What platform / CPU / APU do you recommend for people you build for?

[poofyhairguy]

Gaming friends? i5 Skylake or Haswell depending on their budgets

Regular normal folks? I recommend a off-lease i3 Ivy desktop with the hard drive cloned to a SSD (I usually offer to do that for them). Best bang for the buck by far. Unless you are gaming there is no value in building a PC from scratch I don't think.

 

[Denithor]

Refurbished Dell i3/i5 (SB or IB) off eBay for every build request in the last year or so. Add RAM, SSD and/or PSU+dGPU as needed, done.

Free Windows with a free upgrade to 10 is the icing on the cake.

EDIT: Glad to see I'm not alone in this, Poofy!

 

[Lil'John]

For family/friends that I've done computers in the recent past, I simply get a NUC of some flavor, slap a 240gb SSD, and windows OS on it. If it has room for a 2.5" drive, I'll toss a cheap 1TB drive in.

None of my family/friends are game players and use the computer for email/general web browser.

My dad got a Celeron based Haswell NUC. A step-daughter got a i3 based Haswell NUC. As soon as the Skull Canyon NUC is available, the mother-in-law is getting my "old" i3 based Broadwell NUC.

In general, I rarely do a full build unless there is something specific needed not covered by a NUC sized platform. The price of a build vs NUC is close enough.

For my own machines, I build systems at the higher end(Sandy-E, dual E5-2695v3, 6700, 4690)

Disclaimer: I get VERY good deals on Intel products so I will choose them over AMDs.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Haswell/Skylake dual-core replacements for failed/noisy/slow desktop rigs. If a person games, i7/Xeon 4C/8C all the way, again Haswell or Skylake, depending what I can get for a good price. I skip the i5 entirely, yes.

i3 6100 if it's something in the middle. ~10% go for X99.

Currently, No AMD offerings.

16gb ddr3/ddr4 as a standard option.

I do it mostly for fun and with pure enthusiasm, though.

Intel NUCs are getting popular as well.

 

[nerp]

I'd tell someone to get a NUC. If they insisted on something custom built, I'd toss in an i3-6100 unless they're totally a gamer then I'd go with something like an i5.

 

[gorion]

the NUC isn't really needed unless you are looking for something small (not a lot of space in the house).
A mid-tower offers more room for expansion.

 

[Magic Carpet]

the NUC isn't really needed unless you are looking for something small (not a lot of space in the house).

NUCs are getting increasingly popular in organizations. Say, a business, call-center, they have 50+ computers or so. Power savings / simple maintenance alone, make it worth it for them. Exactly the case when performance per dollar isn't so important. Regular households unless space/power is an issue, always are better off (financially) with a regular matx/sff box though.

 

[biostud]

The last three builds I recommended were:

2015 Top gaming rig: i7-5820K + GTX970 SLI + 16GB RAM + 500GB SSD + 2x4TB HDD
2013 Budget gaming: i5-4670K + GTX 760 + 8GB RAM + 250 GB SSD (and some reused HDD)
2011 Office + home video editing/DVD creation: i5-2400 w/ iGPU + 4 GB RAM (60 GB SSD cache added later)

 

[frozentundra123456]

It still is faster than the A8 in every way, though. Even in tasks that benefit from more cores, still faster.

Tis poster appears to be obsessed with making deals on older hardware.

I dont build systems for resale, but if i did, I would consider the minimum for general usage to be either an i3 or an apu like the A8-7600.

 

[nerp]

the NUC isn't really needed unless you are looking for something small (not a lot of space in the house).
A mid-tower offers more room for expansion.

Most people never expand or upgrade after initial purchase. Most add ons are external in nature (think external HDs, etc). NUC is perfect in these cases.

 

[cbn]

Regular normal folks? I recommend a off-lease i3 Ivy desktop with the hard drive cloned to a SSD (I usually offer to do that for them). Best bang for the buck by far. Unless you are gaming there is no value in building a PC from scratch I don't think.

Any favorite supplier you have use for these purchases?

 

[Lil'John]

the NUC isn't really needed unless you are looking for something small (not a lot of space in the house).
A mid-tower offers more room for expansion.

Most people never expand or upgrade after initial purchase. Most add ons are external in nature (think external HDs, etc). NUC is perfect in these cases.

nerp got it before me.

Most of the people I help never upgrade internals and hold onto their systems until the bitter end

In my cases, a NUC build is close enough in price to any full sized build using new parts that I'd choose the NUC every time... for non-gaming/specialized purposes.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Any favorite supplier you have use for these purchases?

Not really, the deals are always changing so each time I search Newegg for maximum value.

I have learned to prefer off lease Lenovos though. Those things are tanks and use mostly standard ATX parts (so it's easy to upgrade/change).

