PC, Build Or Buy?

I bought Win 10 (as my old version was tied to my previous motherboard) and have now gone and upgraded to Win 11 - as with all change - it takes a bit of getting used to, but is by no means a disaster. You can move your windows key menu thing back to the left whereby they put it in the centre of the screen as standard, and the only annoying thing that's bugged me so far is that the 'network settings' aren't as accessible, but otherwise it seems to do mainly what my Win 10 did. I may discover more challenges in the coming weeks but so far it's ok.
 
I don`t have any issues with Win 11. It`s a damn sight easier than getting to grips with new editing software ;)

I`ve set mine up pretty much as the Win 10 layout. Doesn`t take long, and all good. Yes there are a few thing a bit different. But mostly it`s only one more mouse click away.
 
Re: W10 vs W11
They are pushing free update from one to the other now and I surmise that will continue from now until well after the W11 retirement date.

But in my case as @Snapsh0t says any new motherboard choice needs to be one where W10 drivers are available and supported :thinking:

Hmmm :thinking::thinking::thinking:
 
Windows 10 support runs out Autumn 2025, so we will all have to make a choice by then of biting the bullet or risking being unsupported. I am happy enough with Windows 10 Pro for the present but will probably switch my laptop soon. The PCs in the rest of my network are not Windows 11 compatible, my plan is to replace them before support runs out.

If I was in the market for a new motherboard today which only had Windows 11 drivers , rather than install Windows 11 immediately I would be tempted to try installing them on Windows 10 first, as Windows 11 is mostly based upon Windows 10 & there's a fair chance they might work.

I hasten to add I wouldn't do this for a PC in a 'production or mission critical' environment however.
 
A little update.

All good so far, a few little niggles, mostly default settings that I had set differently on my old PC.

All seems good and stable hardware wise, everything runs smoothly and the PC itself is blisteringly fast.

The (2 drive) NAS is up and running (with some help from a buddy) and I'm using it as I would a piggyback drive type thing, with any files/images backed up on both drives in the NAS itself.

The NAS has a lot more potetnial but it is serving my purposes as is, for now. I never wanted to get into clouds and the like when I bought it, I just wanted somewhere safe for my images, that was backed up automatically and also that I could work from and any changes would be duplicated. So for now, the NAS is doing exactly what I want it to do.

All my photos are now on the NAS, as well as a total of, wait for it, 3 other drives too, on my old PC, 1 internal and 2 external. Those drives (the older ones)will no longer be backed up to (but will still hold my images/files to date), I'll be relying on the NAS from now on, as well as an external drive I use for moving stuff about.

It all turned out well and money well spent, I'm suprised it went as well as it all did, I expected more problems but for the most part, it just works and I couldn't ask for more in that respect.

The ease of upgrading in the future isn't lost on me either, it should be far easier than trying to reserect my old PC, which I did consider. I'm far happier with the decision I made to build a new one though, it's night and day. I would definately do it again.

It's a massive leap from my old PC and the time I'm saving now is just mad, I have a life again.

You never know, I may even try some games. ;)
 
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Your NAS sounds like a single point of failure - if either of the drives go you are fine, but it the RAID controller, or some other part of the NAS goes that could be both copies gone.

Could you put one of your old drives into an enclosure to make a portable drive and back your NAS up to that weekly? I have my NAS set up so that when it detects particular external drives have been plugged in it copies any new files to the external drives, then beeps to tell me when it is done.
 
Dale. said:
A little update.

All good so far, a few little niggles, mostly default settings that I had set differently on my old PC.

All seems good and stable hardware wise, everything runs smoothly and the PC itself is blisteringly fast.

The (2 drive) NAS is up and running (with some help from a buddy) and I'm using it as I would a piggyback drive type thing, with any files/images backed up on both drives in the NAS itself.

The NAS has a lot more potetnial but it is serving my purposes as is, for now. I never wanted to get into clouds and the like when I bought it, I just wanted somewhere safe for my images, that was backed up automatically and also that I could work from and any changes would be duplicated. So for now, the NAS is doing exactly what I want it to do.

