Advice Needed - Computer Purchase for 2023

[thhynes]

Morning, Evening, Afternoon

Brief History - I have purchased till recently all my computers from Best Buy, brand HP - never had an issue with HP computers till now.
My Desktop Computer is NOT expandable, I can't do anything with it as the interior is all proprietary. So I can replace the power supply to a larger unit to run the newer graphic cards. The computer is now 4 years old and is reaching its end of life. Looking to replace the unit

What I use my computer for:

Web browsing, Amazon, Banking,
Office Products heavily used - Excel, Word,
Software that my system just can't handle anymore - Adobe Encore Creative Sweet CS5 Although an old program it's fully licensed and suits my needs
Some video editing

Games:

Upon release purchased Microsoft Flight - never been able to use it as it won't run on my system due to graphic card limitations
Steam Games such as City Skylines, Universe Sandbox
What I am really nervous about is the new systems come with no traditional hard drive but with Memory driven HDD hard drives.- if so how large should it be, I have seen systems with 250-1 terabyte
and no CD Reader/Writer - but I am not opposed to just using a USB-connected one - even though it may be slower than an internal drive
I do have an external HD that I have access to that connects via USB

My question is this - What is the big difference between a gaming pc and a nongaming pc? is it worth the money
do I go with INTEL processors or AMD?
What graphics Card - the only requirement would be to support at least two monitors.
Would like to ensure that the system would last at least another 4-6 years I tend to drive my computers into the ground like my vehicles.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to be stuck with a system I can't upgrade at all like the one I currently have.

 

[root]

Hey @thhynes - welcome to CF.

Just a few thoughts below, I hope some of them are helpful.

To my eyes the main difference between a gaming PC and a non gaming PC is 1) whether it has a good graphics card and 2) whether it has all of the whizz-bang LEDs that a lot of them have now (looks pretty but doesn't make it any faster). It's hard to not buy one with the fancy graphics.

I like you always used to buy HP but certainly on the consumer side the quality seems to have taken a bit of a nosedive, though arguably that's across the board with the traditional PC manufacturers unfortunately.

Cautiously I would suggest getting a fairly generic PC - either building it yourself from components, or going to one of the "custom PC builders". They'll be far more likely to use components that you can upgrade as you go.

In terms of Intel vs AMD - I haven't hugely kept up recently but the general consensus seems to be that AMD gets you a bit more bang for your buck.

To be able to play the games you want to play, you will want a half decent graphics card, but it doesn't need to be top of the line. I've played Cities Skylines admirably on a Geforce 1080 which is now a few years old, the new MS Flight Sim ran OK on it but not spectacular performance.
For your use I would suggest getting both a SSD (NVMe) and a traditional mechanical hard drive - use the faster drive for Windows and your Office Suite, Adobe etc, and install games onto the mechanical hard drive. Perhaps keep one or two of your most frequently played titles on the faster drive.

Performance wise I wouldn't go back to using a traditional spinning hard disk as my "main" system drive.

I've picked out a machine from Cyber Power PC - not sure if they ship to your location but it gives an example of a specification that you should find more than ample for your current needs, while also having enough grunt to cope with any new games over the next 5 years or so (roughly)

Customize Prebuilt Gaming PC GM 99605

Prebuilt Gaming PC GM 99605 - AMD Ryzen™ 5 5500 Processor - 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/3200MHz RAM - B550 Motherboard - 1TB WD Black SN750 SE M.2 PCIe SSD - Windows 11 Home

www.cyberpowerpc.com

You might potentially get more "bang for your buck" by shopping with a local PC store (if you still have one). If you just want a normal looking case, they can put those sorts of components in without all of the RGB lights. Note that these are pretty hard to avoid now, most builds involve using an AIO cooler (essentially a mini water cooling system) and most of these come equipped with the lights.

 

[thhynes]

Hey @thhynes - welcome to CF.

Just a few thoughts below, I hope some of them are helpful.

To my eyes the main difference between a gaming PC and a non gaming PC is 1) whether it has a good graphics card and 2) whether it has all of the whizz-bang LEDs that a lot of them have now (looks pretty but doesn't make it any faster). It's hard to not buy one with the fancy graphics.

Well that has been one of the turn offs, all those LED lights in the case, I don't need to see into it. But building one is now beyond my capabilities. I don't have enough patience, and things always go wrong, I don't even trust myself around power tools.

