Low-maintenance computer build for dad


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First off, apologies if this is in the wrong place - I couldn't see anywhere specifically for this kind of thing.

 

My dad wants a computer to last him somewhere in the region of 10 years. I've been out of the loop on hardware since I stopped being a massive nerd when I left uni, so I'm not really sure if what I've put together makes sense to get him - I'd really appreciate it if anyone could have a quick look over it and give me some feedback before we buy and build it.

 

He doesn't play any games more intensive than Minesweeper, but does use Photoshop (4k x 6k pixels not uncommon) and has a huge catalog of the images he processes, which he wants quick access to (stamps - get your mind out of the gutter!)

 

He absolutely wants a 500gb SSD for his stuff so that he can access everything quickly (and without having to access a second drive for stuff he only needs occasionally), and we're planning on setting up full weekly backups to the mechanical drive using Windows Backup (hence the 4gb drive, to hold around 3 months of backups). If you can think of a better easy way to do that, feel free to suggest it.

 

Overclocking is completely off the cards - he just wants to buy it, build it and run it.

 

I'm aware that what I've specced out is almost certainly overkill for anything non-gaming but don't know how far to scale it back so that it's still capable of doing what he wants and able to last something like 10 years.

 

Budget is no more than £1,000 but the lower, the better.

 

I picked these out as a first draft: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/pgNQZR

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Nix to AMD for Adobe software - Adobe has a notorious bias toward Intel - and has for years.  Swap the Ryzen CPU and motherboard for Coffee Lake i5 and motherboard.  However, you can leave everything else as is.

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Also why are you suing a full ATX case?

You can fit this in a much smaller case for the same cost.

Maybe it's just me but with smaller case you have way more options for placement as it takes a smaller foot print.

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I changed the video card to the Geforce GTX 1060 and memory to DDR4-3000

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor  (£147.50 @ Aria PC) 
Motherboard: *Asus - PRIME B350-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£68.73 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: *Team - Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (£149.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Storage: Crucial - MX500 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£108.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: *Toshiba - X300 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£86.40 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: *Zotac - GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Mini Video Card  (£199.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  (£43.79 @ Aria PC) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic - 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£65.47 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Optical Drive: Lite-On - iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer  (£10.50 @ Aria PC) 
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  (£82.72 @ More Computers) 
Total: £964.06
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-27 19:53 BST+0100

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PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor  ($234.89 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - M9i 48.4 CFM CPU Cooler  ($19.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock - Z370M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($126.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Team - Vulcan 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($154.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung - 860 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($169.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Toshiba - X300 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($112.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Phoenix Video Card  ($214.98 @ Newegg)
Case: BitFenix - Prodigy (Red) Mini ITX Tower Case  ($68.53 @ Newegg Business)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On - iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer  ($13.69 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  ($89.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1261.61 or 891 British Pounds
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-03-27 15:23 EDT-0400

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1 hour ago, PGHammer said:

Nix to AMD for Adobe software - Adobe has a notorious bias toward Intel - and has for years.  Swap the Ryzen CPU and motherboard for Coffee Lake i5 and motherboard.  However, you can leave everything else as is.

Care to elaborate? I'm running a Ryzen7/RX580 build and haven't had any compatibility or performance issues in Photoshop or Lightroom.

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13 minutes ago, Euphoria said:

Here is a good website with performance benchmarks for Photoshop when picking different hardware.

 

Recommended Systems for Adobe Photoshop CC

From what I can gather after reading the CPU performance benchmarks and the GPU faq on Adobe's site, the biggest impact on Adobe application performance is your choice in RAM. Adobe's website hasn't been updated for the latest GPUs and wasn't able to offer much information beyond recommending a Quadro.

 

After reading Ryzen7 vs. Core i7 benchmarks, the majority of actions took a fraction of a second longer (generally 0.1 - 0.5) seconds longer, but some actions were shorter. Keep in mind the Ryzen build this data is based on was using slower RAM in their AMD reference build.

 

Further investigation turned up more benchmark results which places the Ryzen 7 1700X ($289.99) alongside the Intel Core i7 6900k ($1,077.04) in terms of overall average multicore Photoshop performance in regards to completed action time.

