Hi forum,
I am in the market for 2 PC's. Unfortunately I am many, many years behind, and the time it's taking to re-educate myself is longer than I have.
First of all, my parents need to replace their Inspiron ONE from 2011. My Dad will soon be working from home and needs something that can load programs quickly, multi-task reliably, and, ideally, he would like to be able to occasionally play some old school strategy games (think Medieval II, Caesar IV - proper old school). No need for overkill but I would like to future-proof things a bit for them if possible, but I suspect their needs won't evolve much beyond web browsing, Office programs, and very basic gaming. Since we're replacing an all-in-one we'll probably need a new monitor as well, since the ones I have lying around are all VGA antiques.
Here is a basic wishlist:
Desktop
Budget: $1K-$2K (including a monitor)
Storage: 1TB+ (I was thinking an SSD around 128 GB for OS and programs to boot quickly, and HD(s) for regular files - thoughts?)
RAM: 8GB+
CPU: unsure - this is probably what I'm struggling with
GPU: also proving confusing
One of these was for sale 2nd hand for $900, but the seller has since taken it down as he is using it for his own work from home: https://www.harveynorman.com.au/acer-nitro-n50-600-desktop.h… Is that in my ballpark? Or overkill? (It was nearly half-price and barely used, apparently - it's not for sale now anyway)
Also, I'm looking to replace my Alienware M17x from 2012. Its discs are failing and it's a lot slower than it used to be. It has served me very well, probably because it was (I think) a bit of a beast for its time; 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 675M, Core i7-3610QM (8-core). I thought about getting a desktop, but I move around quite a lot so laptop it is for now. I don't have very heavy gaming requirements at all. Like my Dad I'm an old school strategy gamer mostly, but I would like to be able to have the option to at least play some of the newer shooters and such on medium settings. Like my Alienware, future-proofing is desirable.
Laptop
Budget: $3K, give or take for the right machine
Storage: 1TB+
RAM: 8GB+
CPU: as above with the desktop, not much idea
GPU: as above
Screen: ideally 17", but would consider a 15"
My research here is basically nothing so far since my parents' desktop is more important right now. Any general advice, including where I might be able to learn more, would be greatly appreciated. Also if you know of good places to buy that might do something of a deal if we were to buy everything at once, that'd be great - worth asking I guess.
First post in the forums. Sorry if I've stuffed up or forgot anything. Let me know, and cheers!
i dont have any particular suggestions, but your budgets seem to be about double what they could be, from a cheaper store or DIY
decent-ish desktop could be some thing like a ryzen3 based system for around $500 all up (exc monitor). definitely go for ssd, may as well just go straight for a 1tb ssd and skip a separate storage drive. skip gpu, the ryzen cpus have decent enough graphics in them
add a couple hundred for the monitor
For laptops, things have improved in cheap gaming laptops lately, and $1500ish can get you something surprisingly good. I recently picked up an Asus fx505dt a few months ago for only $1000, which I'm enjoying and seems to be a bit of a budget beast. Plays any newer game on mid-high settings, so no worries. Been getting into stuff like Battlefield and Red Dead 2 now that I have a good enough system. And it has space for extra ram (I upgraded from 8 to 16gb) and an extra drive (I added a 1tb ssd).
Given your budget is triple the price, you might want to get something a bit of a step up. I think you'd generally get a comparable (but better) system, but the main difference would be build quality and extras. Mine feels solid enough, downsides are weird ports, bad speaker, no fingerprint reader. No dealbreakers, but $1500 can fix those and get something with a metal build.
Or, at a $3k budget you could probably get all that, plus super thin and light