Critique my brother's new build :)

[Millennium]

Hi there

My brother has gone ahead and purchased this system:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/t3zpPs

(we can always return parts if we messed something up, or change orders hopefully.)

I will be supplying him with a 650w corsair power supply (old but fine, TX series I think) and a functional case.

He will be adding a 120gb SSD for OS and a windows 10 licence (which we're hoping to steal from a tablet but might need a cheap source for an OEM key).

Yes it's just 1 DIMM in a dual memory controller system, but he wants an easy upgrade path and doesn't really mind the performance hit (we think....)

What do you think? He's not planning on any gaming, it's just productivity and mining/cryptocurrency tasks (some of which will be handed off to a laptop). He has a 1080p 24" dell monitor he will be using.

We went with the 710 because of it's 3 display outputs. YouTube suggests it overclocks pretty well too.

Thanks everyone

[EndlessWaves]

OEM keys aren't valid for personal use:
https://dpcenter.microsoft.com/en/Wi...r-personal-use

Why such an expensive GT 710? You can easily find them for £25-30.

The motherboard seems excessive too. What requirement does he have that needs a £110 board?

I'd probably have gone for an i5. It's a similar price to a 1200 + that GT 710 and gives you more CPU and GPU performance and newer technology like HEVC decoding. Three simultaneous display outputs too.

[Xlucine]

That motherboard has 4 ram slots, so dual channel ram will still have an upgrade path.

[Millennium]

Thanks for the comments so far. Am feeding back to my brother.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would have probably got the following:

https://www.cclonline.com/product/23...W0p8yl6NH08aIA
https://www.cclonline.com/product/23...-DDR4/MBD2164/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMK...=2x4gb+2666mhz
https://www.cclonline.com/product/21...rnal-/HDD2776/
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...hoC-cMQAvD_BwE

The RX460 should be pretty strong at OpenCL and mining. I would have probably specced a GT1030 if I could find any with three display outputs.

Having said that,if you could find a cheaper secondhand card for like £20 to £30,you could end up with something like Ryzen 5 1400.

[provenrad]

Hello everyone, thank you for having a look - here is a bit of background f it helps.
I have never had a desktop PC, the last game I was good at was GTA 2, and currently using an XPS 1710 and other laptops and a tablet.
I want to trade cryptos perhaps edit a few short videos, learn some cad, practice my coding and spend around £400 max. No mining (yet)

I was originally tempted by Dell workstations like t3600/5600 because they are reliable, quiet, and I saw one with dual firepro cards + 4 monitors for around 340. It would have done what I wanted, and a few years down the line I could have put 2650/2667 in there and maxed out the memory..
I was talked out of old hardware, and had a look at some other sockets and i5, i3 etc.

The build is a bit unbalanced I agree.

Mobo was the cheapest x370 chipset one, which I just generally guessed/assumed would be better in the future - certainly overspecced a bit.
The 8gb is because my brother is 4 slots full of 4gb so I can swap with him if he wants some space.
Graphics card is the cheapest with 2 full size dvi sockets so I can run my old monitors here, also can do 3 screens for £45 thought cant go wrong.

@CAT-the-fifth, I had a look, your build is nice. I think 3 different sockets on a graphics card is a bit random, but seems quite common? I am hoping used and new graphics cards are going to be cheaper in the future, and I have coins to trade. Any mining stuff I try will be just something to play with the technology and keep an eye on the future opportunities.

[DanceswithUnix]

A DVI-D monitor can usually be driven from an HDMI or Displayport output using just the right cable or adaptor, unless you have something that requires dual link.

[EndlessWaves]

Mobo was the cheapest x370 chipset one, which I just generally guessed/assumed would be better in the future - certainly overspecced a bit.

It depends on what features you're likely to use but often the opposite is true. Cheap boards with X chipset are often only made because of a feature that's exclusive to X and that a board of the same price with a cheaper chipset will have more money spent on implementation and be more capable generally.

I think 3 different sockets on a graphics card is a bit random, but seems quite common?

As DancesWithUnix says you can use the HDMI port to drive a DVI monitor. nVidia did have a long-standing bug where they'd detect it as a TV and only offer limited range colour but I think they've fixed that these days.