 

Verdict: I'd say the performance difference is neglegable at this point in time, especially since the Ryzen series of processors. If you're looking for a cheaper build and aren't necessarily doing heavy video encoding, I'd go with AMD personally. But then again, I hear great things about Intel's Core i5/i7 series processors. I can also say Photoshop runs well enough on my hackintosh with a kaby lake core i3 and an intel hd620 igpu.

 

Take this response with a handful of salt.

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11 hours ago, Euphoria said:

Also why are you suing a full ATX case?

You can fit this in a much smaller case for the same cost.

Maybe it's just me but with smaller case you have way more options for placement as it takes a smaller foot print.

10 years is an insanely long time in doggie years or computer years. We might have QuBit CPUs by then!

 

The full size ATX provides maximum flexibility to swap stuff in and out and seems more prudent as a choice.

 

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9 hours ago, satukoro said:

From what I can gather after reading the CPU performance benchmarks and the GPU faq on Adobe's site, the biggest impact on Adobe application performance is your choice in RAM. Adobe's website hasn't been updated for the latest GPUs and wasn't able to offer much information beyond recommending a Quadro.

 

After reading Ryzen7 vs. Core i7 benchmarks, the majority of actions took a fraction of a second longer (generally 0.1 - 0.5) seconds longer, but some actions were shorter. Keep in mind the Ryzen build this data is based on was using slower RAM in their AMD reference build.

 

Further investigation turned up more benchmark results which places the Ryzen 7 1700X ($289.99) alongside the Intel Core i7 6900k ($1,077.04) in terms of overall average multicore Photoshop performance in regards to completed action time.

 

Verdict: I'd say the performance difference is neglegable at this point in time, especially since the Ryzen series of processors. If you're looking for a cheaper build and aren't necessarily doing heavy video encoding, I'd go with AMD personally. But then again, I hear great things about Intel's Core i5/i7 series processors. I can also say Photoshop runs well enough on my hackintosh with a kaby lake core i3 and an intel hd620 igpu.

 

Take this response with a handful of salt.

Your post is nicely researched.

 

The 10 year perspective gives me pause. Minor differences in performance will hardly matter. Longer term performance and support issues will gradually become the giant elephant in the room.

 

For example, Socket 775 CPUs with NVDIA 680 chipsets are within that 10 year window today but drivers for that hardware that was King Of The Hill for a brief moment are glitchy and often not available anymore.

 

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13 hours ago, JoeC said:

First off, apologies if this is in the wrong place - I couldn't see anywhere specifically for this kind of thing.

 

My dad wants a computer to last him somewhere in the region of 10 years. I've been out of the loop on hardware since I stopped being a massive nerd when I left uni, so I'm not really sure if what I've put together makes sense to get him - I'd really appreciate it if anyone could have a quick look over it and give me some feedback before we buy and build it.

 

He doesn't play any games more intensive than Minesweeper, but does use Photoshop (4k x 6k pixels not uncommon) and has a huge catalog of the images he processes, which he wants quick access to (stamps - get your mind out of the gutter!)

 

He absolutely wants a 500gb SSD for his stuff so that he can access everything quickly (and without having to access a second drive for stuff he only needs occasionally), and we're planning on setting up full weekly backups to the mechanical drive using Windows Backup (hence the 4gb drive, to hold around 3 months of backups). If you can think of a better easy way to do that, feel free to suggest it.

 

Overclocking is completely off the cards - he just wants to buy it, build it and run it.

 

I'm aware that what I've specced out is almost certainly overkill for anything non-gaming but don't know how far to scale it back so that it's still capable of doing what he wants and able to last something like 10 years.

 

Budget is no more than £1,000 but the lower, the better.

 

I picked these out as a first draft: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/pgNQZR

2028

 

Everyone here is just making some sort of lower mid-range config suitable for 2018 based on "dads" just checking email and Facebook etc. Sure the hardware may or may not still be ticking in 2028, but it will be completely unusable.

 

10 years is an insanely long time in doggie years or computer years. We might have QuBit CPUs by then!

 

For 10 years, your config is severely under-speced.

 

If your father has an Adobe Subscription for Photoshop then it will be updated continuously over 10 years. That means it will expect 10 years form now, some sort of average computer specs of 2028.

