New PC Recommendations

[SantaFe]

We don't have a Craiglist and the places that are popular for selling tend to be Gumtree.ie and Adverts.ie

My experience of Irish online selling though is that people over-price everything. I live between Belfast and Dublin and so both provide buying/delivery opportunites and the UK nearly always offers better value.... so worth considering.

http://dublin.craigslist.org/

There's one in Scotland as well.

[Bandit]

...........my cursory reading between SSD/HDD would suggest that SSD trumps HDD and for the extra dollar I'd be happy with that.

Although I would go with a Samsung 830 series SSD, they have proven more reliable and extremely fast. Mine read just over 500MB/s ad writes just over 420MB/s. Its a 256GB model. But what ever brand and model you choose, they are all faster then HDDs.

Most folks get a 128 or 256GB SSD and then a 1TB HDD for extra storage. You can even set them up as JBOD and concatenate the drives so they appear to look as one drive. You can do this and assign you boot files, system files and programs folders to the SSD while all your /home folder/files to the HDD. Apple does this with their lol "Fusion drive", but its all very simple to setup.
Of course if you dont care about 2 drives showing up, Linux will let you just assign your /home folder to the HDD (possible sdb) and keep all your other folders on the SSD (sda).

[cozski]

http://dublin.craigslist.org/

There's one in Scotland as well.

Ha! Thanks for that.... I really thought we didn't have one, so just goes to show I shouldn't make assumptions

[cozski]

Although I would go with a Samsung 830 series SSD, they have proven more reliable and extremely fast. Mine read just over 500MB/s ad writes just over 420MB/s. Its a 256GB model. But what ever brand and model you choose, they are all faster then HDDs.

Most folks get a 128 or 256GB SSD and then a 1TB HDD for extra storage. You can even set them up as JBOD and concatenate the drives so they appear to look as one drive. You can do this and assign you boot files, system files and programs folders to the SSD while all your /home folder/files to the HDD. Apple does this with their lol "Fusion drive", but its all very simple to setup.
Of course if you dont care about 2 drives showing up, Linux will let you just assign your /home folder to the HDD (possible sdb) and keep all your other folders on the SSD (sda).

Hey, thanks for the advice, much appreciated. I'm holding off until just after Xmas before getting the new desktop but will let you know what spec I end up with. Cant wait

[cozski]

Hey, just following up on this.... I went to a PC Specialists in my hometown in England to get a quote on a similar build and this is what they priced up:

AMD FX4130 X4 Core 3.8GHz, AM3+ Processor
MSI 760GA-P43 FX DDR3 Motherboard
16GB DDR3 1333MHz Memory (2x8GB)
Samsung 120GB" SATA III Solid State Drive
Powercool X-Viper 850W Modular 80+ Bronze Active 14cm Fan Single Power Supply
Build Charge £35

Total Ex VAT: £400.01
Total VAT: £79.99
Total inc VAT: £480.00

Does this look like an equivalent, better or worse spec and as it's coming in for less than the elara.ie quote is it worth it, in anyones opinion?

Thanks for any feedback.

[Erik1984]

Price seems a bit high at first but a small local shop can have advantages over online purchase or big chain stores. Seems reasonable compared to what I payed for a system at a local shop. I payed more if I convert the GPB price to € for an i5 with no SSD (did include a 1.5 GB HDD)

The 850W power supply seems overkill, think you can get something off the price if you take a 400W or something. Don't know which components you will be adding yourself, depending on that you could need more power.

Regarding the components: Will you add a non-SSD disk and GPU? Because those are not included in your current setup and that AMD chip doesn't seem to have an itegrated GPU (or does it?).

[prodigy_]

You don't need a 850W power supply. 500W is already overkill for this setup unless you plan to add a couple of video cards later.

[Ximaceo]

Hi cozski, here my recommendation:

... I don't game on my PC and the most demanding thing I do is editing images in a variety of programmes including GIMP, Darktable, Shotwell, UFRaw, etc. Above and beyond that I browse the internets, play the odd movie and listen to music/podcasts, etc. ...

With both system you can work perfectly.

Intel Core i5 3570K has a integrated GPU,
MSI 760GA-P43 FX DDR3 Motherboard has a integrated AMD graphics.

Downgrade PSU to 500W

... have plenty of external storage and other peripherals. ...

SSD is enough

[cozski]

Well thanks for all those additional comments/thoughts/suggestions.... I'm going to go for some of those and hopefully I'll have something up and running in the next few weeks..... really appreciate all the contributions. Cheers

[MoebusNet]

If you want a new desktop PC with Ubuntu already installed and a warranty:

https://www.system76.com/desktops/

I have been quite happy with the notebook I bought from them; support has been prompt with any questions I have.

I believe System76 is available for UK customers. Might be worth checking out.