Black Friday computer buying for desktop - advice

[BoxsterCy]

Probably time to upgrade/replace my old Dell desktop. It's still Windows 10 and half broken down and glitchy as heck at times. I might want to try to reinstall windows but it's old enough that I am thinking about just buying new.

Don't game, do most of my interwebing on my laptop, so the desktop is more of a workstation. I have a nice scanner, laser printer etc and do some photo editing but no real video editing. Do not need crazy amounts of memory but would like 16-32 or so.

Main question, what about hard drives? Now it's a choice of combo platter of old hard drive + a SSD or all one of the other. I see a Dell on sale with just a SSD with 1 TB and all the way up to 1 TB SSD with a 2 TB HDD. What's peeps experience/recommendation on the drive choices?

Edit: Current is Dell with 1 TB HDD with 600 GB space used and that includes old file archives from previous computers. 12 GB memory.

 

[BanjoCy]

Reddit/buildapcsales or something is my usual place to see what deals are out there. More focused on components but some prebuilt systems pop up as well.

For your needs probably save good money by skipping anything with dedicated GPU. Memory wise, I’m partial to M.2 SSD. Not sure how much the SATA SSDs are used nowadays, but they are a bit cheaper.

I do game and have about 3TB between a couple M.2s, but I think I’d go for at least a 1TB SSD (either SATA or M.2, but M.2 is faster). If you wanted best/cheapest value maybe look for a 500gb SSD and a 1TB HDD.

Ram wise 16 is probably fine depending on the actual applications you want to run. Probably more important to get the lastest tech (DDR4/DDR5).

Maybe not much actual guidance, but I feel like that subreddit is generally pretty informative in the comments as well.

 

[nrg4isu]

I highly recommend a mini pc. I picked up a Beelink EQ12 recently for cheap. These things are prefect for your use case (and many others). No sense in buying more machine than you'll use.

 

[SerenityNow]

SSDs have come down a lot recently, there really isn't a need for you to go with a traditional platter drive. I just added a 2 TB SSD to my computer for $100. The the speed difference is really noticeable. Agree that 16 MB is probably all you need but that's also super simple to upgrade down the road.

 

[3TrueFans]

Do not, under any circumstances, buy a pc with only a spinning hard disk in 2023. A 1 TB NVME SSD is like $80 these days.

 

[CyCoug]

If a new laptop is a good deal, you can get a usb-c docking station and hook it up to monitors, making it basically desktop.

Unless I was seriously into gaming, I’d go that route every time these days.

 

[intrepid27]

I've had the best luck with Lenovo. Did buy on HP this spring and mic only works about 10 % of the time.