Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?
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Are you ok with refurbished desktops?
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@black3dynamite said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Are you ok with refurbished desktops?
Not opposed - no.
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@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
AMD Ryzen
AMD RYZEN 7 2700 8-Core 3.2 GHz (4.1 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2700BBAFBOX Desktop ProcessorA Ryzen 7 is some serious stuff. Consider a Ryzen 5.
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If you are starting fresh, why not system76? Have you ruled them out? That's going to be my next laptop.
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Personally, I'd rather build it myself or buy from a local computer shop.
I don't see any advantages in buying a tower PC from Dell/HP/other big box unless you're into Bloatware, bloated drivers (HP), limited options, and over priced parts (Dell SSD upgrades).
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@nadnerB said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Personally, I'd rather build it myself or buy from a local computer shop.
I don't see any advantages in buying a tower PC from Dell/HP/other big box unless you're into Bloatware, bloated drivers (HP), limited options, and over priced parts (Dell SSD upgrades).
Yes and No to this.
Personal machines, build myself as you get want you want.Business Machines.
Because for me, we don't have any local builders that I would trust as I know most and wouldn't want them to build anything
Also we buy Dell as we get 3yr On Site with all our machines.Yes we could build them in house but when issues arise it's easier to just log it with dell and leave them sort it
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@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Just need a decent build
i5 or better CPU
16GB mem
500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.That's run of the mill stuff. Just buy something and call it a day.
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@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Been working on retiring the old NTG desktop for a while, and have been looking at different starting points for hardware.
- MSI
- ASUS
- Dell
- etc
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800, and that is before looking at a good video card for dual or triple monitors. Like what the heck... Stock Memory is 4GB.. ouch!
I want a decent box, but don't want to get sticker shock at the same time. I could build my own, the NTG case is solid - and heck, it hasn't rebooted in two or three months (now that I've said that, it'll reboot mid post)....
Co-worker got a MSI laptop for his wife, but I don' think I need another laptop. To many of those things floating around here as it is...
Just need a decent build
- i5 or better CPU
- 16GB mem
- 500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
- Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
- USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.
I've been happy with HP EliteDesk machines. Though $800 might be pushing it. They all come with onboard dual monitor outputs (single VGA, Dual DisplayPort). USB A for sure - not sure about USB C yet on new models.
I buy this with my corporate hat on. Though for someone who doesn't want to futz with building their own shit - this is a great solution.
though you could be like Scott and order small barebones systems (case/PS/Mobo/CPU - pre assembled) toss in some RAM and SSD/M.2 and video card and go... considering in general a 1 year warranty, the price didn't seem to be that much better.
Personally - this is a desktop. I expect to get 5 year min out of it. $800 is the least amount I would consider spending on just the tower, let alone monitors.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800
Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.
you have to be VERY careful with this. I told PCM I need i5 equivalent machines - and they sold me AMD shit that was slower than computer I have that are 4 years old. I take all the blame because I didn't confirm anything about the performance of those systems once getting the specs... but I can tell you - they bloody well suck!
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@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800
Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.
you have to be VERY careful with this. I told PCM I need i5 equivalent machines - and they sold me AMD shit that was slower than computer I have that are 4 years old. I take all the blame because I didn't confirm anything about the performance of those systems once getting the specs... but I can tell you - they bloody well suck!
Good point. Also, sometimes people just look at the number of cores. Intel also has some CPUs that are VERY slow - made for tablets and such.
This is a pretty good list to have handy when checking out desktop CPUs.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/desktop.htmlI wouldn't pick something below a passmark score of at least 5000 for general office Windows use. Single thread score over 2000.
Just for comparison, something like a standard 8-12 core Xeon will have a score around 15000. Monster CPUs are around 30000.
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800
Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.
DAMN...80%?
In what market though? Surely not the consumer market. And most servers I've at least seen are always Intel. Perhaps the east coast is different?
I seldom come across an amd processor in the consumer market, it's extremely rare.Edit: And in terms of speed, I mean AMD just doesn't seem to cut it. Maybe as a server because of the muilti core speeds. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X/4028vs4044
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800
Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.
DAMN...80%?
