jtr63 wrote:Does anyone have recommendations for PC build / suppliers. My son wants to replace his aging desktop - upgrade not realistic. I'd like to have a bit of flexibility on the specification and don't want to use a shed.
TIA
John
Are you sure that an upgrade is not possible?
You could be correct, but I recently bought a dog slow Dell to replace a dog slow HP.
The Dell has a far higher spec CPU, so I started investigating what the problem was.
I boosted the ram, for the princely sum of £5 and fitted a SATA SSD. Wow the improvement.
Looking further I found that the bios didn't support NVME SSD's so that is as far as I got. Though I did find a web page about patching the bios.
For those who don't know, if you have a spare X4, X8 or X16 PCIe connector you can get a huge boost by using a NVME SSD. Modern computers have a M.2 slot for the purpose, but you can achieve the same using a daughter board.
That said, you are unlikely to have such a spare slot if you use a graphics card, as X4 and X8 slots are rare and the X16 slot is normally used for graphics.
It all depends upon what your son uses his desktop for. RAM and a fast "hard disk" will make opening up applications snappy, but it if you are transcoding video then you probably need a graphics card and good CPU.
What is the current spec of the aging desktop? What CPU. How much RAM. What type of "hard disk". What is it used for?