Need computer purchase help

[Saxum]

Being forced to work at home has shown me the limitations of my computer equipment.

I usually buy end-of-lease professionally refurbished leased business computers from micro center with same theory you have with cars - a good deal of value goes down as soon as you leave lot.

I have a older Windows 7 machine as main (never got a virus on it even post M$ cutoff) and an ACER Intel loptop running Windows 10 now I bought a number of years ago for trip to Hong Kong where I was told there would be no TV in apartment we were renting.

My wife told me "Just keep your job. Buy whatever you need even though they should supply it like they have other groups."

 

This is what I need so I can be productive for work:

 

I do lots of windows and large spreadsheets so I need memory.  I think at least 16GB and maybe 32GB.

I need to be able to use at least two monitors; I need to use a remote Citrix console and splitting screen does not work well.

At least 8 cores. Not sure of Intel Core i5 vs i7 vs i9

A decent graphics card which supports multiple large screens well.

A lot of times I will have one window over another and the lower window is not seen so I think it is running out of graphics memory.

Needs to run Windows; I know advantages to Linux but I need compatibility. 

 

Current computer has two monitors due to installed card but my friend has told me that that is not needed anymore.

 DisplayPort 1.2 daisy chainable MST monitors is way to go he told me.  He also gave me computer on Amazon which matched search but Amazon searches are real fuzzy. They will provide matches which do not entirely match.

 

I tried to do the distance thing with Micro Center.  Tell them what I wanted and get it customized via chat and got generic response "Come in store and work with one of our associates."  I wanted to just go in, pay for purchase and leave but evidently that does not work with them unless you just order and pick up in 20 minutes.

I think this is the best search I can do.  I am guessing I will need a new monitor too to support DisplayPort 1.2 daisy chainable MST but article I read says last does not need to.

https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?Ntk=all&sortby=pricelow&N=4294967292+4294820733+4294819035+4294820274+4294820679+692+90+45+46+4294819544+4294817946&myStore=true

 

Can someone help me quality check? Maybe someplace else other than Micro Center. The key thing is I want to make one trip/order not get home and discover I need something else.

 

 

 

 

[Seasons1992]

Laptop, with MAX memory, at least 16GB.

SSD hard drive. 

 

Those two things trump most other things in terms of hardware. Fast booting, fast running.

 

Try either Dell or HP's website directly to "build" a system.

[unbillievable]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

[unbillievable]

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/intel-core-i9-vs-i7-vs-i5-cpu/

I recommend starting with an i7. i9 is too expensive and i5 is too weak.

 

Fill out the rest based on budget or need.

 

Memory is cheap. minimum 16gb

Solid State Drive SSD; minimum 100gb. Operating system use only.

Storage Drive: keep your files separate (and safe) from the Windows drive. HDD. Cheap so you can go Terabyte range.

Geforce GTX 1080 Ti is a good card. Titan if you want to game.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by unbillievable

[Saxum]

6 minutes ago, unbillievable said:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

 

Seems like great site for someone who understands computer parts well.  Not such a person.

I looked at "Completed Builds" but the one thing I am sure of - need more memory is not even a choice.

Want two hard drives - one solid state for OS (faster) and one for storage and stuff not so speed intensive.

[Augie]

While a lot of other industries are getting crushed, some others must be reeling to keep up with demand. My wife’s new “home monitors” arrived this week, and she’s purchased more for others on her team. They are finding where the gaps were and who didn’t have a designated work laptop. They are filling all these holes as fast as they can.

 

The world will be a different place when we come out on the other end of this. To what degree will be interesting. 

[Saxum]

 

Laptop no for I learned from experience that if a laptop has a bad part it is basically useless to upgrade.

Bought a Toshiba laptop and it worked first 12-14 months then started having issues.

They told me repeatedly "you need to tweak this" or "an update to bios is coming wait".

When it got to 24 months with me still waiting for response theirs was "warranty has expired, do you want to pay for extension? and extension was 50% of original machine.  Learned later that this was just the latest in series of laptops all with same problem and only solution is replacing motherboard with new one of same type or soldering cable to motherboard. Toshiba did not care for issue usually occurred after 24 months.

[/dev/null]

For spreadsheets and Citrix you don't need a beast.  Check out Dell or HP for a cookie cutter dekstop or laptop.  Avoid Lenovo unless you want your activities phoned home to the People's Republic of China

 

As previously stated, at least 16GB or RAM and a SSD for your system disk.  There are faster disks on the market called M2 drives, but you have to watch the specs.  Some M2 drives run on the SATA bus, which will perform no better than an SSD.  An M2 drive that runs via PCIe will run significantly faster

 

The OP mentioned this computer would be used to work from home.  So excuse me a second while I slip into my IT Nazi uniform...

Check with your employer if they require any disk encryption on work computers.  They may require a secondary disk (either fixed or USB) be encrypted for work related files.  If they require the system disk be encrypted, increase your budget because disk encryption eats up system resources

[BillsFan4]

Check out this site. They have a bunch of pre-built computers if you don’t want to build your own. You can also pick a basic build and upgrade one or more components. 