All my photos are now on the NAS, as well as a total of, wait for it, 3 other drives too, on my old PC, 1 internal and 2 external. Those drives (the older ones)will no longer be backed up to (but will still hold my images/files to date), I'll be relying on the NAS from now on, as well as an external drive I use for moving stuff about.

It all turned out well and money well spent, I'm suprised it went as well as it all did, I expected more problems but for the most part, it just works and I couldn't ask for more in that respect.

The ease of upgrading in the future isn't lost one me either, it should be far easier than trying to reserect my old PC, which I did consider. I'm far happier with the decision I made to build a new one though, it's night and day. I would definately do it again.

It's a massive leap from my old PC and the time I'm saving now is just mad, I have a life again.

You never know, I may even try some games. ;)
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All sounds good. Do you have any storage off-site?
 
Brentor said:
All sounds good. Do you have any storage off-site?
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Up until recently, yes. For the moment though, as it's all new, it's all at home but addressing this is part of my near future plans as I like at least one hard drive off site, just incase of fires/burglary etc. I've blown the bank with the build but once I'm in a position to do it, I'll be getting a 4TB HDD to use offsite, probably in my workshop.

This will be done manually but not so much of a pain as it used to be on the old PC as I'll only be using one drive off site.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Your NAS sounds like a single point of failure - if either of the drives go you are fine, but it the RAID controller, or some other part of the NAS goes that could be both copies gone.

Could you put one of your old drives into an enclosure to make a portable drive and back your NAS up to that weekly? I have my NAS set up so that when it detects particular external drives have been plugged in it copies any new files to the external drives, then beeps to tell me when it is done.
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I will certainly look into that. (y) It will be part of the learning curve, which has been pretty massive so far.

Just to confirm, as well as the NAS, I'm using a single, b/new HDD for now too, the portable one mentioned above. :)
 
Dale. said:
Up until recently, yes. For the moment though, as it's all new, it's all at home but addressing this is part of my near future plans as I like at least one hard drive off site, just incase of fires/burglary etc. I've blown the bank with the build but once I'm in a position to do it, I'll be getting a 4TB HDD to use offsite, probably in my workshop.

This will be done manually but not so much of a pain as it used to be on the old PC as I'll only be using one drive off site.
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I have used a cloud based back up system for the last 3 years. Probably overkill but you never know and it only costs £70pa. I also back-up to in house HDDs and some files to NAS. I also have my photos backed up on Amazon.

I am no expert, but I was told that a virus or cyber attack etc could destroy everything on your network.
 
Depending on what NAS it is, you may be able to get the NAS to back itself up to the cloud.
 
After reading this thread I finally upgraded my motherboard/cpu/memory.

I was previously using an i3 3.7Ghz dual core cpu with 8gb of memory it was getting a bit slow, but had srved me well for 8 years (i'm a "if it's not broke......")

I got a Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite, Amd Ryzen 5 5600g with 16gig of memory.

Impressed with the speed of it, there were a few niggles and I have to use my old GT 710 Gpu as the board doesn't have the same connectio for my main monitor.
The graphics are a bit sharper though, but I think not as good as the onboard
 
My mind is turning towards some games now, I have a GPU that can do it, so why not?

I enjoyed the Silent Hill series back in the day, also The Suffering was very good. That kind of dark theme is something I enjoy.

I'm interested in flight sims and train sims too as well as the likes of Theme Hospital (that was a long time ago) but you get the idea.

Shoot 'em ups, not so much but wouldn't rule a good one out.

Any recommendations appreciated and not necessarily the mentioned genres........................ or is this a dark and bottomless pit I don't want to go down?

Ta.
 
Dale. said:
Any recommendations appreciated and not necessarily the mentioned genres........................ or is this a dark and bottomless pit I don't want to go down?

