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New Computer Suggestions

asterixsmeagol

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I'm well past due for a new PC, and I'm not really sure what I should be looking for in a new one. What kind of setup do you all have?
 

The Scribbling Man

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About a year ago I bought this on Addiesin's recommendation. I'm sure there are a few options around and it'll depend on your use and budget, but so far I've been pretty happy with that for my video editing needs.
 

Q2

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I'm well past due for a new PC, and I'm not really sure what I should be looking for in a new one. What kind of setup do you all have?
Are you interested in a laptop or desktop? What would you primarily be doing on it?
 

addiesin

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About a year ago I bought this on Addiesin's recommendation. I'm sure there are a few options around and it'll depend on your use and budget, but so far I've been pretty happy with that for my video editing needs.
I still absolutely love it. I've never had a problem with it that wasn't my fault. I still recommend it for anyone struggling to make a choice.
 

asterixsmeagol

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Are you interested in a laptop or desktop? What would you primarily be doing on it?
I currently use my PC mostly for watching TV/movies, running Plex/Calibre/ComicRack servers, some light gaming on Steam, and now video editing. I've always had desktops so I'd probably lean toward that, but the difference in price isn't as significant as it used to be so I wouldn't be opposed to a laptop.
 

addiesin

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I still absolutely love it. I've never had a problem with it that wasn't my fault. I still recommend it for anyone struggling to make a choice.
I wanted power on a reasonable budget, over anything else, my recommendation is only valid if you want to do the same things. The features I like most about this laptop have been the included ray tracing ready graphics card (RTX 3060 - laptop version), and the high refresh rate monitor (144Hz). Ram and storage are where you could argue corners were cut; but not badly, both are upgradeable though I don't trust myself enough to open a laptop up to do anything. 16gb ram seems low on paper but hasn't been a problem, the biggest bottleneck for me has been external SSD transfer speeds but with USB 3.1 connections even those are fast as they really could be without getting more expensive internal drives.

It does smooth audio recording and video editing, plays every game I've thrown at it including demanding VR games, plays nice with all Adobe CC apps and Blender, etc. Renders are extremely fast with any program that can take advantage of the GPU.

Like any machine with some power under the hood the designation of 'laptop' is strictly a formality, because it gets hot and you wouldn't want it on your lap. I keep it on an open air laptop stand on a desk that has good air flow for the fans underneath, and that's been good enough to prevent overheating, which can happen if you block the fans and do something heavy.
 

Q2

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I currently use my PC mostly for watching TV/movies, running Plex/Calibre/ComicRack servers, some light gaming on Steam, and now video editing. I've always had desktops so I'd probably lean toward that, but the difference in price isn't as significant as it used to be so I wouldn't be opposed to a laptop.
If you only do light gaming then a laptop is fine, though I don't keep up with laptops since I'm more into desktops. So I guess what I would suggest is get a laptop and, if you have the space, turn your old computer into a dedicated server. I run Unraid with a ton of dockers like Emby, Nextcloud, Bitwarden, to name a few. I don't like relying on other companies such as Google because I don't like being thought of as a product. I'll keep by business to myself.
 

asterixsmeagol

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I'm leaning toward this one. It's pretty similar in specs to the one flaminio suggested, but it has a space for an optical drive so I can move my Blu-ray drive over from my old PC. It only has 2 USB 3.0 ports on the front, but I should be able to transfer over my USB 3.0 PCIe card too to get some more ports. At this point we're prett close to Black Friday, so maybe I'll just wait 2 weeks before I pull the trigger.
ASUS - Performance Desktop - Intel Core i7-12700 - 16GB Memory - 1TB PCIE SSD
 

asterixsmeagol

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Well, the ASUS finally arrived and it turns out that it has no expansion slots available on the motherboard at all, and the space that looks like it would be an optical drive space doesn't actually have a hinged slot, and doesn't have a slot in the case behind the plastic cover. I'm just going to return it and build my own instead. This way I can bump up the storage and RAM a little bit and actually install my Blu-ray drive. I tested out adding a couple of graphics cards to make sure it didn't flag any compatibility issues so hopefully space isn't a problem if I do upgrade in the future.
 

Q2

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Well, the ASUS finally arrived and it turns out that it has no expansion slots available on the motherboard at all, and the space that looks like it would be an optical drive space doesn't actually have a hinged slot, and doesn't have a slot in the case behind the plastic cover. I'm just going to return it and build my own instead. This way I can bump up the storage and RAM a little bit and actually install my Blu-ray drive. I tested out adding a couple of graphics cards to make sure it didn't flag any compatibility issues so hopefully space isn't a problem if I do upgrade in the future.
Only thing I recommend is adding an additional HDD. I keep the OS and programs on one drive, and then docs/pics/games/media/etc. on the second drive (with cloud backup of docs/pics). This way if a drive fails you're not totally screwed.
 

asterixsmeagol

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I already keep my docs/pics/media/etc on a NAS, but this is a good reminder to back it up again!

What is the benefit of keeping games on a second internal drive rather than the primary one with the OS and other programs? I do have a small (128 GB) SATA SSD, should I install that in one of the open bays, or just use the new 2TB M.2 SSD?
 

Q2

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I already keep my docs/pics/media/etc on a NAS, but this is a good reminder to back it up again!

What is the benefit of keeping games on a second internal drive rather than the primary one with the OS and other programs? I do have a small (128 GB) SATA SSD, should I install that in one of the open bays, or just use the new 2TB M.2 SSD?
Basically if your primary drive goes down you don’t have to reinstall hundreds of GB of data. Time saver, mostly. :)
 

tremault

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Hope I'm not too late.

if you're likely to be doing lots of different tasks at once, such as using photoshop, browsing the web, encoding a video, remuxing, muxing, etc. Then you will want a machine that excels at parallel processing. Ryzen CPUs tend to be better at running multiple threads. Generally speaking, more cores is better for people like us. A GPU can be good, but perhaps not quite as important as CPU unless you're also going to be using it for gaming. Lots of memory can also be good. lots of internal hard disk space is desirable for high quality video and the faster the hard drive, the better for doing any operations that will be reading and writing a lot of video data.

for specifics, I can only really paste my own system specs.
HDD --::-- 1tb, 500gb, 2tb, 2tb, 1tb, 4tb
SSD --::-- 250gb
mem --::-- 32 GB
CPU --::-- Ryzen7 2700
grafx --::-- rtx2080
mobo --::-- B450M-A
Disp --::-- SAMSUNG UE50AU9000KXXU
 

tremault

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are we going to get some show photos? what did you end up choosing?
 

asterixsmeagol

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Here's a photo, but it's not much to look at! As you can see, it's currently sitting on the ground in my living room so I can set it up while I watch TV. I'm not big on colors, so it's basically all black. Even the RGB motherboard LED (blue at the moment of this photo) has been turned off now, and I've put the side of the case back on.

Here's the important stuff:
Processor: 12th Gen Intel i7-12700K
RAM: 32 GB (DDR4-3200 CL16)
SSD: 2 TB M.2 (PCIe 4.0 X4)
Optical: Blu-ray (LiteOn iHOS104)
Motherboard: ASUS B660M-PLUS WIFI D4
Network: 2.5 Gbps wired/Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.0

I also have a NAS that I use for my media storage.

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tremault

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It'll be incredibly fast at rendering. maybe not as good as it could be at multitasking but still good and faster than mine. will struggle gaming though, without a graphics card.
 
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