Been going crazy for 3 days trying to pick a solution for my new computer...need some advice!

Satearn

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Is it just me or this buying/building a PC is just turning me neurotic? I'm just about ready to take some Zanax about this! :lol:

Anyways, I now have a laptop with 6 gigs or Ram and a Pentium B950. I don't game, only heavy office work and AI, Illustrator etc...

I have narrowed it down to 2 option for essentially the same price:

1. Self build:

- i5 7500
- ASUS Asus PRIME B250M-A
- 8 Gigs of Ram (expandable to 64)

2. Desktop DELL Vostro V3668 -W2681501PTH

- i3 7100
- Dell Motherboard? ...
- 12 Gigs of Ram (expandable to 16)

I like the Dell warranty, a little worried about my own build warranty...

Will the first option be much better? Am I better going with Dell for warranty? If my motherboard or CPU fries, do I have to wait weeks either way? Dell has 3 year on site.

 
Solution
Op did say Heavy Office work, Ai, illustrator etc, so production is premium concern. If the programs he's using don't use more than 4 threads then the i5's IPC will be better than Ryzen. If, however, he is using production software that'd benefit from multi core, the Ryzen might be better overall. It's really a toss-up.


Well, the cost - lets say for the I5 system, will be roughly on par with what I mentioned. So, would you rather have the best bang for buck, plus have an upgrade path in the future - and on top of that have a very good multitasking system, or stick with an I5 system, with limited upgradablility, and with less performance.

Bit of no-brainer don't you think??
 

Karadjgne

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Op did say Heavy Office work, Ai, illustrator etc, so production is premium concern. If the programs he's using don't use more than 4 threads then the i5's IPC will be better than Ryzen. If, however, he is using production software that'd benefit from multi core, the Ryzen might be better overall. It's really a toss-up.
 
Solution

Bruno Vincent

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Thanks guys, even more confused now!

I have an ssd already that I will put on any new build.

So the i3 7100 is out of the question then? I5 7500 or Ryzen 1600?

I like to multitask and open tons of tabs, I also plan to use a virtual machine, I'm a web designer, but no games ever, no desire, only game I ever liked was Vectrex when I was a kid! (I'm old.…!)
 


Ryzen would be advisable then with all your work and the virtual machines. Do not that you'll have to ge a cheap gpu with the ryzen since it doesn't have integrated graphics (a gt 1030 will do + bonus for some better gpu acceleration in AI).
 
^+1 Jaslion, and madmatt30 are correct. The Ryzen does not have a built in GPU. However, for your needs a straightforward low cost GPU will fit nicely with the Ryzen. Something like a gt1030 4gb will do fine. Then you have a system which is well capable for your needs, is upgrade-able, and will do you all you need and more.
 
Can you hold out a month for coffee lake just to wait & see .

The quad core i3 8300 & 6 core i5 8400 may be a killer proposition for someone who does not really need a GPU priced at roughly $130/$190 respectively.

Don't get me wrong , I'm a big fan of amd & the ryzens in general BUT for someone who does not need a discrete GPU they're not really making a lot of sense IMO.

A gt 1030 adda $70-80 to the build cost which puts a ryzen 1600 into intel i7 7700 territory .
& as much as it pains me to say it that i7 is a stronger CPU for productivity.

 

Satearn

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In Thailand the cost is the same for:

A. Ryzen 1300x + gt1030 4gb

B. I5 7500

According to userbenchmark, Ryzen 1300x is equivalent to i5 7500

A or B?

 

Rogue Leader

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MERGED QUESTION
Question from Satearn : "Warranty service and scenarios self build versus onsite prebuilt Dell, Lenovo or HP 3 years warranties"



If you plan on gaming with this machine buying a Dell or HP is a terrible idea.

Prebuilts are good if you need a regular PC with no maintenance and no plans to upgrade, because many are made to be tough to impossible to do more than a hard drive or memory upgrade to.

BTW CPUs don't break, they have like a .6% failure rate. Motherboards as well do not fail that often. You are far better off building it yourself.
 

Karadjgne

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With a Virtual Machine and many open tabs, neither.
Virtual machines split ram bandwidth, not size and this'll be important later. Intel is funky about ram in that it doesn't really take well to higher speeds without some OC on the cpu to give the memory controller (on die) a boost. So there's little/no gain by using faster than @2666 on a kabylake processor. And the i5 7500 does not OC, so is stuck with 2400 max supported. Not so with Amd. Ryzen loves faster ram, 3200 will show @20% better performance over the native 2133. And can overclock on a b350/x370 mobo. Back to importance. 3200 has almost 2x the bandwidth of 2400.
So picture your i5 build with 16Gb ram and open up a VM. Your 4/4 cpu just took a major hit. You'll show 16Gb ram capability on both machines, but that 2400 bandwidth just got halved basically. If you open up a decent amount of tabs on either machine, that i5 will slow to a crawl as the ram bandwidth just got saturated. The Ryzen 1300x with 3200 will have a serious advantage there, overall you'll have approximately the same bandwidth as stock 2400, but still be running at 3200. But it's still a 4 core, 4 thread cpu, so VMs are going to hurt.