Ta.
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I have always been a console gamer, (from Playstation 1 onwards) mainly racing games. Many many years ago I was into Railroad Tycoon for awhile on the Atari ST. Shows how long ago that was. ;) :LOL: I never considered games on my PC's as that was not what they were bought or used for. A few years ago I saw video pop up on YT for a game called Cities Skylines, by a chap called Biffa. He is very entertaining, but once I saw the complexity of the city building, I wanted to try it out.

The game itself can be 'played' in a few different ways. You can start with a blank canvas, on an empty map, and you have to build whilst managing your finances. You can start with a Scenario, where a city has problems, and you need to fix them, with some constraints, in a certain number of weeks, or not using specific types of transport for example. You can have a very large less detailed city, or you can get down to road level with a lot of detailing. Or you can start with unlimited money and build away to your 'perfect' city(s). You can build assets or maps for yourself, or others to use. You can play it however you want. :)

There are mods and assets to download and use if you want to go down that route too. There is a generic style for buildings, but users have all kinds of things to extend the gameplay. Biffa, mentioned above, has a series based on a UK style city, with UK style houses and shops.

My PC struggles a bit as the game saves get larger, I did increase my RAM from 16-32Gb, which helped a lot, but my system is quite old, 4th gen i5, and a RX550 graphics card. Any newer processor and graphics card would have no problems running this.

As it is for me, I would need a whole new system to improve one aspect, processor, graphics card etc, to a significant degree, and this PC was not built for games, and for everything else, it works fine. Cities Skylines works fine, to a point. And that will do me for now. :)

It is something to have a look at if anyone has played similar games in the past, Railroad Tycoon, The Sims, etc.
 
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Last time I did any ‘serious’ PC gaming was the Half-Life series, which I enjoyed immensely. I also enjoy driving sims, had one based on GT cars that was great, but I can’t remember the name of it.
 
Last gaming for me was Mechwarrior, and I've really not been interested since, though I do occasionally watch the boy when he plays.
 
Dale. said:
My mind is turning towards some games now, I have a GPU that can do it, so why not?

I enjoyed the Silent Hill series back in the day, also The Suffering was very good. That kind of dark theme is something I enjoy.

I'm interested in flight sims and train sims too as well as the likes of Theme Hospital (that was a long time ago) but you get the idea.

Shoot 'em ups, not so much but wouldn't rule a good one out.

Any recommendations appreciated and not necessarily the mentioned genres........................ or is this a dark and bottomless pit I don't want to go down?

Ta.
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If you're fancying dipping your toe in the gaming waters then I'd consider a Game Pass Ultimate subscription which is Netflix like system for games and trials can be picked up fairly cheap. There's a decent library of games it gives access to including Microsoft Flight Simulator which is extremely well regarded and Train Simulator World 3 which is one of the top rated Train sim games (although I'd buy it for keeps on Steam rather than the Microsoft platform).
 
GeeJay57 said:
Last time I did any ‘serious’ PC gaming was the Half-Life series, which I enjoyed immensely. I also enjoy driving sims, had one based on GT cars that was great, but I can’t remember the name of it.
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Assetto Corsa Competitzione?

I’ve always used console for gaming but recently got a PC for driving sims (and a steering wheel) and in doing so I found myself a new hobby.
 
I don`t play many games, but use Steam, for what I do play (Valheim mainly). They have some crazy deals now and again too.
 
T_J_G said:
Assetto Corsa Competitzione?

I’ve always used console for gaming but recently got a PC for driving sims (and a steering wheel) and in doing so I found myself a new hobby.
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I think it was GTR2 by 10tacle, like this:

store.steampowered.com

GTR 2 FIA GT Racing Game on Steam

The Game That Revolutionized the Racing Genre.
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com
 
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Install Steam and register. Tons of games on there and you can put ones you are interested in on your Watchlist then wait for them to go on sale - it will alert you by email as well. I've had some great savings by doing this.


A couple of games I keep coming back to because of the atmosphere and immersion:

Door Kickers 2 - strategic thought needed (can pause and issue a sequence of commands), dead easy to pick up and leave if you don't have much time for a game and generally good fun.
This War of Mine - very immersive and atmospheric
Frost Punk - same developers as This War of Mine so lots of atmosphere. The second one is due out soon.
Prison Architect - low level graphics but surprisingly fun and addictive because of the freedom you have with building etc
Little Nightmares 1 & 2 - great atmosphere etc and gets your heart racing!


