Replacing my old laptop with a desktop PC

[Fionafrills]

My 6 year old Acer laptop with Nvida Geforce GT540M is starting to slow down in busy sims, so I’m considering replacing it with a desktop.

I live in the Canary Islands and my choice is quite limited.  My maximum budget is about €700 or £700.  I already have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Hopefully my expectations are not too high for this amount.  I would be happy with medium quality graphics and not to crash in a club full of people.  Anything above that would be a bonus.

Would either of these specs for desktops made by a German company called Medion be up to the job?  I have translated them from Spanish

OPTION 1

MEDION COMPUTER M11 A8-8650 8GB - 1TB + 128GB SSD
 
€ 575.00

AMD processor A

Processor model A8-8650

Processor frequency 3.2 GHz

Turbo processor frequency: 3.8 GHz

Number of processor cores 4

Number of installed processors 1

8GB DDR3-SDRAM memory

Storage 128GB HDD + 128GB SSD

Hard disk capacity 1TB

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics adapter 3GB memory

Graphics model on AMD Radeon R7 card

Type of discrete graphics memory: GDDR5

Operating system installed: Windows 10 64bit

Operating system architecture: 64 bits

OPTION 2

MEDION COMPUTER M11 P4368 8GB - 1TB + 128GB SSD

AMD A8-8650 processor (3.2GHz)

8GB RAM DDR4

Storage 1TB HDD + 128GB SSD

NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 750 graphics (2GB GDDR5)

Video 1 x Dual Link DVI

1 x HDMI (HDCP support)

3 x DisplayPort

1 x HDMI (HDCP support)

3 x DisplayPort

Connectivity: Ethernet - WiFi - Bluetooth

Microsoft Windows 10 operating system

Both of them have AMD processors.  Do they run SL ok?  

Thank you

 

[angeoco]

The first one would be a better option for SL, as it has a better graphics card.

[Chic Aeon]

The graphics card IS really the most important thing for SL (well heavily weighted anyway). Be sure to research your POWER SUPPLY for the graphics card that comes with your computer. I have gone through a few power supplies (one being a less than great company even though it was rated fine for the system and sold WITH the computer I bought; it also blew up the motherboard along the way so THAT was an expensive lesson).   

I gave up my notebook for SL long ago in favor of a desktop for SL and it was a very good choice for me.   

[Fionafrills]

Thank you very much for your replies.

So far, I have not been able to find out the spec for the power supply.  

Although it is slightly above my budget, I have found an Acer Intel i5 desktop PC

ACER AGX-781 018 8GB - 1TB

Processor Intel Core i5-7400

Processor cores: 4

Processor speed: up to 3.50 GHz

RAM memory: 8GB DDR4

Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 2GB GDDR5

Type of graphics card: Dedicated

Ready for virtual reality (VR Ready)

Storage capacity: 1TB

Operating system: Windows 10 Home

System architecture: 64-bit

The power supply is sufficient for the graphics card and the shop has had one on display running games for several weeks.

Is the spec sufficient to run SL?

Many thanks again

 

[cykarushb]

Yeah, that i5 option will suit SL way better, as the i5 7400 has much better single threaded performance than the A8 Series AMD APU's. SL greatly benefits from better single thread speed.

Next to no pre built options are going to give you specifications for the power supply because 99% of consumers dont care, it is fairly important for a variety of reasons, a cheap power supply is made with low quality components that may fail, and when a power supply fails it goes out extravagantly, usually taking other components with it, possibly starting a fire (though thats extremely rare nowadays). Theyre also just less efficient, put out a lot of heat and noise, and theyre usually the bare minimum for what the components in the system require, making future upgrades a pain.

Also note that, in case you wanted to, that machine is only technically "VR ready", as in it will probably start a VR game. Its not going to be enjoyable in the slightest since a GTX 1050 would not be able to push beyond 60fps in any virtual reality game, which would make motion sickness a huge issue.

Looking it up though, note that it is extremely expensive for the hardware you're actually getting. I see the page online for the same model and its ~850 Euros, which is insane for a locked i5 and a regular GTX 1050. If you would want to do it yourself, or know someone who does PC building, you can get a system with the same components made for much cheaper if you bought individual parts.

Example, i5 7400 system with a GTX 1050, 8gb of ram and a 1TB HDD in a decent case with a quality power supply costs about 630$ or 600 Euros (converting to part costs in the EU).

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dz7sRG

Including Windows 10 at that.

[Fionafrills]

Thank you all once again for your helpful advice.

I am very grateful.

 

[animats]

Get a UL-approved power supply. UL tests power supplies by loading them up to their rated load for hours. The power supply must not overheat, fail, or catch fire to pass. Despite this rather low standard, many non-approved power supplies from China won't pass it. Since SL use means running the CPU and graphics card hard for hours at a time, you need a reliable power supply.

[Fionafrills]

Just a few questions before I go ahead with a new PC.

Is it worthwhile increasing the memory to 16GB of RAM?

Are there any benefits in adding an SSD drive?

With all the recent media coverage about flaws in Intel processors, should I hold off investing in a new PC?

Thanks

 

[Alwin Alcott]

30 minutes ago, Fionafrills said:

Is it worthwhile increasing the memory to 16GB of RAM?

yes always

30 minutes ago, Fionafrills said:

Are there any benefits in adding an SSD drive?

yes

30 minutes ago, Fionafrills said:

With all the recent media coverage about flaws in Intel processors

don't only follow the big headers... nearly ALL big brands are involved with this.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/list-of-meltdown-and-spectre-vulnerability-advisories-patches-and-updates/

[cykarushb]

6 hours ago, Fionafrills said:

Is it worthwhile increasing the memory to 16GB of RAM?

Are there any benefits in adding an SSD drive?

With all the recent media coverage about flaws in Intel processors, should I hold off investing in a new PC?

-If you need it, sure. For regular use and only one SL viewer open at once 8gb is fine, 16gb if youre a heavy multitasker. See how much you use first, open everything you can think of having open at once, and see if you need more than 8gb.

-An SSD as a boot drive for your operating system and to store commonly used programs would be beneficial as the increased read/write speed of solid state drives will reduce loading times, speed up program cache and all that kinda stuff.

-As a regular consumer you dont need to worry about it too much, its a security risk but the people who would exploit it really wouldnt care about some home PC. Its a problem for large datacenters and especially cloud based servers.

[LittleMe Jewell]

7 hours ago, Fionafrills said:

Is it worthwhile increasing the memory to 16GB of RAM?

6 minutes ago, cykarushb said:

-If you need it, sure. For regular use and only one SL viewer open at once 8gb is fine, 16gb if youre a heavy multitasker. See how much you use first, open everything you can think of having open at once, and see if you need more than 8gb.

Agreed.  I used to run with 8gb, but I multitask a lot - viewer running (sometimes 2), firefox browser with a couple dozen tabs, Chrome browser with a dozen or so tabs, email client, and often a photo editor.  I would often bog down quite a bit.  My new computer has 16 gb and I can run all of that without any issues at all.

If you don't run many other things while inworld and only typically run one viewer at a time, then 8gb will be sufficient. 

That being said, if you can get the bump from 8gb to 16gb pretty cheap, then I personally think that you can never have too much RAM.

[Fionafrills]

An additional 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD is

68 Euros

or

$81

or  

£60

Does that sound reasonable?

 

[cykarushb]

Thats actually pretty decent for ram and an SSD (im sorry i realized this post is fairly old now), considering a single 8GB stick in the US can be 60-70$, so youre essentially spending 20 bucks on an SSD that would normally cost about 50-60 on its own. Thats a good deal.