In what market though? Surely not the consumer market. And most servers I've at least seen are always Intel. Perhaps the east coast is different?
I seldom come across an amd processor in the consumer market, it's extremely rare.Edit: And in terms of speed, I mean AMD just doesn't seem to cut it. Maybe as a server because of the muilti core speeds. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X/4028vs4044
How many people are running i9's though? For consumers wouldn't it be better to look at i5 vs Ryzen, or i7 vs Ryzen?
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@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Been working on retiring the old NTG desktop for a while, and have been looking at different starting points for hardware.
- MSI
- ASUS
- Dell
- etc
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800, and that is before looking at a good video card for dual or triple monitors. Like what the heck... Stock Memory is 4GB.. ouch!
I want a decent box, but don't want to get sticker shock at the same time. I could build my own, the NTG case is solid - and heck, it hasn't rebooted in two or three months (now that I've said that, it'll reboot mid post)....
Co-worker got a MSI laptop for his wife, but I don' think I need another laptop. To many of those things floating around here as it is...
Just need a decent build
- i5 or better CPU
- 16GB mem
- 500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
- Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
- USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.
We've done a number of custom builds over the last while.
This one is on the build docket for today:
- Gigabyte C246M-WU4 mATX
- Intel Xeon Processor E-2278G
- 32GB DDR 4 (2x 16GB)
- 1TB RAID 1 (Intel SSD 7600p NVMe pair)
- AMD RADEON Pro WX 3100 PCIe (can drive 4 or more monitors)
- SilverStone FT03 Mini-Tower
- SilverStone ST75F-PT Ultra-Quiet
- Mini-DisplayPort Adapters (MDP2DPMF6IN)
The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:
- VM0: Domain joined and work apps
- VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps
This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.
For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.
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@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Been working on retiring the old NTG desktop for a while, and have been looking at different starting points for hardware.
- MSI
- ASUS
- Dell
- etc
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800, and that is before looking at a good video card for dual or triple monitors. Like what the heck... Stock Memory is 4GB.. ouch!
I want a decent box, but don't want to get sticker shock at the same time. I could build my own, the NTG case is solid - and heck, it hasn't rebooted in two or three months (now that I've said that, it'll reboot mid post)....
Co-worker got a MSI laptop for his wife, but I don' think I need another laptop. To many of those things floating around here as it is...
Just need a decent build
- i5 or better CPU
- 16GB mem
- 500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
- Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
- USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.
We've done a number of custom builds over the last while.
This one is on the build docket for today:
- Gigabyte C246M-WU4 mATX
- Intel Xeon Processor E-2278G
- 32GB DDR 4 (2x 16GB)
- 1TB RAID 1 (Intel SSD 7600p NVMe pair)
- AMD RADEON Pro WX 3100 PCIe (can drive 4 or more monitors)
- SilverStone FT03 Mini-Tower
- SilverStone ST75F-PT Ultra-Quiet
- Mini-DisplayPort Adapters (MDP2DPMF6IN)
The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:
- VM0: Domain joined and work apps
- VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps
This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.
For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.
Is the plan to use Windows 10 Hyper-V?
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@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Been working on retiring the old NTG desktop for a while, and have been looking at different starting points for hardware.
- MSI
- ASUS
- Dell
- etc
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800, and that is before looking at a good video card for dual or triple monitors. Like what the heck... Stock Memory is 4GB.. ouch!
I want a decent box, but don't want to get sticker shock at the same time. I could build my own, the NTG case is solid - and heck, it hasn't rebooted in two or three months (now that I've said that, it'll reboot mid post)....
Co-worker got a MSI laptop for his wife, but I don' think I need another laptop. To many of those things floating around here as it is...
Just need a decent build
- i5 or better CPU
- 16GB mem
- 500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
- Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
- USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.
We've done a number of custom builds over the last while.
This one is on the build docket for today:
- Gigabyte C246M-WU4 mATX
- Intel Xeon Processor E-2278G
- 32GB DDR 4 (2x 16GB)
- 1TB RAID 1 (Intel SSD 7600p NVMe pair)
- AMD RADEON Pro WX 3100 PCIe (can drive 4 or more monitors)
- SilverStone FT03 Mini-Tower
- SilverStone ST75F-PT Ultra-Quiet
- Mini-DisplayPort Adapters (MDP2DPMF6IN)
The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:
- VM0: Domain joined and work apps
- VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps
This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.