If you really want to test your setup then:

Red Dead Redemption 2, plus it's a great game.
Cyberpunk 2022 will test your system as well.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 (UEBS2). They are just silly fun simulators but strangely addictive and you can really push the limits.


A few others:

FPS: I remember enjoying Dead Island and I'm sure there's an online co-op mode as well.
FPS: Metro series of games were fun
FPS: Fallout 4
Classic: The Company of Heroes games
Total War games - some epic large scale warfare and also a strategic element. I particularly liked Shogun 2 and the Empire one.
Assassins Creed
 
Well following discussions above on gaming, I’ve now used Bootcamp for the first time and put a Windows 10 partition on my Late 2012 iMac 27. Then installed Steam, Half-Life 2 and GTR2. Not played either for at least ten-years.

Must say I’m quite surprised (don’t know why) how good it is for these games, though I’m sure there are much much better systems for that.

As a side note, the Late 2012 iMac is Windows 11 compatible and can (I think) use the current versions of Photoshop, Lightroom etc. Something it can’t do as an Apple machine because the OS can’t be upgraded beyond MacOS 10.15.7 (Catalina).
 
I have built many PC's over the years but, its been about 7 years since i built the last one. Def out of the loop now.
 
I am now digging into choices and specs......

So far almost all motherboards I have looked at major on "good for gaming" though that aspect is of zero interest to me..... IMO & AFAIK any of them should be suitable for general usage and equally up to photo & if needed video editing.

I am likely to make this a build with a new case..... though my current LianLi case is good for many years to come I currently intend to mothball the old PC less some prime parts.....so new case it will be. But lit fans not required though do want good multi fan ventilation and a drive cage/capacity for min of 4 drives :thinking: NB in regard to fans I want the drives to be behind one/two fans = good drive health.
 
GeeJay57 said:
Well following discussions above on gaming, I’ve now used Bootcamp for the first time and put a Windows 10 partition on my Late 2012 iMac 27. Then installed Steam, Half-Life 2 and GTR2. Not played either for at least ten-years.

Must say I’m quite surprised (don’t know why) how good it is for these games, though I’m sure there are much much better systems for that.

As a side note, the Late 2012 iMac is Windows 11 compatible and can (I think) use the current versions of Photoshop, Lightroom etc. Something it can’t do as an Apple machine because the OS can’t be upgraded beyond MacOS 10.15.7 (Catalina).
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Well, oddly (perhaps), Windows now tells me that my Late 2012 iMac is NOT compatible with Windows 11.

Weird, it said it was yesterday when I did the Bootcamp Win 10 install.. :rolleyes:
 
@Box Brownie
What about the noise levels?

I use a fractal design R6 case, and temp doesn't get above 45 , even rendering in PS. Plenty of drive space too.
 
I quite like the Fractal cases, and the cooling seems good + nice & easy to build.
 
Paulie-W said:
@Box Brownie
What about the noise levels?

I use a fractal design R6 case, and temp doesn't get above 45 , even rendering in PS. Plenty of drive space too.
Click to expand...

ancient_mariner said:
I quite like the Fractal cases, and the cooling seems good + nice & easy to build.
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Thanks for the heads up re: Fractal brand cases, will look into them.

In regard to noise, some years back I did replace the original fans in my LianLi for quiet(er) one but they are 75mm IIRC and slower spinning 120mm ones would be good in a new case.
 
Box Brownie said:
Thanks for the heads up re: Fractal brand cases, will look into them.

In regard to noise, some years back I did replace the original fans in my LianLi for quiet(er) one but they are 75mm IIRC and slower spinning 120mm ones would be good in a new case.
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No worries :)

Iirc the fractal case (or at least my R6) runs 140's as standard. So even oon a semi sealed case it still get plenty of air through it.
 