 

[waltchan]

Tis poster appears to be obsessed with making deals on older hardware.

I dont build systems for resale, but if i did, I would consider the minimum for general usage to be either an i3 or an apu like the A8-7600.

I love the 2011 CPUs so much, in fact, I want to stay with them (Sandy Bridge, Bulldozer, and Llano) for another five years. They will get cheaper and better. I don't need faster cores because I've never played games in my whole life. Only internet and browsing. 2011 was also the crucial year, and since then, CPUs have become less-obsolete with smallest percentage of gain in performance you've seen. Not much has changed 6 years later, 2017 nearing.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I don't need faster cores because I've never played games in my whole life. Only internet and browsing.

No comment D:

 

[crashtech]

Now that the G3900 is widely available, that would be my bottom floor build.

 

[waltchan]

No comment D:

Yes, as you can see (clearing up all the speculations here), what good does it buy me with Skylake Core i7 when I've never played games in my whole life. It's like throwing money out to the water. That's why I've become more obsessed with the obsolete CPUs, and prices continues to drop better for the 2011 CPUs as time goes on. Now, if there are any appropriate LGA1155 boards left for sale. I didn't find any, so I got FM1 Llanos instead.

 

[waltchan]

Now that the G3900 is widely available, that would be my bottom floor build.

Yes, I do need a Celeron G3900, but I refuse to pay over $30 for it. Maybe next year. My local Fry's Electronics store is dumping out Celeron G1850 for $25 after promo code all the time. I've bought at least five already. Pentium G3258 dumps out for $35 after promo code. Supply has dried up now, and Fry's no longer sell them at this price.

 

[crashtech]

Yes, I do have a Celeron G3900 added in my shopping cart, but I refuse to pay over $30 for it. Maybe next year. My local Fry's Electronics store is dumping out Celeron G1850 for $25 after promo code all the time. I've bought at least seven already.

That's still a really good option that should be presented, though with full disclosure that it's no longer the latest platform.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yes, as you can see (clearing up all the speculations here), what good does it buy me with Skylake Core i7 when I've never played games in my whole life. It's like throwing money out to the water.

You're the first on the internet I have come across who has never actually played a game. I am just speechless

That's why I've become more obsessed with the obsolete CPUs, and prices continues to drop better for the 2011 CPUs as time goes on. Now, if there are any appropriate LGA1155 boards left for sale. I didn't find any, so I got FM1 Llanos instead.

I recently picked up a new ASRock H61M-DGS (minus backpanel) board for $15 and a used i3 3240 Ivy Bridge processor for $50 (came with the brand new 3770K HSF too). Planning to gift it to a friend, a gift for $65, not too much, but still very capable combo, imo. FM1/AM1 CPUs I stay well clear of, burned too hard after getting that A4-5000 APU SSF box couple years ago. Price doesn't matter to me much, I can sell you a bunch of Pentium 3 & 4's, could be useful for decoration purposes or something, haha.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Depends on what they need it for.

For basic boxes I usually get people an AMD A8-7600 machine with a small SSD. Slightly more CPU power, they get an i3. If they need something heavily threaded and are cheap, an AMD FX-8320e. If they need high ST perf, an i5.

In all cases, I always put SSDs in for boot drives if nothing else, and only use Asus or Gigabyte motherboards.

 

[waltchan]

You're the first on the internet I have come across who has never actually played a game. I am just speechless

The only game I played was chess when I was kid. Since 2002, I haven't played any games since. Call me crazy... I didn't even know PlayStation 4 was released.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yes, as you can see (clearing up all the speculations here), what good does it buy me with Skylake Core i7 when I've never played games in my whole life. It's like throwing money out to the water. That's why I've become more obsessed with the obsolete CPUs, and prices continues to drop better for the 2011 CPUs as time goes on. Now, if there are any appropriate LGA1155 boards left for sale. I didn't find any, so I got FM1 Llanos instead.

There is a wide, wide gulf between a skylake i7 and a slow, inefficient Llano. With the price of modern AMD apus and lower end core chips being so low, I just dont understand trying to save a few bucks on old, inefficient tech that may have been used heavily or even abused and has no warranty. And I certainly would not feel comfortable reselling it.

 

[waltchan]

There is a wide, wide gulf between a skylake i7 and a slow, inefficient Llano. With the price of modern AMD apus and lower end core chips being so low, I just dont understand trying to save a few bucks on old, inefficient tech that may have been used heavily or even abused and has no warranty. And I certainly would not feel comfortable reselling it.

All the Llanos I picked up (as well as VirtualLarry) are brand new, OEM, and never used at discontinued prices.

 

[Torn Mind]

Real browser boxes should be equipped with a i5, the fastest SSD, and 32 GB of RAM. Those who demand speed from their peripherals also should get the latest platform.