

[drogulus]

     Micro Center does have pre-builts that look very interesting. They are called PowerSpec and contain quality parts. Nothing is proprietary so you can replace the mobo and PSU.

     One that goes for ~$900 even has a RX 6600 GPU, one of the best performance/price values in the civilized world. It's more than I need, but considering that it comes with an i5-12400 CPU and 16GB of dual channel memory it's a tempting proposition.

[DavidW]

Nice!  The prebuilts have actually been cheaper during the shortages as opposed to building it (opposite of what it usually is).  That might be your ticket.

[drogulus]

Nice!  The prebuilts have actually been cheaper during the shortages as opposed to building it (opposite of what it usually is).  That might be your ticket.

     Yeah, and I can upgrade the memory right away for not much coin.

     

[DavidW]

I also appreciate that the pc doesn't look like Christmas in July (all the colors of the rainbow!).

[LKB]

I also appreciate that the pc doesn't look like Christmas in July (all the colors of the rainbow!).

Which the keyboard of my MSI laptop most certainly does. 

( Too lazy to change the setting. )