Desktop has Died

[RobertOZ]

It is with deep regret that I have to announce the passing of my beloved Win 7 desktop, a faithful companion for some 8/9 years. It did give a warning of imminent failure, which allowed me to make a full backup, then died shorty after, no fanfare, no long goodbyes, just shutdown the screens and passed away.

Ah well, that's the past now to the future, replacement is now the priority, need some advice from forum members, do I stick with i7 or is the i5 available these days almost as good, do I really need dedicated graphics,4/6 GB, or is integrated graphics suitable, bearing in mind the generally low memory available, would still need 2 monitor capability though. would also like to remove the TV card from the old system and install into new system, have checked that the existing card can run on win 10. Definitely need SSD 500GB plus HDD 1/2 GB.
Being long retired the financial impact needs to be considered carefully

[gewb]

Hello Robert -

My sympathies. My wife's Win desktop bit the big byte a couple days ago. She is now on a Win 10 machine and compalining about lots of little things. She wants a Chromebook. Sigh.

[gewb]

Are you comfortable building your own? What warnings did you get of a failure?

Not likely the RAM or video failed. The drives can be tested. Power supplies are common failures and motherboards come next.

Might well be least expensive to reuse your parts and build yourself.

[Davidk]

Robert,
gewb has it right. On my prior system fails it was the motherboard that gave up the ghost. So it's likely that you can minimise your cost by exploring just a mb replacement; your existing drives may be very usable and with 1 proviso you exiting desktop tower should be more that suitable (whoever heard of sheet metal in a computer case failing??). The provisio is the power supply capacity: early on, a 250W unit was good enough, but when I last upgraded a mb, 500W was necessary to support the mb and a graphics card. graphics cards are very power hungry - can be more than the PC, need to check.

Given that CVS has until lately been not real flash at the hardware acceleration provided by a graphics adapter, and even now that's still iffy, you might want to think carefully about investing in one of those: I found that the on-board graphics for a high end mb are good enough. If the hardware accel functions don't give any benefit, or break it (usually a sign of driver software issues for the integrated pair (mb+adapter)) there is no a good case to invest in one for video use.

But before you go to the expense of boosting the basics, get a good basic platform first. IMHO, that means a mb with a multi core processor (even tho CVS does not do multi-threading using multi-cpus, the OS will assign one core to itself and another to apps . . so you do get some benefit) with 2 things: the fastest clock speed available, there days over 4ghz seem to be common, and as much RAM as fiscally possible whether you go the system build or buy a new one route. And in either case, existing SSD and HDD drives assuming a SATA interface (IDE is dead) could be inserted into the case and plugged into the mb.

Another bean to consider is windows 11 and the secure boot issue. For a system build, get a mb that is guaranteed to work as MS specifies. This item may be the one that drives a new purchase featuring win11. And maybe you should delay a buy until that new OS is available. soon . . .

Other issues . . the peripherals you have. If anything like mine, they are old but work. May even work under a new OS like win10 or 11 - but the installation disks to get them attached are another issue. I found that network and older CD installation disks for win7 devices just caused lots of heartache with win10 (unrecognised, would not work so a clean install was out of the question. In my case, a migration in place did work, but in yours with a mb failed: that option isn't available).

But getting new PC hardware up and running is the least of your probs - loading all the software will take ages. Why? because the new platform has it's own drivers etc and you will need to create a new registry for it - even if the old drives fit and are recognised. see also remarks about peripheral device installs above.

[RobertOZ]

The message was, Imminent Hitachi Hard Disc Failure, back up now, which fortunately I did

I suppose I could just replace the hard drive, but would also probably need to replace the graphics card with something more powerful which would mean replacing the power supply unit to accommodate a new card, then what other components would be stressed with new units installed. Very restricted on what processors can be installed on the motherboard, the i7 930 whilst an excellent processor when new, is very outdated now, and the system is not Win 10 compatible
So just looking for a reasonable replacement system

[asik1]

