What do decent fast desktops look like now?

eljefino

eljefino

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Jun 15, 2003
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Been out of the game for a while.

Use Ubuntu, do some non-linear video editing. But I can dual boot with windows. I just hate paying for stuff or being tracked so I use linux.

Seems like most $600 desktops have $400 graphics cards. I think this is dumb as a box of rocks.

Needs are generic. SSD boot drive. No gaming.

I've bought off-lease desktops that are a couple years old that get good CPU benchmarks. Should be easy enough. Budget $200-500. Not afraid of building my own, but it's been more financially feasible to get them already assembled. Throw me some ideas.
 
Most of the cheaper systems (even in a standard case) have a proprietary insta break power supply

My OEM Compaq core 2 mid tower would still be my modern system if the PSU wasn’t more expensive than the entire Pc

Most of the so called generic cases for you to build your own look like they came out of some kind of clown show and many of them aren’t reasonably priced and are way to large for what I stuff in a case, LED lit and clear panels are an instant no from me.
 
eljefino said:
... Use Ubuntu, do some non-linear video editing. But I can dual boot with windows. I just hate paying for stuff or being tracked so I use linux.
... Needs are generic. SSD boot drive. No gaming. ...
Click to expand...
If you're not gaming, desktops haven't really gotten faster in several years. And Ubuntu runs fast even on old hardware, especially if you use the XFCE desktop (XUbuntu). I've had good longevity with Dell and HP desktops lasting 10+ years. I'd look for one of those used. Try to get one with at least a 400 watt power supply - it will be overbuilt for what you need and last longer. You'll need a much bigger power supply for gaming since the graphics cards use so much power.

eljefino said:
... I've bought off-lease desktops that are a couple years old that get good CPU benchmarks. ...
Click to expand...
Sounds like a good idea. BTW, if you use Ubuntu you'll want an NVidia card - the binary drivers are seamless.
 
Any of the older i9 processors and a 2080 video card will give excellent performance on 4K material. Unfortunately, the video cards have become rather expensive and pre-made computers cut corners here. In my experience a 1050 video card will struggle processing 4K YouTube programming.
 
I don't see a big leap in technology from say 10 years ago compared to from 20 to 10 years ago. My 10 year old dell has 16 GB RAM and the i7 processor runs at about 3.00 GHz. Today those numbers are still pretty up to date, while 20 years ago I don't think 1 GB RAM and 1.00 GHz was available. I would think a TB of RAM and 100 GHz would be a thing by now as they say computing power is supposed to increase exponentially at time goes by.
 
Cujet said:
Any of the older i9 processors and a 2080 video card will give excellent performance on 4K material. Unfortunately, the video cards have become rather expensive and pre-made computers cut corners here. In my experience a 1050 video card will struggle processing 4K YouTube programming.
Click to expand...
Some of Intels integrated PUC systems are “good enough” if your primarily worried about video playback, the higher models will even “modern” 3D game if you turn down res/details .

Sadly Intels almost useable PUCs are in my mind getting rather expensive for a small integrated set top/ desktop mini box but considering how much a 10 year old video card is I guess they have a place in the market.

AMDs integrated stuff is supposed to be ok even for light gaming but I’ve lost track of AMDs offerings
 
atikovi said:
Today those numbers are still pretty up to date
Click to expand...
Until you get into serious, high-end software that's capable of using more RAM, 16gb or maybe 32gb is pretty max'd out. People browsing the web, running Word or Excel, and so on have zero need for 16gb of RAM.

With CPUs, you can't go by clock speed anymore alone. A single-core or dual-core CPU at 4ghz isn't necessarily faster than a quad-core running at 2.2ghz (I'm using pretty generic examples since I don't keep up with this stuff that closely anymore).
 
atikovi said:
I don't see a big leap in technology from say 10 years ago compared to from 20 to 10 years ago. My 10 year old dell has 16 GB RAM and the i7 processor runs at about 3.00 GHz. Today those numbers are still pretty up to date, while 20 years ago I don't think 1 GB RAM and 1.00 GHz was available. I would think a TB of RAM and 100 GHz would be a thing by now as they say computing power is supposed to increase exponentially at time goes by.
Click to expand...
The clock speed it runs is not the limiting factor anymore.

Take a look at the benchmarks of 2 Intel processors 10 years apart, with similar clock speeds (the new one is lower).

Even the single core speed is at least twice as fast. The multi core speed is 8x faster. Also, for all of the "down talk" about Intel, the performance over time has improved markedly and Intel remains world class fast, despite, or maybe because of, stiff competition.