 

https://www.ibuypower.com/Site/Computer/IntelDesktop

(this is the intel processor section)

 

If you want at least 8 cores in an intel processor, I believe you’re looking at at least a high end i7, or an i9 processor (which all have at least 8 cores iirc). I believe all i5 processors are 4 cores. AMD processors have more given codes at each price point but I’ve read intel offers more general computing performance (I’m not knowledgeable enough to really comment on the differences).

 

 

[Saxum]

9 minutes ago, /dev/null said:

For spreadsheets and Citrix you don't need a beast.  Check out Dell or HP for a cookie cutter dekstop or laptop.  Avoid Lenovo unless you want your activities phoned home to the People's Republic of China

 

As previously stated, at least 16GB or RAM and a SSD for your system disk.  There are faster disks on the market called M2 drives, but you have to watch the specs.  Some M2 drives run on the SATA bus, which will perform no better than an SSD.  An M2 drive that runs via PCIe will run significantly faster

 

The OP mentioned this computer would be used to work from home.  So excuse me a second while I slip into my IT Nazi uniform...

Check with your employer if they require any disk encryption on work computers.  They may require a secondary disk (either fixed or USB) be encrypted for work related files.  If they require the system disk be encrypted, increase your budget because disk encryption eats up system resources

 

For the work I do I do need a beast.  I also do a large number of data crunching which gets fed into spreadsheets and every time I pull up any metrics charts my work just freezes due to graphics.  Sometimes at work I use multiple machines to do my work.

 

I am a monitoring nazi. I am playing with stats not actual client data.  I am trying to find out which system is overtaxed by a computer which is overtaxed and the quality of my work is going down.  My boss has learned that in his group I am the one who makes the reports valuable hence us valuable.  Right now things are slow but if we go out of slow time we will have nothing to add when we have a crisis.

[/dev/null]

25 minutes ago, Limeaid said:

 

For the work I do I do need a beast.  I also do a large number of data crunching which gets fed into spreadsheets and every time I pull up any metrics charts my work just freezes due to graphics.  Sometimes at work I use multiple machines to do my work.

 

I am a monitoring nazi. I am playing with stats not actual client data.  I am trying to find out which system is overtaxed by a computer which is overtaxed and the quality of my work is going down.  My boss has learned that in his group I am the one who makes the reports valuable hence us valuable.  Right now things are slow but if we go out of slow time we will have nothing to add when we have a crisis.

 

Fair enough.  If you are doing mathematically complex calculations on the data sets you will need a higher end CPU.

 

Now lets back up.  You mentioned that you will be connecting via Citrix.  I have no idea whats on the back end in your data center, so this is an outsider observation.  Rather than rely on an individual workstation, or multiple workstations, to perform complex mathematical calculations on data sets stored locally on each workstation, can your Citrix admin create a virtual machine within the Citrix environment?  You would connect to the VM via Citrix.  The VM would be using the servers CPU and RAM.  You would not have to upload/download data across the Internet and your data would be more secure as the storage never leaves the data center.

[Saxum]

3 minutes ago, /dev/null said:

Now lets back up.  You mentioned that you will be connecting via Citrix.  I have no idea whats on the back end in your data center, so this is an outsider observation.  Rather than rely on an individual workstation, or multiple workstations, to perform complex mathematical calculations on data sets stored locally on each workstation, can your Citrix admin create a virtual machine within the Citrix environment? 

 

Maybe but not for me.  All I get access to is one citrix desktop.  Cannot run stuff on other machines.  At work only machines I have access to is my workstation (or multiple if no one is using them) and monitoring machines.  For the machines actually doing the monitoring which are virtual Windos I can log in and fix but cannot run anything but monitoring software.  On the machines gathering the data which are Linux virtual workstations I can log in and run scripts and sql calls on data I have access to (no root access).  Oh Citrix workstation is clean every time I go on so cannot leave anything running too long for it times me out and then any work would be lost unless I was writing to my home disk and no good tools on it hence I usually do stuff at home with Cygwin64 terminal.

 

If it appears I am a step child in this arrangement I am.

[/dev/null]

Yeah you do sound like their red  headed step child.

 

This might be a good time to raise the issue with your employer.  As an IT guy, I suggest you emphasize the security benefit and reduced external bandwidth of you having to pull what sounds like large data files across the Internet

[Saxum]

1 hour ago, /dev/null said:

Yeah you do sound like their red  headed step child.

 

This might be a good time to raise the issue with your employer.  As an IT guy, I suggest you emphasize the security benefit and reduced external bandwidth of you having to pull what sounds like large data files across the Internet

 

There is nothing at risk for these files as I said before. No customer data.  And we cannot get more hardware, contract set up that way.

[BillsFan4]

Came across this and thought I’d share: 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-buying-guide,5643.html

 

and this:

 

https://windowsreport.com/multiple-monitor-desktop-computers/

Edited April 4, 2020 by BillsFan4