One for the IT peeps on the back of the thread for 'TLB skills'. I am looking to buy a new PC for Office applications, emails, a bit of music, occasional video editing, moderate photo editing and A LOT of time on the TLB forum Having had a look around I have come down to two. The first is what I believe is a compact tower and the second is a normal tower. I won't list the specs here as the links will do that for me, but you will see they are very similar to each other. I am not pushed for space so tower size is not so important but I might want to upgrade to a separate Graphics card later and I was wondering if compact tower means smaller components and therefore higher prices for components, or whether they take the same size but have less space inside. Then does the compact suffer the same problem as classic VWs, ie. cooling problems ? Thanks in advance. http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5089662.htm http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-m3985-desktop-pc-21252853-pdt.html
Go for the physically larger box - the mini tower boxes restrict you on the size of expansion cards, and like the camper engine the airflow can be restricted - Hard drives and plastic components can fry. Also think about buying a machine where not every available memory module slot is filled up when you buy it with at least 4 gigs of RAM, and check there is a space and a motherboard socket for another hard disk to add later (some of the small PCs have exactly what they need out of the box and no room for expansion) . Video editing especially HD will quickly require many gigs of RAM. And that means a Windows 64 bit version (either Win7 or Win8) to be able to use more than about 3gigs of RAM. I have a compact PC once used as a Media Centre PC where I upgraded the video card (to play iTunes HD video content) and then had to add another fan as it tended to melt the fans on the video card. Having added the fan it ran reliably, but ran out of hard disk space. Have a look at some of the refurbished Dell PCs around - they are a lot better built than modern boxes, and can be literally left switched on for years.
For a start, avoid the i3 and go minimum i5 or if your serious about video editing or gaming, I assume gaming as otherwise you wouldn't be thinking about changing the graphics card. Go for an i7 As far as a desktop goes, are you sure? Would suggest a touch laptop, and an external drive, good for backups and if you need a massive screen, you can run it from the laptop. Just my two pence worth...