 

Also, consumer SSDs are not designed for a 10 year write longevity, so be sure to provision a Samsung "Pro" series SSD, preferably a 960 Pro but 850 Pro is a passable substitute perhaps that will be like using a floppy drive by the time 2028 rolls around. Even with a Pro series SSD, it will help a lot if you Over-Provision the drive on first format to leave empty space at the end - this cannot be done later on - if never allocated from first use the drive firmware will add the extra space to its bad block table.

 

A Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB with 20% extra unallocated space has a chance to be passably usable in 2028.

 

I suggest Intel over Rizen simply because Rizen has not yet withstood the test of time yet. In favor of Rizen however, you should be looking closer at the 16 core end of the spectrum in 2018 so as not to be a joke in 2028.

 

Photoshops pure love of lots of RAM will only get more intense as time goes by. The more DIMM expansions slots the better, but there comes a time when finding ancient DDR4 DIMMS might be very hard so you will need to keep ahead of the RAM game as aggressively as possible so I would strongly suggest starting with 2 16 gig DIMMS to not waste your slot space and frankly today's Photoshop will blow some kisses at your Dad for starting with 32 gigs.

 

An over-provisioned Samsung 960 Pro will have an extremely long longevity as long as the computer is not powered down for long lengths of time (like a 6 month vacation to sunny Spain etc) The spinning platter will be the problem element here over long time and given the objectives, I would suggest tiny monthly payments to Backblaze.com for unlimited online backup. 

 

If you must get a spinning hard drive, then I suggest the WD Black 6 TB drive as extremely reliable.

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822235281

 

I really must ponder this 10 year period a bit further...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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If you can get a cheap Ryzen, great, otherwise you can go with a cheaper CPU a few generations old. My own CPU is a 2600k, and I've not felt the need to upgrade in these last seven years.

 

If you're serious about nothing more graphically intensive than Minesweeper, then you can leave the video card as a 1030. Photoshop won't make use of anything more than a midrange card (1050), and even midrange cards nowadays can play benchmark games with max settings at over 60fps at 1920x1080. The only reason to get anything higher is to eventually make use of a 4K monitor. Going by your budget, that's probably not going to happen soon. My own video card is a 750 TI.

 

Also, since you're going to use the mechanical for backup, I'd suggest you look here first for specific models of drives to get. Many of those models are in high demand because of Backblaze's annual reports, but there's no harm in looking. I managed to get an 8TB Seagate ST8000DM002 for 200 USD last year. Many companies are also on track to release 14TB drives this year, so if you wait long enough, prices on smaller drives should drop significantly.

 

I'd personally put the mechanical drive in an enclosure. It shouldn't be that much more, and the added convenience is worth the slight cost.

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1 hour ago, DevTech said:

2028

 

Everyone here is just making some sort of lower mid-range config suitable for 2018 based on "dads" just checking email and Facebook etc. Sure the hardware may or may not still be ticking in 2028, but it will be completely unusable.

 

10 years is an insanely long time in doggie years or computer years. We might have QuBit CPUs by then!

 

It really depends on how intensively Photoshop / Lightroom is been used.

 

My Dad does Photography as a hobby in his free time, he uses Photoshop / Lightroom and does what he needs to do on a Core 2 Duo E8400 with 4gigs of ram.

 

That's a 10 year old PC which used to be mine, I added an SSD to it a couple of years ago and he's perfectly happy with it. It runs Windows 10, boots up in a couple of seconds and does everything he wants quickly.

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11 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

It really depends on how intensively Photoshop / Lightroom is been used.

 

My Dad does Photography as a hobby in his free time, he uses Photoshop / Lightroom and does what he needs to do on a Core 2 Duo E8400 with 4gigs of ram.

 

That's a 10 year old PC which used to be mine, I added an SSD to it a couple of years ago and he's perfectly happy with it. It runs Windows 10, boots up in a couple of seconds and does everything he wants quickly.

4,000 x 6000 pixel image

 

Depends on processing

 

I'd be conservative and get upper-mid range at the minimum to hope for 2028

 

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2028

 

I am seriously surprised by "moment in time" thinking prevalent in this thread. It's like nobody can pause for a moment and remember back 10 years and then bring themselves back and try to just imagine the next 10 years.

 

IBM already has a working 20 QuBit Quantum Computer that is available on their cloud for people to run programs.

