New PC Build Specification Advise

[Nevillet]

Hi All,

I am a regular on the BC forum and wonder if I can get some unbiased advise on putting together a new PC.

I have built several in the past and usually go to a supplier (www.novatech.co.uk/) and buy a motherboard bundle comprising of MB, CPU, RAM and fan that has been assembled and tested. I then put in a case, add a HD and load a Windows OS.

We have several PC's around the house but the one that needs replacing is about 10 years old.

The spec of the PC is: Foxconn G41MXE motherboard, Pentium E5800 @3.2 GHz and 4Gb RAM. It has a 250Gb Sandisk SDSSDA240G.

The new PC is just for normal household jobs and not for gaming and I want to run 2 screens directly from the MB without additional graphics cards.

I'm looking to spend about £250-300 for the 'bundle'. Can anyone please suggest what I should be looking at?
Many thanks in advance.

[diif]

I recently bought and AMD motherboard, CPU and memory bundle from Scan for my mum and stepdad. Just shy of £300 with a PCI-E M.2 with a case and power supply.

I use Scan and not Novatech due to a couple of customers having shocking customer experience in the past, Scan also offers very cheap insurance (around £10). against assembly mishaps. Look at their deal of the day page, they change every day and they do great bundle deals.

[SMDFlea]

Which windows OS are you going to put on it, do you plan using an old retail disk and upgrading to win 10/11 or are you going to buy a new one, just wondering as win 11 is released soon.

[Nevillet]

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay (work got in the way..) I was planning to put on W10 but guess I should be making provisions for W11.

I need to take a look at the middle of the road spec for 11.

Thanks for the Scan recomendation.

[SMDFlea]

Win 11 is a free upgrade from win 10 ,depending on the hardware spec, it has to support TPM 2.0 .Win 10 will still be supported for another 4 or 5 years.
Have a look at ebuyer, had a lot of gear from them over the years, and cclonline .

[Nevillet]

How does this sound for a spec:

Intel i5-9600K processor & motherboard (no particular preference on manuf. of MB)
16Gb RAM
250Gb SSD
Optical drive

Comments welcome please.

[Uranium-235]

Originally Posted by Nevillet

Hi All,

I am a regular on the BC forum and wonder if I can get some unbiased advise on putting together a new PC.

I have built several in the past and usually go to a supplier (www.novatech.co.uk/) and buy a motherboard bundle comprising of MB, CPU, RAM and fan that has been assembled and tested. I then put in a case, add a HD and load a Windows OS.

We have several PC's around the house but the one that needs replacing is about 10 years old.

The spec of the PC is: Foxconn G41MXE motherboard, Pentium E5800 @3.2 GHz and 4Gb RAM. It has a 250Gb Sandisk SDSSDA240G.

The new PC is just for normal household jobs and not for gaming and I want to run 2 screens directly from the MB without additional graphics cards.

I'm looking to spend about £250-300 for the 'bundle'. Can anyone please suggest what I should be looking at?
Many thanks in advance.

If that's all you're using it for, you can just honestly just get a core 2 quad off ebay and put a second 4gb of stick of ddr3 in there and this

https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...102gd3hlp.html

for dual monitor (DVI and HDMI)

[Nevillet]

The reason for the spec is born out of an 'A list' listing of a PC in a UK magazine that uses these components. www.palicomp.co.uk/intel-mercury-review-cof9

It might seen a bit OTT but need to cover my butt from a longevity POV.

I know I said no to gaming but I might (might) take a look at the latest and greatest MS flight sim..

[diif]

Originally Posted by Nevillet

How does this sound for a spec:

Intel i5-9600K processor & motherboard (no particular preference on manuf. of MB)
16Gb RAM
250Gb SSD
Optical drive

Comments welcome please.

They have a 1TB M.2 drive as their base spec, any reason for the small SSD?

[Nevillet]

I don't need a HD larger than that as all data is on NAS so i't just to keep the OS happy.

[diif]

Get an M.2 NVMe drive rather than SATA.

[Nevillet]

What's the advantage of a M.2 NVMe drive vs a regular SSD?

[diif]

Originally Posted by Nevillet

What's the advantage of a M.2 NVMe drive vs a regular SSD?

Speed. SATA is slow compared to PCI-E.

[Nevillet]

It's about speed for me so thanks for that.

So I need a M.2 NVMe that plugs directly into the MB?

I read the the UK magazine (PC Pro) that HD size should be >512Gb.

It also states W11 reguires:

UEFI/Secure Boot
TPM2
DirectX 12

[diif]

Yes, the M.2 socket is on the motherboard. 512GB tend to be faster than 256GB and the price difference is negligible.