Calling ricedg

Sorry John the series 1 Ryzens won’t cut it. More later. Delivery of the i7 is here.

Don’t do it.

I just think it will be overkill for you John, save your money by buying a cheaper CPU, like an i3. The only reason I didn’t was because I needed something in a hurry and the R5 3600 was the only thing I could buy that would fit the motherboard I already had. I had to buy a graphics card too, ouch. This was for work chasing a big contract, otherwise I’d still be waiting for things to calm down.

The one component that really makes a massive difference is an NVMe drive. The difference in price between an i5 and an i3 is more than the cost of a decent one, so it makes sense to buy a fast drive than more cores.

If I was starting from scratch right now this is what I’d be buying:

i3 10105 3.7GHz £125 This has onboard graphics and is better value than the F version + a cheap graphics card.

MSI B560M PRO Intel Socket 1200 Motherboard VGA, HDMI and Display Port £70 There are plenty at this price from all the OEMs. It’s hard to go wrong, but this has the latest chipset. Just make sure it has an M2 drive slot.

Kingston FURY Beast 8GB (1x 8GB) 2666MHz DDR4 RAM £35 Only a couple of quid more for much lower latency, but any DDR4 at this price will be fine. I wouldn’t get less then 8GB.

Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB M.2-2280 SSD £38 A very fast SSD for the same money as others. The 512Gb version is £55. The WD Blue drives are good value too.

Cases are a very personal thing. I have the CiT S503 Desktop Case £38 and a GameMax GT-300W 300W 80+ Bronze PSU £30. You don’t need a larger PSU than that.

TBH John, you could save £75 by using a Pentium Gold G6405 4.1GHz and not notice any difference in day-to-day tasks.

If you need Wi-Fi get the MSI B460M PRO-VDH WIFI Motherboard VGA, HDMI and DVI £90. It has Bluetooth too. It’s better value than a pci-e card.

John

That  Core i3 10105F you linked does not have integrated graphics – a discrete graphics card will be required.

John, it may help you if you write out your current usage and what irritates you so much about it. Sometimes things can be cured by simple things like a ram upgrade etc. A small pre-investment now in (say) a future-proof graphics card may buy you the time for the Win11 market to sort itself out.

If you just want the improved bling and sounds of Windows 11, then it may pay you to wait until Windows 11 is officially released. My bet is that the low cost box shifters will put together a minimalist spec that will run the OS acceptably, if not at blazing speeds. I’d also bet that AMD will have lower cost Ryzens that are Win11 compatible and beat the Intel offerings at lower cost.

It must be half height (aka low profile) as your case won’t take full height ones. So you must make sure it does have the right brackets in the box.

Asus GeForce GT 710 2GB GDDR5 £50 Only get this if you can’t afford anything else.

Gigabyte GT 1030 Low Profile D4 2GB £80 All the current GT 1030 cards have only digital output i.e. no VGA. So if you have a VGA only monitor you’ll need an adapter like this for £8.

As you’ll be getting a graphics card now, especially if it’s the GT1030 (I have one in my R5 3600 PC), and you want to take it forward, you can look at CPUs for the new PC project that don’t have onboard graphics. For Intel that’s ones that end in F, for AMD ones that don’t end in G. That opens up a lot more options.

Sorry John, I hadn’t realized you’d started ordering and I have confused everything.

If you intend to replace the HP with the new PC, I’d live without a graphics card for a while. If you really absolutely need one, I’m sure I have something here that will tide you over while you’re waiting, just return it to me when you’re done.

The new one won’t need a graphics card, and yes that is the motherboard with Wi-Fi. It also has all the right sockets for the CPU graphics.

As for the ram, don’t worry too much about it, any 8GB of DDR4 at that sort of price will do the job. If you’re looking at CCL then anything on this page.