I think you should start with the budget, How much you can/willing to spend and for what. Do you do 4K high fx's projects?
I built all my systems for the last 30 years... It's EZ as lego (not to mention my first Pentium that didn't boot as I didn't plug the 4pin power plug...)
I don't know what prices you have down there but here in the levant, about $1000us will get you this (no case)
INTEL ‏850 ₪ Intel® Core™ i5-10400F Comet Lake Box
לוח אם ‏460 ₪ לוח אם Asus Prime B460M-A mATX
זכרון (RAM) ‏590 ₪ זכרון למחשב Kingston Fury Beast DDR4 3200MHz 2X8GB KF432C16BBK2/16 DIMM
כונן SSD ‏340 ₪ Kingston A400 SA400S37/240G 240GB SSD
כונן Western Digital WD Blue SN550 250GB PCIe M.2 2280 NVMe SSD
‏260 ₪ Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 2TB
‏570 ₪ PNY Nvidia T400 2GB GDDR6
ספק כח ‏315 ₪ Corsair CV650 80+ Bronze 650W
צורב / כונן אופטי ‏79 ₪ י Pioneer DVR-S21WBK
The issue here is the GPU, no mid selection only low or high. 1050ti ~$370

[Davidk]

If an HDD was the failure, and the system then would not work - I guess that drive was also C.
Given that you have a backup, if there is a workable HDD - might be older, replaced at the time by a newer one - perhaps you could plug it in, restore the C backup to it and evaluate whether - or not - you really need a plug-in display adapter. that is, try using it with the on-board graphics see if the result is 'poor'.

OTOH, if this combo will not start or the imagery result is poor, then a new PC seems inevitable and the only considerations then are what? and how much?

[RobertOZ]

Hi Adi,

Sourcing all the components listed in your post would be in the region of $AU1000 with an additional $AU250 to upgrade the graphics

4K projects would be completed on the laptop, so that would not be a requirement for the desktop

[RobertOZ]

Looking at
Intel Core i5-10400 Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.30 GHz) LGA1200, Asus GeForce GTX 1650 TUF Gaming OC Plus 4GB GDDR6 Graphics Card, Asus PRIME H510M-E LGA1200 mATX Desktop Motherboard, 500GB NVME M.2 PCIE SSD, Kingston Fury Beast RGB 16GB Kit (2x8GB) DDR4 CL16 3200MHz, 2TB Hard Drive Disk, Cooler Master MWE WHITE 230V 650W 80PLUS Power Supply, Cooler Master MasterBox MB311L ARGB, Windows 10 Home, AC1200 Dual Band PCI-E WiFi Adapter

Price $AU1499

The existing Desktop cost just under $2000 8/9 years ago

[excalibur1814]

The main point is... don't go nuts. Corel VS simply won't use it. I've thrown an SSD raid 0 at it and... it's still pants at times.

As per the stats across there, ---------->
I have an i5-10600 and Corel runs as intended. It still needs proxy files and still needs to be the entire master of the pc (to avoid audio/video playback sync delays), but it's still fine. It also runs fine on my Surface Pro 7.

The above seems pretty good. I have one system drive (m.2) with VS installed, with another M.2 for video media and editing. I used to have three, the third being a scratch drive where proxies sat and the exported/created video would be saved to. Couldn't be bothered in this latest build (my board supports an 11th gen cpu, with a third slot for pcie 4 m.2 drives. I'll upgrade one day).

I would actually say that you could drop the 1650 until you're SURE that you need it. The one and only time I tried nVidia's CUDA for video creation, it crashed.

[RobertOZ]

I also use Magix Movie Edit Pro Premium 2021 which does use the Nvidia GPU for Hardware Acceleration
Think I will change the processor to an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6C 12T 35MB Cache Processor, has better performance ratings than the Intel i5-10400

[RobertOZ]

Got all the components listed above but with the AMD Ryzen 5 3600, putting it all together now, no real instructions, but it is up and running, sort of....
Thankfully I have the laptop

[asik1]

Most important is how to fix the fan on the CPU with the thermal paste.

[tletter]

The one and only time I tried nVidia's CUDA for video creation, it crashed.

I use NVIDIA CUDA hardware encode acceleration in VS2021 without any issue and it utilizes the GPU (see fol image).

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[RobertOZ]

Beginning to wish I had selected an i5 10400 instead, every time I launch AMD Ryzen it tells me Win 10 needs updating, yet the system tells me that Win 10 is up to date, there are issues with other updates, some download but won't install, also at each launch it tells me that No AMD Graphic Driver is installed, but I have a Nvidia 1650 installed, lots of issues with Outlook at the moment, have a lot of folders missing, will keep plodding on