Intel Core i7-2700K vs Intel Core i9-12900K - GadgetVersus

Comparison between Intel Core i7-2700K and Intel Core i9-12900K with the specifications of the processors, the number of cores, threads, cache memory, also the performance in benchmark platforms such as Geekbench, Passmark, Cinebench or AnTuTu.
gadgetversus.com gadgetversus.com
 
Thanks all for the replies.

Running Ubuntu 16.04, the long term stable version, which is becoming obsolete. It's nagging me to upgrade the OS.

I hate going through this, getting it all tweaked how I like it, because I'm an old fart I guess. So I am looking to upgrade hardware simultaneously.
 
atikovi said:
What useful software is there uses more than 32gb that isn't used on a mainframe?
Click to expand...
You can't use the word "useful" just because it's not software you're familiar with. Or use. You changed my "serious, high-end software" into "useful software". There's a little bit of a difference there.... It's not software "we" use on home computers, for example.

What software do you use that runs on a mainframe ? And mainframes aren't necessarily for software that needs a lot of power as much as needing to support many users (thousands) but they are often doing mundane tasks.
 
You can get a Lenovo P620 workstation installed with Ubuntu. But, you'll have to add a zero to your budget price range.
 
Hall said:
What software do you use that runs on a mainframe ? And mainframes aren't necessarily for software that needs a lot of power as much as needing to support many users (thousands) but they are often doing mundane tasks.
Click to expand...

I’m a user that runs reports from a mainframe does that count?
 
Running reports = mundane, wouldn't you agree ? 😁 And I'll bet the queries that generate your report(s) doesn't overload the CPU(s) on that mainframe either, but yourself and hundreds or thousands of co-workers are all using it at the same time.
 
eljefino said:
Been out of the game for a while.

Use Ubuntu, do some non-linear video editing. But I can dual boot with windows. I just hate paying for stuff or being tracked so I use linux.

Seems like most $600 desktops have $400 graphics cards. I think this is dumb as a box of rocks.

Needs are generic. SSD boot drive. No gaming.

I've bought off-lease desktops that are a couple years old that get good CPU benchmarks. Should be easy enough. Budget $200-500. Not afraid of building my own, but it's been more financially feasible to get them already assembled. Throw me some ideas.
Click to expand...
Ubuntu will run on anything. The issue I guess you need to work out, is how you want to approach Windows 11 and their
"need" on basic requirements. If you hang onto w10 then you can pick up an off lease special and be golden.

docs.microsoft.com

Windows processor requirements Windows 11 supported Intel processors

This specification details the Intel processors that can be used with Windows 11 customer systems that include Windows products, including custom images.
docs.microsoft.com

Non-linear video editing is unclear to me. Can you post your current rig specs and what type of video quality you are working with?
 
Hall said:
Running reports = mundane, wouldn't you agree ? 😁 And I'll bet the queries that generate your report(s) doesn't overload the CPU(s) on that mainframe either, but yourself and hundreds or thousands of co-workers are all using it at the same time.
Click to expand...

Generating an excel doc with 3xx,xxx rows does seem to take a while and load up my system when it finally finishes.
 
GPU is too expensive still. If you want a decent machine these days for that cost you probably are looking at some integrated graphics.

I got my dad an HP M1024 something last year, 8 core AMD 4750 (Ryzen 7 I think), 8GB DDR4 and 256GB SSD, I moved his old HDD over and bought another stick of ram to make it dual channel 16GB. It should be good enough for most people if not playing games.

Power supply would be a bottleneck if in the future he wants to add a big GPU, but hopefully by that time there will be cheap low end card that would match this CPU and still fit the power budget (100W I think).
 
PCs are being sold with 12th gen intel core processors. My Dell XPS with a FIRST gen i7 is still going strong. It doesn’t support W11, but still absolutely crushes every single minor thing we throw at it without any lag or delay. I have upgraded to an SSD, higher wattage PSU and a better used GPU only. It still rocks the original DDR-3 RAM.

I can still play last-gen games like Fallout 4 at high settings without issue. I was told that the old i7 couldn’t possibly feed enough data to make the 1070 ti work but that turned out not to be true.

IMO, buy once, cry once. I spent over a grand for this decent mid-level gaming PC way back when and it’s still good to go. It could die tomorrow and it wouldn’t owe me anything!

If you don’t want a GPU then you should at least buy name-brand. Unless you want to cheap out and buy a new PC every few years it behooves you to spend a little more and buy something that will last.
 
AMD Ryzen CPU’s have been killing it lately. But we’d need to know the current specs and what software, no sense in telling you upgrade some say a 9th gen Intel to a 10 or really 11th gen if it’ll only save you a few seconds when editing.
 
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