What you want out of the pc, and what you are willing to budget for don't match. Your best option for relatively close would be the Ryzen R5 1600 with a cheapo gpu (second hand, older etc) paired with a B350 mobo and g-skill Trident-Z / RipJaws V (Cas14) / Patriot Elite 3200MHz ram.

That'll run your VM, Ai, multiple tabs, heavy office work without a hitch. I'd say maybe wait for CoffeeLake i5, but that'll be at premium prices for 3-4 months until the impulse buyers taper off.
 

Satearn

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I don't play any games ever, and on intention either, but I like speed for productivity, only heavy multitasking, no movies either, this is only for work, web design and programming, some graphic design in Illustrator.

My main concern now is service and warranty, is onsite Dell 3 years REALLY superior than self build with Synnex and 3 years warranty? I don't want any headaches, heard horror stories about ASUS motheboards that take 4 months to get fixed/replaced...!

 

Rogue Leader

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If you're worried about a warranty and down time then you should not be building yourself a PC. While failures are rare they happen and yes you will be taking your system apart and sending your motherboard back. 4 months is an exaggeration but a couple weeks would not be unprecedented.
 

Karadjgne

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Warranty doesn't cover down-time, just cost. If there's an issue you can't fix quick and easy, you call Dell. Dell will either tell you to ship it or drop it off at a center. Now sit back and wait for a week or 2 with no pc.
Build it yourself. Same issue you can't quick and easy fix. Ask questions here or someplace else, spend a day or 2 troubleshooting, maybe get a fix maybe need a new part (RMA if still covered under manufactures warranty). Down-time 2 days-2 weeks.
So warranty is questionable, depending on your work needs, you might loose more time/money with a warranty than spending out for a replacement part.

I've dealt with Dell several times over the years, their warranty is decent, as is their customer service and repair. But make no mistake, if they feel they need to totally wipe out and restore windows to fix the issue, they will do so and not blink. Best hope you have everything backed up separately before shipping them a pc.

All new parts are covered for a time by the vendor, could be 30 days to a year generally. After that, there's manufacturer warranty, usually at least a year, some parts as much as 10 years. Dell is good parts/labor for a year unless you pay a bunch extra for 3 or more years. After that year, you are on your own, not even covered by manufacturer warranty, it's a pre-built, Dell assumes the warranty.

Everybody has a horror story. Pick a brand, be it pre-built or home built, there is a horror story or 100 that still there. Ask ppl about MSI RMA department being 2 drunk old rednecks in a garage. I've RMA'd plenty in 30 odd years of playing with hardware, both professionally and amateur home builds, my last RMA was my own Asus p8z77-v LE motherboard when a ram slot literally fell off. Sent it in under RMA, got a brand new board in the mail 6 days later. Evga gpu, 3 days via Express overnight delivery. I could go on and on. I've never personally had a bad experience with any RMA, but then again, I make well sure that they get every scrap of documentation, packaging, parts they require. Be surprised how much holdup time there is because someone forgot to mail a copy of the store receipt, with the upc from the box etc. 4 months? Blame Asus if you want, I'll lay odds it was the owners fault because he forgot something, or failed to disclose the fact he dumped a coke into the pc and shorted out the mobo. You'll find that many of the complaints and horror stories are like that, user abuse you aren't told about, all you see is 'it died, so I mailed it in, and it took 4 months to get a replacement'

Oh, forgot to add. OEM for Dell motherboard include Asus, MSI and Gigabyte, and have for many years, so probably not going to make much difference if you get an Asus mobo with Dell lettering on it, or an Asus mobo with Asus lettering, other than the chances of owning a significantly better board come with buying your own. Pre-builts tend to use the lowest budget stuff they can, just to cut costs.
 

Satearn

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Amazing answer, if you ever come to Thailand I'll buy you a few beers;)

So conclusively, Dell Onsite or build your own is pretty much the same wait time right? Minus me driving to the shop (5 minutes)?

Your username says Asus, so with your experience I suspect this could be a good Motherboard choice for me? (Asus PRIME B250M-A) , better than stock Dell, HP and Lenovo I take it?

Cheers

 

Karadjgne

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The B250m-a is your basic mATX mobo. It's not fantastic, it doesn't suck. Very mediocre. Does have some upgrades like the Usb-C etc that can be handy, but basically it's an office use mobo with decent storage capability but no real flexibility for stuff like good audio or cases with multiple fans.

There are worse boards, but also better.
 

Bruno Vincent

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Well, I have a hearing condition, so barely need sound, no gaming ever either so that's fine, what is good storage? Not sure I need multiple fans?
 

Karadjgne

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Well it has 1x usb 3.1 internal header, 2x USB 2 headers, 6 Sata 6GB and an m.2 slot (kills 2x Sata ports). So for storage capability it's better than most older mATX. You can still run 3x hdd, an optical drive and an m.2 NVMe (pcie x4 speed) ssd. But the rear ports are lacking, just 2x USB, a USB-C, etc. So plenty of interior expansion possibilities but not much on ghetto insides. For a basic mobo it's not too shabby.

As for fans, it has 2x fan headers and a cpu header, so that's 2x fans intake and 2x fans exhaust possible if using splitters. Fans are important for noise issues (2x slow fans move more air than 1x fast fan, faster there fan, noisier it gets) and airflow. Get air moving and it keeps temps in check when the pc is under heavy extended usage.