I have a Fractal Define R6 case and it was so quiet when I first powered the system on when building it (new motherboard, CPU etc. as well) I thought it wasn't working as I hadn't heard any fan noise as I was used to but then looked round the side and saw all the fans spinning away fine. It's a great case to work on as it's well very well designed and laid out plus I really like the non-flashy design which is very welcome amongst the huge sea of garish RGB colours.
 
Paulie-W said:
No worries :)

Iirc the fractal case (or at least my R6) runs 140's as standard. So even oon a semi sealed case it still get plenty of air through it.
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Thanks for the user insight :)
JohnMcL7 said:
I have a Fractal Define R6 case and it was so quiet when I first powered the system on when building it (new motherboard, CPU etc. as well) I thought it wasn't working as I hadn't heard any fan noise as I was used to but then looked round the side and saw all the fans spinning away fine. It's a great case to work on as it's well very well designed and laid out plus I really like the non-flashy design which is very welcome amongst the huge sea of garish RGB colours.
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Thanks for the post and the info about its lack of noise and the user friendly construction.

I have been looking at Fractal and they do a range of models apart from the R6 :thinking: :cool:(y):) and I too like that they are or can be non- flashy gaming !!!!!
Edit ~ the R6 is somewhat bigger than my current case and I ideally I do not want to go too much bigger than its dimensions....so subject to measuring up....looks like one of the other more modest sized Fractal cases ;)

PS my aim to keep the total cost. if I can to <£1000 if I can ? Just in the early costings phase right now

PPS I am lead to understand that W10 is more forgiving when moving (I will actually clone the C drive for the new build) the C drive into the new hardware environment ( I have a new W10 license and DVD in anticipation that it 'bleats' about the "license").....in that it should boot up and run fine but to have the motherboard drivers ready to install as appropriate :) NB I know the wisdom says to start with a vanilla W10 install.
 
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Box Brownie said:
Thanks for the user insight :)

Thanks for the post and the info about its lack of noise and the user friendly construction.

I have been looking at Fractal and they do a range of models apart from the R6 :thinking: :cool:(y):) and I too like that they are or can be non- flashy gaming !!!!!
Edit ~ the R6 is somewhat bigger than my current case and I ideally I do not want to go too much bigger than its dimensions....so subject to measuring up....looks like one of the other more modest sized Fractal cases ;)

PS my aim to keep the total cost. if I can to <£1000 if I can ? Just in the early costings phase right now

PPS I am lead to understand that W10 is more forgiving when moving (I will actually clone the C drive for the new build) the C drive into the new hardware environment ( I have a new W10 license and DVD in anticipation that it 'bleats' about the "license").....in that it should boot up and run fine but to have the motherboard drivers ready to install as appropriate :) NB I know the wisdom says to start with a vanilla W10 install.
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I cloned mine without any issues at all. b****r having to re install everything ;)
 
In regard to Fractal brand......

Is anyone using their PSUs (Ion + Platinum)? FWIW my current PSU is a Corsair 650W and I bought that on brand 'recommendation' at the time.
 
Box Brownie said:
In regard to Fractal brand......

Is anyone using their PSUs (Ion + Platinum)? FWIW my current PSU is a Corsair 650W and I bought that on brand 'recommendation' at the time.
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I got Corsair 650w too :) The only other brand I've used is Seasonic, which lasted about just over a year before it gave up. Had Corsair before that, and I`m happy with my choice.
 
Paulie-W said:
I got Corsair 650w too :) The only other brand I've used is Seasonic, which lasted about just over a year before it gave up. Had Corsair before that, and I`m happy with my choice.
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Ah! this build was done in 2010 but I think the Corsair was an upgrade.......perhaps a couple of years after that when I added hard drives and changed the GPU so wanted more headroom on the supply.

Methinks (unless I get other insights) I will get another Corsair :thinking:

PS re cases.....still drilling down but the Fractal Define S looks interesting for size and 5drives spaces, though the drives do not get 'bathed' by the airflow but are mounted on steel that could provide a heatsink effect.
 
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