The lack of good video outputs on cheap cards is annoying though. The graphics chips are fully capable of it, the same chips power entry level workstation cards with 2-4 DisplayPort outputs. It just seems like artificial product segmentation to get people to pay more.

With 3840x2160 screens close to hitting £200 it can't carry on much longer.

I am hoping used and new graphics cards are going to be cheaper in the future

I'd expect the opposite, integrated graphics is so capable these days the low end market is declining. We used to see a new low end card every generation but the GK208 chip in the GT 710 was launched in 2013 as a minor revision of a 2012 chip. It was only replaced this year with the GP108 in the 1030 and we still haven't seen the cheaper cards using the same chip.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

@CAT-the-fifth, I had a look, your build is nice. I think 3 different sockets on a graphics card is a bit random, but seems quite common? I am hoping used and new graphics cards are going to be cheaper in the future, and I have coins to trade. Any mining stuff I try will be just something to play with the technology and keep an eye on the future opportunities.

I just read the OP again,and it says you will be using a 120GB SSD,so I included a 2TB SSHD so you can probably save a few quid there too going with a normal HDD. If you are not gaming a GT1030 despite "only" supporting 2 monitors in the ones I was at looking,would be more than enough.

[Dashers]

Ignore mining, you need expensive hardware to do that effectively, and really it needs to be dedicated standalone hardware.

The most intensive thing you've specified is CAD. CAD itself isn't tough on even an entry level PC, but if you're getting into doing 3D renders then that'll really tax your computer depending on the quality you demand. Likewise, media encoding benefits from large cache's and cores, which is expensive. All that said, these are batch jobs which you can leave your computer to - a lower end system will just take longer about it.

I'm not sold on Ryzen at this end of the market, it makes sense if you're gaming and require a dedicated graphics card, but your work load does not.

I'd be more tempted to get something like this:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zWg6WX

I've swapped the hard drive for a hybrid that has a tiny SSD in it to boost things like Windows boot up.

Of course, with the Intel stuff, you can flex down the price of the CPU to up things elsewhere (like more RAM etc).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wouldn't touch a Core i5 7500 at £170 with a bargepole - what upgrade path do you have?? A £300+ Core i7?? Socket 1155 is just a dead end platform now.

If the OP gets Ryzen they can upgrade at some point upto 8 cores and AMD generally tends to keep CPU compatibility between sockets for much longer.

As a longterm bet,Ryzen will give the OP more options.

Maybe wait for Coffee Lake if the 4C/8T Core i3 rumours are true,but ultimately I can't see a Core i5 7500 being 70% faster than even the low clocked Ryzen 3 1200,and also as better reviews indicate,many of them run clean Windows installs,so once you have more stuff going on I would still get a Ryzen 3 1200 over a Core i3.

I mean also so many more packages use GPU acceleration now,so I would still have a Ryzen 3 1200 and a GT1030 over Core i5 7500. Also going for a very low cost B250 motherboard - only two RAM slots and RAM in single channel. Plus a lack of PCI-E slots if the OP wants to add more cards which is not helped by the mATX form factor of the motherboard.

It gets progressively worse for any of the Core i5s,if the OP gets a secondhand card for like £20 to £30 and gets a Ryzen 5 1400. These can be had for as low as £150.

Plus the utterly rubbish stock cooler too on the Intel CPUs - many of the YT channels have tested the AMD stock coolers and they are in a class above the Intel ones.

In fact the only Intel CPUs which seem to be worth it are the G4560,and the Core i7 7700K,but mostly for gaming.

[benjohnson]

Go for Intel Xeon processor maybe? Xeon is nice for office tasks and offered with good price, why everyone ignores it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Go for Intel Xeon processor maybe? Xeon is nice for office tasks and offered with good price, why everyone ignores it?

That would have been an option a few years ago - the Xeon E3 4C/8T CPUs were well under £200 and could fit in normal motherboards. Sadly Intel kind of stopped that with Skylake so you need to get one of the C232 ones(sadly).

I actually use an IB Xeon E3 1230 V2. They were a great hidden gem!!