For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.
Is the plan to use Windows 10 Hyper-V?
Correct. What I missed was that we need to test whether Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Professional for Workstations (Microsoft's Server to Desktop Hack all done for us).
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@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
AMD Ryzen
AMD RYZEN 7 2700 8-Core 3.2 GHz (4.1 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2700BBAFBOX Desktop ProcessorA Ryzen 7 is some serious stuff. Consider a Ryzen 5.
We ventured into AMD quite a while ago and ran into some serious problems with the desktop and workstation platforms we purchased.
The big difference between AMD and Intel has been, and still is today, the partner and system builder ecosystem.
As hard as AMD has tried, they have seemingly fallen short of getting a homogeneous ecosystem together.
Mind you, today, the AMD EPYC system builder focused platforms have a lot more in-vendor options for chassis, storage, and power supply setups. That may help.
But, for those of us that build custom systems, yeah I know we're a dinosaur in the industry, it's important to avoid the Willy Wagging that can come with disparate system components. BTDTBTTS (Been There, Done That, Burnt the T-Shirt)
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@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800
Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.
DAMN...80%?
In what market though? Surely not the consumer market. And most servers I've at least seen are always Intel. Perhaps the east coast is different?
I seldom come across an amd processor in the consumer market, it's extremely rare.Edit: And in terms of speed, I mean AMD just doesn't seem to cut it. Maybe as a server because of the muilti core speeds. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X/4028vs4044
How many people are running i9's though? For consumers wouldn't it be better to look at i5 vs Ryzen, or i7 vs Ryzen?
No...because AMD's software is garbage, their performance is spotty despite benchmarks that are decent.
But this is anecdotal and obviously my opinion.Now it has been a while, I wouldn't mind trying out a system with another AMD proc, but at least at this time, Intel is cheaper and faster...still...so from a consumer perspective, it doesn't seem viable to go with AMD.
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@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800
Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.
DAMN...80%?
In what market though? Surely not the consumer market. And most servers I've at least seen are always Intel. Perhaps the east coast is different?
I seldom come across an amd processor in the consumer market, it's extremely rare.Edit: And in terms of speed, I mean AMD just doesn't seem to cut it. Maybe as a server because of the muilti core speeds. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X/4028vs4044
How many people are running i9's though? For consumers wouldn't it be better to look at i5 vs Ryzen, or i7 vs Ryzen?
No...because AMD's software is garbage, their performance is spotty despite benchmarks that are decent.
But this is anecdotal and obviously my opinion.Now it has been a while, I wouldn't mind trying out a system with another AMD proc, but at least at this time, Intel is cheaper and faster...still...so from a consumer perspective, it doesn't seem viable to go with AMD.
Ah, tweaked a memory ... indeed, the drivers were an issue for the AMD chipsets especially the chipset software based RAID setups. Lots of broken arrays.
The problems we have had on the Intel side have been with in-box drivers in the Windows OS, though the last time that happened was Windows 7 on the Intel NIC driver ($15K dual Intel Xeon trading box with pausing mouse cursor was a heart-stopping moment) on the user side.
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@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:
- VM0: Domain joined and work apps
- VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps
This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.
For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.
Just curious...why can't the o/s be F30 with both VM's running in Virt-Manager?
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@FATeknollogee said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:
The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:
- VM0: Domain joined and work apps
- VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps
This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.
For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.
Just curious...why can't the o/s be F30 with both VM's running in Virt-Manager?
F30 being Fedora?
All of our clients are Windows houses and are licensed as such with Windows 10 E3 and soon E5 to gain access to Advanced Threat Protection.
Everything is tied in to Active Directory and Group Policy for management and security.
We've built GRID on FreeBSD and security soft-appliances on OpenBSD but that was quite a while ago.
There's no point to *NIX on the user side for us and our clients. It would be way too painful. Dealing with Macs can be a challenge enough especially when Apple is not so kind to their integration components for Microsoft networks.