Cautiously I would suggest getting a fairly generic PC - either building it yourself from components, or going to one of the "custom PC builders". They'll be far more likely to use components that you can upgrade as you go.

I have been keeping an eye on Bestbuy's web page and I have not been convienced enough that spending $1500+ for a system that would do what I need it to do is worth that kind of money.



To be able to play the games you want to play, you will want a half decent graphics card, but it doesn't need to be top of the line. I've played Cities Skylines admirably on a Geforce 1080 which is now a few years old, the new MS Flight Sim ran OK on it but not spectacular performance.
For your use I would suggest getting both a SSD (NVMe) and a traditional mechanical hard drive - use the faster drive for Windows and your Office Suite, Adobe etc, and install games onto the mechanical hard drive. Perhaps keep one or two of your most frequently played titles on the faster drive.


Right now I have installed in this system, don't laugh a Nvidia GeForce GT730 - Released in June of 2014, I installed it because it was the only way I could get two monitors to work...and since I was working at home, and the requirements of my job, and the software they use, I need THREE to do my job....so I know at this time the bottle neck in my system must be the graphics card with the 3 or 4 updates to Windows has occured in the last year.
It is so bad, that I had to close my Citiskylines just to be able to respond to this message.

Performance wise I wouldn't go back to using a traditional spinning hard disk as my "main" system drive.


Really? No issues with that then? I am pretty old fashion , Change is hard to accept for me, and its overwhelming when I don't see componets in a "tower" that I have now... Spinning HD, CD/DVD reads/Writers, I have older spinning type HD that I use a USB support system to read and write from those disks from 20 years ago. So the HD spinning type are quite reliable. My reading on the new HDD hard drives that are all digital do have a life span. I realize that everything electronically has a life span, but it seems, at least for me a giant leep into the unkown.

I've picked out a machine from Cyber Power PC - not sure if they ship to your location but it gives an example of a specification that you should find more than ample for your current needs, while also having enough grunt to cope with any new games over the next 5 years or so (roughly)


I am going to take a look at this now. Thanks for the recomendation.

Customize Prebuilt Gaming PC GM 99605

Prebuilt Gaming PC GM 99605 - AMD Ryzen™ 5 5500 Processor - 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/3200MHz RAM - B550 Motherboard - 1TB WD Black SN750 SE M.2 PCIe SSD - Windows 11 Home

www.cyberpowerpc.com

You might potentially get more "bang for your buck" by shopping with a local PC store (if you still have one). If you just want a normal looking case, they can put those sorts of components in without all of the RGB lights. Note that these are pretty hard to avoid now, most builds involve using an AIO cooler (essentially a mini water cooling system) and most of these come equipped with the lights.

The last privately owned PC business closed in May of 2022, with two others following fairly closely behind. Change of times I suppose.

 

[tech100]

HP is one of the best in laptop.

 

[root]

It's a real shame that the privately owned shops near you have closed - in the UK this is also happening and nothing beats local, independent advice from somewhere that trades on reputation rather than marketing and trying to sell you whatever makes them the biggest commission.

In terms of whether SSDs are trustworthy - I would say at this point, yes. In my employment we change around 700-800 machines per year as part of lifecycle and some of the oldest machines we had in life with solid state drives are now going out of service. Very few have failed, compared to mechanical drives where we would expect quite a few per month.

On my own machines I've had around 6 or 7 mechanical drives fail vs a couple of SSDs - and the only ones that have failed on me were cheap no name ones. Sandisk, Samsung, Kingston drives are pretty decent and usually what you would end up with.

To keep costs low, you might want to look into buying second hand. There are a lot of system refurbishers on eBay - just beware that many will try to sell you a machine that is pretty much only good as e-waste these days that they have slapped a video card in and called a "gaming PC".
For anything with enough grunt to play games such as FS2020, it looks like you will still be spending $1000+ as PCs remain inflated in price. Here's one machine I've picked out, name brand and refurbished:

HP OMEN 30L GT13 Gaming Desktop PC 5600X 32G 8GB RTX 3060Ti W11 *HP REFURBISHED* | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for HP OMEN 30L GT13 Gaming Desktop PC 5600X 32G 8GB RTX 3060Ti W11 *HP REFURBISHED* at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

The other option may well be to try and wait things out a little longer. With any luck the silicon shortage coming to an end will start filtering down into prices over the next few months.