 

50 QuBit Computers are being designed by IBM and others that might break the encryption on BitCoin...

 

The computing industry is in the middle of huge sweeping ground breaking changes in many areas and yet everyone sees what? a i9 9700K next year? a 10700K in 2020? a i10 16900K in 2022? a i28 22800K in 2028?

 

really? a simple linear progression of some sort? but even with that, what does that i28 22800K do with its 280 CPU cores?

 

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This isn't moment in time thinking.

 

Based on the usage scenario given the hardware people have recommended is total overkill for anything that's going to be done on that computer now or years in the future. I can't see how some of the recommendations are not future proof for the intended use personally.

 

From that scenario i've taken it as general computer use with a big library of photos which are probably going to be post processed in Lightroom / Photoshop. Even today Photoshop is capable of running on a dual core system from 10 years ago: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/system-requirements.html I know from first hand experience for basic edits and touch up's of this is more than double today on 10 year old hardware.

 

If he had said his Dad was going to be editing 4K video now with the hope of been able to edit higher resolution video in the future i'm sure the recommendations would be vastly different and a £1000 budget wouldn't be near enough.

 

We're not going to be doing day to day computer use and editing images on quantum computers in 10 years time. Short of Quantum Computers breaking the internet and Quantum processors been required to encrypt anything that has to be sent over the internet securely I don't see that becoming the norm in the next 10 years personally.

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44 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

This isn't moment in time thinking.

 

Based on the usage scenario given the hardware people have recommended is total overkill for anything that's going to be done on that computer now or years in the future. I can't see how some of the recommendations are not future proof for the intended use personally.

 

From that scenario i've taken it as general computer use with a big library of photos which are probably going to be post processed in Lightroom / Photoshop. Even today Photoshop is capable of running on a dual core system from 10 years ago: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/system-requirements.html I know from first hand experience for basic edits and touch up's of this is more than double today on 10 year old hardware.

 

If he had said his Dad was going to be editing 4K video now with the hope of been able to edit higher resolution video in the future i'm sure the recommendations would be vastly different and a £1000 budget wouldn't be near enough.

 

We're not going to be doing day to day computer use and editing images on quantum computers in 10 years time. Short of Quantum Computers breaking the internet and Quantum processors been required to encrypt anything that has to be sent over the internet securely I don't see that becoming the norm in the next 10 years personally.

Well, I can't help it if you have a failure of imagination.

 

But in any case nobody has a Crystal Ball and of course everyone has a different pain tolerance for torture.

 

Instead of Waterboarding, the CIA could just force me to edit Photoshop on an ancient 4 gig Core 2 dual core CPU.  So for me the already obsolete configs become the daily driver to Hell in 2 years time, forget 10 years.

 

I think 5 years might be a more appropriate time period to consider and one could just start a savings fund to buy another computer in 5 years instead of planning for 10 years (not that anyone is planning for 10 years anyways)

 

So that's my final suggestion I think - plan it out for 5 years and then buy an i12 32 core CPU computer with a GTX 16060 Ti at that point.

 

 

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1 hour ago, DevTech said:

Well, I can't help it if you have a failure of imagination.

 

But in any case nobody has a Crystal Ball and of course everyone has a different pain tolerance for torture.

 

Instead of Waterboarding, the CIA could just force me to edit Photoshop on an ancient 4 gig Core 2 dual core CPU.  So for me the already obsolete configs become the daily driver to Hell in 2 years time, forget 10 years.

 

I think 5 years might be a more appropriate time period to consider and one could just start a savings fund to buy another computer in 5 years instead of planning for 10 years (not that anyone is planning for 10 years anyways)

 

So that's my final suggestion I think - plan it out for 5 years and then buy an i12 32 core CPU computer with a GTX 16060 Ti at that point.

 

 

 

It's nothing to do with a failure of imagination, i'm been practical based on personal experiences.

 

All i'm saying is technology is advancing so fast, tasks which required an insanely high specification machine to do histrionically are still more than capable of been done on much older machines today.

 

My current CPU is an i5-2500K which is what, 7+ years old now? for my usage I don't struggle at all with that. Unless anything drastically changed in my usage requirements I expect to get another couple of years out of that.

 

Maybe at 8-9 years old you might start thinking, yeah this machine is showing its age, I can still do what I need to do, however might treat myself to something newer.

