New Desktop Computer What Do I Need?

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
NOT an all in one and preferably a pc without all the promotional and preinstalled w4nk on it.
What about one of these little beauties?...

It can be configured as you want it and very like my machine if desired/needed. Just buy a generous amount of RAM and storage from the off, because they are difficult to add later. External storage is possible of course, so lots of RAM takes priority in my opinion. You are looking at about £1300 inc VAT [£1083+VAT] for a nice spec with 1TB SSD drive and 16GB RAM. More than a PC obviously but much more satisfying to run long term.
 
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Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ my go to for no preinstalled w4nk. I’ve had a number of desktops and laptops from them

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Likewise. I did look and see if they had any pre-built machines that might suit the OP but the only one less than £1k was a £300 which didn't look too impressive at the time.

Just looked back at it now and actually I think it would serve pretty well as an office machine at a competitive price.

 

Timbo

Member
Location
Gods County
Likewise. I did look and see if they had any pre-built machines that might suit the OP but the only one less than £1k was a £300 which didn't look too impressive at the time.

Just looked back at it now and actually I think it would serve pretty well as an office machine at a competitive price.


Cant recommend anything with that grade of cpu. It's going to be sluggish from the start.
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
The Mac Mini doesn't look like bad value if mid-spec PC's can't be found for much less than a Grand. The Mac with M1 chip has a decent spec for £525 + VAT. That's for an 8 core processor that is very fast indeed, with 16GB RAM and 256GB hard drive. More spec will cost more but for office duty it is a great spec and a 2TB external drive could sit on top of it, to supplement the 256 onboard [Apple charge £180 just to double it to half of a Terabyte] to store files and cost only £45+VAT Another one would be advised for backups to supplement the standard iCloud backup. So £615+ VAT would get you a fairly high spec processor with great graphics, 2.25Terrabytes of total storage, 256GB being blisteringly fast SSD.
No speakers though. Few desktops for business come with speakers as standard but perhaps the existing monitor would have speakers? If indeed they are needed for this application. If watching YouTube or any video or music, even games, then speakers are essential.
 
Me too but what happens when the cloud breaks as it probably will?
Bad enough trying to access QuickBooks when the internet is slow.

What do you mean a cloud is 'going to break?'

My cloud service is OneDrive. It seamlessly integrated with Windows and MS Office 365. If Microsoft goes under then the world has bigger problems.

Ok, so next door put a digger through your phone cable and your accountant wants to access your files for the VAT return. No problem. You can log into your files from ANY device ANYWHERE in the world.

My office burns to the ground and my desk and computers are a pool of molten metal and plastic.

No problem. I can go into Uni, login to my OneDrive using my MS account details and my files are sat ready for me to use.

The security for OneDrive and similar cloud services are insane and way beyond anything you can put on a home PC or external drive.
 

Cowabunga

Member
Location
Ceredigion,Wales
That Mac mini looks pretty ace if you like Apple software but I thought their retail price was more like £800.
They actually increased in price last night but have an £80 voucher to spend in Apple Store today, which they didn't yesterday. [which can be on-line]. The price today is £583 + VAT [up from £525 yesterdy] which is around £60 more than yesterday but with the £80 voucher [which obviously doesn't cost them much more than £20 due to their retail margin].
I'd add the £166+VAT for doubling the RAM to that, although RAM is available for about 25% of that price if someone is handy with a screwdriver and has the patience to install it themselves. Not so easy with Mac Mini.

Fortune favours the bold, but it's too late now to get yesterday's deal unless you find a retailer on eBay with old stock.

One warning about M1 chip Macs. You cannot install Windows on them apparently. No issues with Microsoft apps like Office or Office 365 or OneDrive or Outlook Mail of course, which will work perfectly. As will Adobe products such as Acrobat.

EDIT
The price rise is steeper than I thought because I prices the £525 one with 16GB RAM where the current price for that spec today is £749 including the £166 extra for a total of 16GB RAM, which I would suggest to have.
 
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They actually increased in price last night but have an £80 voucher to spend in Apple Store today, which they didn't yesterday. [which can be on-line]. The price today is £583 + VAT [up from £525 yesterdy] which is around £60 more than yesterday but with the £80 voucher [which obviously doesn't cost them much more than £20 due to their retail margin].
I'd add the £166+VAT for doubling the RAM to that, although RAM is available for about 25% of that price if someone is handy with a screwdriver and has the patience to install it themselves. Not so easy with Mac Mini.

Fortune favours the bold, but it's too late now to get yesterday's deal unless you find a retailer on eBay with old stock.

One warning about M1 chip Macs. You cannot install Windows on them apparently. No issues with Microsoft apps like Office or Office 365 or OneDrive or Outlook Mail of course, which will work perfectly. As will Adobe products such as Acrobat.

I think we will see more of this going forward. Hardware that won't run certain software as the big names are so desperate to keep people within their ecosystems. Of course, MS have now provided versions of their software for Mac (as have other companies) because there are so many Mac users about now.

Windows 11 also requires some special motherboard hardware as well, and no all motherboards have it so they have almost built in some planned obsolescence.
 
You get 1TB off free storage on OneDrive if you use Office 365 (yes, I use the paid annual subscription version as it is very powerful). If I had a lot of data I wanted to look after, I would pay for OneDrive professional and probably put a second copy on a slice of Google Drive as well.
 

Frank-the-Wool

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex

Lenovo V35s 07ADA Ryzen 5 3500U 16GB 512GB SSD DVD-RW Windows 10 Pro Desktop PC​


I have been recommended this one, is it what I need? It is only around £460 on a Black Friday deal.

Many thanks for all the comments and suggestions.
 

Boysground

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Wiltshire
What do you mean a cloud is 'going to break?'

My cloud service is OneDrive. It seamlessly integrated with Windows and MS Office 365. If Microsoft goes under then the world has bigger problems.

Ok, so next door put a digger through your phone cable and your accountant wants to access your files for the VAT return. No problem. You can log into your files from ANY device ANYWHERE in the world.

My office burns to the ground and my desk and computers are a pool of molten metal and plastic.

No problem. I can go into Uni, login to my OneDrive using my MS account details and my files are sat ready for me to use.

The security for OneDrive and similar cloud services are insane and way beyond anything you can put on a home PC or external drive.

I use Xero for my accounts I am fairly sure it’s not possible to backup to a hard drive as everything is in the cloud. I have been known to access it from holiday

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I use Xero for my accounts I am fairly sure it’s not possible to backup to a hard drive as everything is in the cloud. I have been known to access it from holiday

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I am not that familiar with Xero. I suspect as part of the deal your information is uploaded and maintained within Xero's own cloud service within a very secure system which your accountant can access and work on simultaneously, which is needed because a lot of these accounting packages automate a lot of parts of the process.

Cloud based services are ok, my OneNote is effectively a cloud based service because everything I do is saved to OneDrive automatically. It would be a pain in the chuff to back this stuff up or use removable drives as I use three differing devices and my phone to access OneNote.

Provided you have a good internet connection, there really isn't much need to store anything locally these days as you can download data or stream video and music with ease.
 

Timbo

Member
Location
Gods County
Provided you don't want to do any gaming with it, this PC should be fine for office work and browsing the web.
Although this does have vga & hdmi ports, a machine with multiple display ports might be a longer term better buy ? Although there are plenty of low profile gfx cards around that could be fitted.
 

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