Tech Savvy? After a new computer

[plasteredric]

So i'm well past due replacing my current laptop to something with a little more power. The poor thing sounds like it's going to take off when i'm doing my day job and have guardian/excel data collection running in the background. That and I can no longer shut the screen as the chassis is coming apart.
I've been looking at building my own tower or using the likes of pcspecialist but there are so many different part models, manufacturers, variations etc that it's blown my mind.
I'm looking to spend around the £1k mark, though everything seems so expensive (I assume covid has caused supply/demand issues)
I need to be able to plug in 4 screens and for it to run some moderately intense data collection comfortable while also being able to run solidworks design software.
Any pointers that anyone can give would be greatly appreciated.

[jimibt]

FWIW - i'm of the opinon these days that it's just as economical to split the duties of your laptop across a number of platforms/devices. To this end, I run my laptop plus connect to my VPS on two different logins. VPS' these days are pretty much delivering the same power as a high spec laptop, so it's a no brainer.

I have mine setup with the main laptop screen, plus two 24' monitors either side. the LAPTOP portion is used for standard email/browsing etc, whilst the VPS delivers my betfair activites on one login and my development platform on the other (i also on occassion have 3rd party VPS's that I login to for specific tasks).

If i ever find that I'm running out of *juice*, I can upgrade the package to inculde more RAM and/or double up the cores of the cpu. the entire setup costs just under £20 a month, pretty much in line with a decent laptop's depreciation over 3 years. It honestly depends on what you want to *own* at the end of the 3rd year.

[Realrocknrolla]

I run four screens off one of my laptops. With

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops ... lsrc=aw.ds

It is the nuts... the reason I bought it was the salesman said all applications start within 6 seconds. I was sold.

He was right.. two years on and it is still the same. Never had any issues the machine is fantastic.

[plasteredric]

FWIW - i'm of the opinon these days that it's just as economical to split the duties of your laptop across a number of platforms/devices. To this end, I run my laptop plus connect to my VPS on two different logins. VPS' these days are pretty much delivering the same power as a high spec laptop, so it's a no brainer.

I have mine setup with the main laptop screen, plus two 24' monitors either side. the LAPTOP portion is used for standard email/browsing etc, whilst the VPS delivers my betfair activites on one login and my development platform on the other (i also on occassion have 3rd party VPS's that I login to for specific tasks).

If i ever find that I'm running out of *juice*, I can upgrade the package to inculde more RAM and/or double up the cores of the cpu. the entire setup costs just under £20 a month, pretty much in line with a decent laptop's depreciation over 3 years. It honestly depends on what you want to *own* at the end of the 3rd year.

I'd never even considered a VPS but definitely something i'll look into. Are you not concerned about having all your data off site? that would be my initial concern.

[plasteredric]

I run four screens off one of my laptops. With

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops ... lsrc=aw.ds

It is the nuts... the reason I bought it was the salesman said all applications start within 6 seconds. I was sold.

He was right.. two years on and it is still the same. Never had any issues the machine is fantastic.

I've been warned away from dell on a couple of occasions, apparently they mix and match different components within the same range so you could buy two seemingly identical machines to find they both have different hardware when you open them up.

[Realrocknrolla]

I run four screens off one of my laptops. With

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops ... lsrc=aw.ds

It is the nuts... the reason I bought it was the salesman said all applications start within 6 seconds. I was sold.

He was right.. two years on and it is still the same. Never had any issues the machine is fantastic.

I've been warned away from dell on a couple of occasions, apparently they mix and match different components within the same range so you could buy two seemingly identical machines to find they both have different hardware when you open them up.

No worries mate. Like i said its been one of the best machines I have had.

I also have a

https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Prod ... lsrc=aw.ds

Still prefer the Dell.

I have my eye on this I posted earlier last week.

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo UX581GV 15.6 Inch 4K Dual Touchscreen Alexa Enabled Laptop (Celestial Blue) (Intel i7-9750H, 512 GB PCI-e SSD, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB Graphics, Windows 10) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SGR3Z2Z/ ... N2H0?psc=1

[rik]

Not a tech expert but the mistake I made is I got a Nvidia Quadro Card which is specialised for multiple Monitors and for "traders" but is terrible value in terms of performance.
I ended up getting a 4k Monitor as my main screen and couldnt record full screen or have multiple videos running without getting lag on the trading so had to change the graphics card.
Your system only as strong as the weakest part so make sure everything is similiar on a benchmark test.

[plasteredric]

I run four screens off one of my laptops. With

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops ... lsrc=aw.ds

It is the nuts... the reason I bought it was the salesman said all applications start within 6 seconds. I was sold.

He was right.. two years on and it is still the same. Never had any issues the machine is fantastic.

I've been warned away from dell on a couple of occasions, apparently they mix and match different components within the same range so you could buy two seemingly identical machines to find they both have different hardware when you open them up.

No worries mate. Like i said its been one of the best machines I have had.

I also have a

https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Prod ... lsrc=aw.ds

Still prefer the Dell.

I have my eye on this I posted earlier last week.

ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo UX581GV 15.6 Inch 4K Dual Touchscreen Alexa Enabled Laptop (Celestial Blue) (Intel i7-9750H, 512 GB PCI-e SSD, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB Graphics, Windows 10) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SGR3Z2Z/ ... N2H0?psc=1

That Zenbook looks mad

[plasteredric]

Not a tech expert but the mistake I made is I got a Nvidia Quadro Card which is specialised for multiple Monitors and for "traders" but is terrible value in terms of performance.
I ended up getting a 4k Monitor as my main screen and couldnt record full screen or have multiple videos running without getting lag on the trading so had to change the graphics card.
Your system only as strong as the weakest part so make sure everything is similiar on a benchmark test.

Do you know what model the card was so I can look it up?

[rik]

Not a tech expert but the mistake I made is I got a Nvidia Quadro Card which is specialised for multiple Monitors and for "traders" but is terrible value in terms of performance.
I ended up getting a 4k Monitor as my main screen and couldnt record full screen or have multiple videos running without getting lag on the trading so had to change the graphics card.
Your system only as strong as the weakest part so make sure everything is similiar on a benchmark test.

Do you know what model the card was so I can look it up?

it was had nvs510 which was useless compared to the CPU

benchmarkk.png

[alexmr2]

It's been 3 years since I looked but the most important thing I learned when getting my laptop was that i3. i5, i7 etc have different generations so an old i7 can be worse than a new i3 for example. So on ebay you can get PCs which sound good but are actually an ancient i7 processor.

I think 8th generation is where they made a bigger step up but I'm not familiar with anything newer. Usually the generation number is at the start of the processor number like 9600K would be 9th generation. There's also something about the letters like U means more efficiency and K means more power.

There's a useful website which lets you compare processors which is probably the easiest way to measure overall performance against your current setup or help you decide between two. I think the site I used is:

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/I ... -/4031vs10

[plasteredric]

Not a tech expert but the mistake I made is I got a Nvidia Quadro Card which is specialised for multiple Monitors and for "traders" but is terrible value in terms of performance.
I ended up getting a 4k Monitor as my main screen and couldnt record full screen or have multiple videos running without getting lag on the trading so had to change the graphics card.
Your system only as strong as the weakest part so make sure everything is similiar on a benchmark test.

Do you know what model the card was so I can look it up?

it was had nvs510 which was useless compared to the CPU

benchmarkk.png

Wow that's really bad
What is worse, I just looked up the price. They were retailing around £200 last summer now they're around £400

[Crazyskier]

I bought a high-spec, ray-tracing, water-cooled gaming rig (as below) from Currys around a year ago for £1200, so should be below £1,000 now I guess.

It works great coupled with a 144 Hz ASUS XG32V and I have no issues running several separate versions of BA simultaneously, while streaming video or working on spreadsheets etc.


Time of this report: 2/26/2021, 22:50:05
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 19041) (19041.vb_release.191206-1406)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Model: ESL Certified PC 2070
BIOS: 0601 (type: UEFI)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16320MB RAM
Page File: 6298MB used, 12453MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 12

Monitor.jpg

It is capable of running several monitors, though I've never found the need, rather simply pinning multiple windows on the same screen.

Hope this helps

CS

[Derek27]

FWIW - i'm of the opinon these days that it's just as economical to split the duties of your laptop across a number of platforms/devices. To this end, I run my laptop plus connect to my VPS on two different logins. VPS' these days are pretty much delivering the same power as a high spec laptop, so it's a no brainer.

I have mine setup with the main laptop screen, plus two 24' monitors either side. the LAPTOP portion is used for standard email/browsing etc, whilst the VPS delivers my betfair activites on one login and my development platform on the other (i also on occassion have 3rd party VPS's that I login to for specific tasks).

If i ever find that I'm running out of *juice*, I can upgrade the package to inculde more RAM and/or double up the cores of the cpu. the entire setup costs just under £20 a month, pretty much in line with a decent laptop's depreciation over 3 years. It honestly depends on what you want to *own* at the end of the 3rd year.

Can you install an OS and software on a VPS or do you need to rent a physical server to do that?

[Anbell]

FWIW - i'm of the opinon these days that it's just as economical to split the duties of your laptop across a number of platforms/devices. To this end, I run my laptop plus connect to my VPS on two different logins. VPS' these days are pretty much delivering the same power as a high spec laptop, so it's a no brainer.

I have mine setup with the main laptop screen, plus two 24' monitors either side. the LAPTOP portion is used for standard email/browsing etc, whilst the VPS delivers my betfair activites on one login and my development platform on the other (i also on occassion have 3rd party VPS's that I login to for specific tasks).

If i ever find that I'm running out of *juice*, I can upgrade the package to inculde more RAM and/or double up the cores of the cpu. the entire setup costs just under £20 a month, pretty much in line with a decent laptop's depreciation over 3 years. It honestly depends on what you want to *own* at the end of the 3rd year.

Can you install an OS and software on a VPS or do you need to rent a physical server to do that?

You choose the OS and can install SW