 

It's like smart phones, these really did used to show their age after a year or two, however today the mid to higher end phones from 4+ years ago can still hold their own. They support 4g, have NFC, enough ram to multitask and do all that most people do on a phone. Sure newer phones will have nicer 2k or 4k screens, however they becomes a point where that's not essential and you can still have a good user experience on much older hardware.

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4 hours ago, InsaneNutter said:

It really depends on how intensively Photoshop / Lightroom is been used.

 

My Dad does Photography as a hobby in his free time, he uses Photoshop / Lightroom and does what he needs to do on a Core 2 Duo E8400 with 4gigs of ram.

 

That's a 10 year old PC which used to be mine, I added an SSD to it a couple of years ago and he's perfectly happy with it. It runs Windows 10, boots up in a couple of seconds and does everything he wants quickly.

In all fairness, when that card was released in 2008, it was pretty close to top of the line. I'm not surprised it's still running strong after ten years because it was an awesome processessor then with a nice clock rate and technology support.

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11 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

 

It's nothing to do with a failure of imagination, i'm been practical based on personal experiences.

 

All i'm saying is technology is advancing so fast, tasks which required an insanely high specification machine to do histrionically are still more than capable of been done on much older machines today.

 

My current CPU is an i5-2500K which is what, 7+ years old now? for my usage I don't struggle at all with that. Unless anything drastically changed in my usage requirements I expect to get another couple of years out of that.

 

Maybe at 8-9 years old you might start thinking, yeah this machine is showing its age, I can still do what I need to do, however might treat myself to something newer.

 

It's like smart phones, these really did used to show their age after a year or two, however today the mid to higher end phones from 4+ years ago can still hold their own. They support 4g, have NFC, enough ram to multitask and do all that most people do on a phone. Sure newer phones will have nicer 2k or 4k screens, however they becomes a point where that's not essential and you can still have a good user experience on much older hardware.

You're right, we really don't know the exact details of his Dad's workflow and if he has an Adobe Subscription and if he will use Premier and what other hobbies he might putter with over the next 10 years. Maybe a junker-nothing of a computer will do him just fine.

 

I'm much more comfortable imagining just 5 years but I have already gone past the limit of what is worth imagining for someone else's Dad on the very sketchy workflow details that were given.

 

Thankfully I don't have this problem. I just continually update about 4 main computers and then have a collection of 6 others I use for various servers that don't need updating much. It would be horrific (Silicon Horror Picture Show?) to choose now for the next 10 years hardware I could not change or putter with. :)

 

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1 hour ago, DevTech said:

Well, I can't help it if you have a failure of imagination.

 

But in any case nobody has a Crystal Ball and of course everyone has a different pain tolerance for torture.

 

Instead of Waterboarding, the CIA could just force me to edit Photoshop on an ancient 4 gig Core 2 dual core CPU.  So for me the already obsolete configs become the daily driver to Hell in 2 years time, forget 10 years.

 

I think 5 years might be a more appropriate time period to consider and one could just start a savings fund to buy another computer in 5 years instead of planning for 10 years (not that anyone is planning for 10 years anyways)

 

So that's my final suggestion I think - plan it out for 5 years and then buy an i12 32 core CPU computer with a GTX 16060 Ti at that point.

 

 

I would keep in mind (according to the articles Euphoria posted), Photoshop doesn't exactly benefit from multicore performance, so getting an 8 core processor is overkill at the moment. I don't know if Adobe has plans to implement heavy multithreading, but with the way our desktop operating systems are being lightened up to run on mobile processors, I wouldn't worry about a heavy processor load.

 

4GB RAM was appropriate 10 years ago for mid range builds. I would say the minimum at this point in time is 8GB. Similarly, 1-2GB graphics cards were appropriate ten years ago, 4GB graphics cards are the minimum (imo) for decent 1080p rendering now.

 

So for a rig to still feel snappy in 10 years, I would recommend the following guidelines:

 

8core, 3GHz+ processor

16GB+ 2400 - 3000MHz RAM (maybe even 32GB)

8GB GPU

SSD + HDD (500GB ssd + 2TB 7200rpm or higher)

A mobo with plenty of expansion slots, possibly 802.11AC if you want mobility.

