Build a PC

[Anonymous]

Over the next 6 months I want to get out of Socket 775 PC building.

I have purchased a W10 Licence Key off Ebay maybe gone wrong already, as the email says upgrade-from-windows-10-home-to-pro (I don’t recall seeing that in the listing I wanted a W10 for a new motherboard (not yet purchased)

I have been browsing and come across a Socket 1151.

It will possibly take 6 moths to purchase parts and build, will a socket 1151 become redundant by then like the 775.

[PlaneMan]

John, save the money up for the full build and then do research and or, ask on here.

[Anonymous]

Thanks PM if only I could (have hole up my –se) hence if/when I have it I buy it in stages.

Just looking and I think the i7 i5 i3 CPUs are pricey for me.

have to look at some other sockets, maybe start with the CPU and then see about the mobo to fit.

 

[Ed P]

Depends what you do John maybe a AMD Ryzen build would suit you. Cheaper than some of the others you mentioned.

[Dave Rice]

I’m building perfectly acceptable office type machines for less than £200.

They are however not designed to be upgradable. If you need to add wireless I’m using these £11  600Mbps Dual Band 2.4G/5G AC600 Wireless Usb Network Adapters.

EDIT – the cheapest Ryzen on EB is £156 and the cheapest AM4 mobo is £64. The Kabylake 3.6Ghz Pentium G4600 can handle 4 threads for £87 and the cheapest mobo is also £64.

John, worrying about future proofing is a waste of time. When you are ready to upgrade the CPU they’ll not be made any more. Not a problem, it’s called EBay or Amazon ? I upgraded one of the charities old Sandybridge machines to a 3.1Ghz i5 for £65.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Ed & Dave

On MM I often saw talk of i CPUs etc and different sockets, I always felt that the bigger the processer the faster the job and something better for Windows 10.

The rigs I have were built around XP and maybe 7 and feel they are a little slow for multitasking.

They seem to lock up at times and I have to wait before next task.

I am well behind and thought it might be the right time to move up to over 3GHz mark.
I watched a program about the 80s (Technology Gets Personal) I have (as much as techno) come a long way but maybe stuck in the early 2000s with rigs for today’s Windows and will be for some time to come.

I recently upgraded Windows on rigs built for XP, although Windows passed the CPU Ram and HDD

I was hoping to upgrade to a rig worthy of Windows upgrades.

In the program it talked more about Apples.

[Ed P]

John, I have to be very honest unless you are on the gaming bleeding edge or running lots of scientific simulations you do not need a new rig. Until Microsoft sabotaged the Windows 10 beta I was very happy running a six years old box, and it would probably be still pretty usable now. My current box is five years old. It still runs the latest games (OK I had to swap out the gpu but nothing else). I do not plan to replace it for another couple of years and when I do that replacement is most likely to favour electricity savings rather than grunt.

Building a PC is no longer the challenge it was. Its just Lego with electronics.

Imo better to play with things that do not cost a lot but may make people say wow! For example a diy Hololens (sort-of) .

[Dave Rice]

I have to agree with Ed. That’s why the 4 year old dual core J1800 – with an SSD – runs W10 and Office 2016 quite acceptably for under £200. You absolutely do not need bang up to date kit.

There is a new socket on a chip CPU (like the J1800), the Celeron J3160 Quad Core. Like the J1800 it need low voltage DDR3L, but this time it’s the full size desktop memory. It’s also MATX rather than MITX. But you can still build a system for under £200 with W10 and O2016.

If you want a socketed CPU you can save some money by not using the very latest technology.

TBH that’s is going to do all you want and more. If you want a better case and PSU I have used this combo many times and would add £45 to the total.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again Ed & Dave for the advice.

Maybe I am as far as I need to be and no upgrade needed.

The rigs I have are in my profile, I will stick with them.

Much appreciated.

[Dave Rice]

TBH John, all I would do is get an SSD for the Lenovo. The difference will be amazing.

[Ed P]

+1 for the SSD remark, but do make sure you continue to have good backups!

SSDs do not fail slowly like the hdd of JCD — they drop down dead as though they have been pole-axed. No warnings are given. You cannot even get a hint by looking at read/write error data as the controller can in some cases be the single point of failure.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dave & Ed

Good idea, the Lenovo is a struggle for SSD running Windows 7 all my backups originate from the Lenovo Factory backup (I have no W7 disks for the Lenovo only recovery drive), not sure if taking the secret drive to SSD will work. I did once clone it but lost F2 (Lenovo backup) I will get an SSD and try it on the Lenovo.

 

[Dave Rice]

John, once you’re on W10 you can forget all about recovery partitions. In W10 the reset option does the same job. By and large it’ll sort all your drivers out as well, in your case I’d say 100% of them.

If you’ve bought a key from E-Bay I’d just put the hard drive to one side and do a clean install of W10 on the SSD. Once it’s working you can copy the data from the old HDD then put it in a drawer just in case.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dave

I do have Win 10 on another drive (sometime ago I asked about powering it, I opted to keep swapping the power from one (7) to another (10). The Lenovo seems to handle Win7 better.

Not sure what you mean reset option in 10.

[JayCeeDee]

Anonymous wrote:

Not sure what you mean reset option in 10.

 

In W10, if you click on the Settings Cog, then click on Update and Security, you’ll see a option to “Reset this PC”. You can choose to keep all your files, or remove them. It’s a bit like a Rebuild my OS option, or wipe it all and load the OS from scratch, either self-repair or nuke and start again.

[Anonymous]

You learn something new every day, thanks.

I’ve not been able to find an SSD above 120gb for my pocket. Where’s the best place to look.

[Dave Rice]

If you go to Settings – Updates & Security – Recovery you’ll see an option called Reset this PC.

This reinstalls Windows as if from a USB stick except that you can opt to save your data files. Any drivers and applications will need to be reinstalled, but these days Windows seems to do a good job on drivers itself.

I’m running W10 on many machines that are the dual core equivalent of your quad core J2900 and they are fine. But they all have SSDs (I only use spinners in servers these days). I also have a customer with the J2900 All In One desktop and that is running OK too.

[JayCeeDee]

If you’re only going to put the OS and a few other programmes that you use a lot, such as Browsers – and that’s really all you need to put on there unless you game at more than just casual level, – 120 is all you need, so Dave’s recommend in the posts on Page 1 of this topic, 120GB for £60 ish should do you nicely.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info Dave SSds seems the way to go.

Thanks JayCee (overrun) it’s my backups that take room, but I can start to forget them and look at 160gb.

 

[Anonymous]

What’s with these, I am going to struggle fixing a 2.5″ SSD let alone this, where’s it go.

[Author]

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