 

I just built a similarly specced rig in December for just barely less than $1000, but GPU prices continue to fluctuate like crazy so I think your best bet is to get something like the following and throw a solid state in there:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-1700-16gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-580-1tb-hard-drive-recon-blue/5948598.p?skuId=5948598

 

 

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29 minutes ago, satukoro said:

I just built a similarly specced rig in December for just barely less than $1000, but GPU prices continue to fluctuate like crazy so I think your best bet is to get something like the following and throw a solid state in there:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-1700-16gb-memory-amd-radeon-rx-580-1tb-hard-drive-recon-blue/5948598.p?skuId=5948598

 

 

Good find and nice deal. Would save him time and trouble + will have warranty.

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Wow, that's an awful lot of replies - thanks to everyone who's had some input, I really appreciate your time.

 

Some thoughts on the main discussion points so far:

 

Intel vs AMD Ryzen CPU: Good to know that Photoshop prefers a higher clock speed over more cores, and that there potentially is a difference between Intel and AMD specifically here. I'll have a look over comparable processors and see what looks doable.

 

mATX vs ATX case: Physical size isn't particularly a problem as the computer will just be sitting under a desk. ATX gives slightly better opportunities for natural ventilation what with it being a bit roomier inside, so will probably go with that purely for this reason.

 

Backblaze hard drive stats: Very interesting to see the failure rates for different drives. I'll take a look to see if any of those drive models are feasible given the budget, but may end up just using a cost-efficient drive if they're too expensive.

 

InsaneNutter's similar computer: Really handy to have an example of a 10-year-old computer running similar tasks today, thanks a lot.

 

10-year doomsday predictions: It's definitely hard to imagine what computers will look like in ten years, although I think people might be a bit hung up on the exact time-frame. The computer should be able to last a long time before it needs upgrading at all, and an even longer time without too many significant (ie. expensive) upgrades. 10 years was more of a rough idea to convey that rather than a definitive timeline. That said, it's really interesting to see what people think will be necessary and I'll adjust the build accordingly.

 

BestBuy rig: Looks good, but unfortunately I'm in the UK. The dollar conversion rate looks nice but once UK taxes are added in, similar spec machines are out of budget. Again though, I'll take some ideas from the components.

 

I'll review all of the notes and post an updated plan shortly. Thanks again to everyone who's contributing, I really appreciate the input!

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1 hour ago, Euphoria said:

Good find and nice deal. Would save him time and trouble + will have warranty.

The OP budget was specified as "Budget is no more than £1,000 but the lower, the better."

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2 minutes ago, JoeC said:

 

Intel vs AMD Ryzen CPU: Good to know that Photoshop prefers a higher clock speed over more cores, and that there potentially is a difference between Intel and AMD specifically here. I'll have a look over comparable processors and see what looks doable.

 

 

10-year doomsday predictions: It's definitely hard to imagine what computers will look like in ten years, although I think people might be a bit hung up on the exact time-frame. The computer should be able to last a long time before it needs upgrading at all, and an even longer time without too many significant (ie. expensive) upgrades. 10 years was more of a rough idea to convey that rather than a definitive timeline. That said, it's really interesting to see what people think will be necessary and I'll adjust the build accordingly.

 

1. You should not waste a second on the issue of Intel vs AMD re Photoshop. If you get a low end piece of junk of either type it simply won't matter and if you get a nice performing machine it won't matter. It could only matter if you were balanced on some sort of knife edge and the criteria are simply way too muddy for that so all together there is no logic path in which that matters.

 

In addition to that, Photoshop is being constantly updated by Adobe through the subscription model, so the characteristics of hardware requirements will change. We are going to see a coming explosion in the number of CPU cores and it would be brain-dead of Adobe not to adapt it's design to that.

 

 

2. I would use the opposite of the word "Doomsday" to typify the amazing advances we will see in the next 10 years. The advances will be enabling of many things. Ignoring the large changes that will impact society at large, just things like Windows Mixed reality will become mature established commonplace tech and affect the way that people expect to interact with software. etc. This is all impossible to predict other than looking at examples of computers from 10 years old. Top end units from back then are barely usable today. The bottom end stuff would simply not be considered viable for a human being to interact with. I would say that @satukoro list of components are the best thought out ones so far.

 

 

3. I will now leave it to those here who have Shopping List Addictions and in this particular run to 2028, I will find discussing the minutiae of tiny Shopping List differences more amusing than it usually is to watch...

 

 

 

 

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