Grandparents PC...

[Johnatron 101]

Just built this PC for my grandparents so that they could access their old files and stream sport... Maybe a little overkill?  

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Johnatron101/saved/3dMjpg

[Tamesh16]

whoa, thats a pretty decent pc for your grandparents

[Akira Shimazu]

Grab 3200G, 8gigs of ram. KIngston A400 or XPG SDD. asrock B450m pro 4. CX 450w.

[murph0981]

It never hurts to be overpowered. At least this way it will last a while. And hey, now they can play solitaire with 500 FPS!

[Fasauceome]

Did they pay for it or was it a gift? If you charged them to build it you ripped em off as it is indeed overkill, but if you gifted it to them then it was just an overly generous donation

 

Also it's been a while since I've seen a reasonably priced 1050 ti. Still somehow costs as much as an RX 570 but not absurdly expensive

[Roswell]

Going with a dedicated GPU just adds another point of failure and increased energy costs if they're not going to use it.

[Johnatron 101]

3 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Did they pay for it or was it a gift? If you charged them to build it you ripped em off as it is indeed overkill, but if you gifted it to them then it was just an overly generous donation

 

Also it's been a while since I've seen a reasonably priced 1050 ti. Still somehow costs as much as an RX 570 but not absurdly expensive

They gave me a budget of $600 so... 

[kelvinhall05]

Get them a Ryzen APU in a small case and throw in a nice Noctua cooler so it doesn't make much noise. They'll appreciate a small, quiet build, trust me.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Johnatron 101 said:

They gave me a budget of $600 so... 

Under promise and over deliver.

 

"Here's $600"

 

"I'll do it in $200"

 

"Wow, so efficient!"

[Johnatron 101]

3 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Going with a dedicated GPU just adds another point of failure and increased energy costs if they're not going to use it.

They said that they don't really care about power usage so...

[Roswell]

7 minutes ago, Johnatron 101 said:

They gave me a budget of $600 so... 

Well if all they're doing is looking at files and streaming video, why are you intentionally wasting their money? That's not cool to do to your grandparents.

 

Quote

They said that they don't really care about power usage so...

It still adds a needless point of failure for no reason.

[Johnatron 101]

3 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Well if all they're doing is looking at files and streaming video, why are you intentionally wasting their money? That's not cool to do to your grandparents.

They're fine with it and they get too much energy from their solar panels so at least that extra energy now has a purpose

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Well if all they're doing is looking at files and streaming video, why are you intentionally wasting their money? That's not cool to do to your grandparents.

Actually you could spend this whole budget for a killer grandparents PC.

 

Fanless PSU, fanless heatsink that Arctic makes for the Athlon series, whackton of m.2 storage, sff case, pretty rad

[Johnatron 101]

2 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Actually you could spend this whole budget for a killer grandparents PC.

 

Fanless PSU, fanless heatsink that Arctic makes for the Athlon series, whackton of m.2 storage, sff case, pretty rad

Maybe in the future

[Ru5h]

8 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

Well if all they're doing is looking at files and streaming video, why are you intentionally wasting their money? That's not cool to do to your grandparents.

 

It still adds a needless point of failure for no reason.

I think you're being needlessly harsh for no reason.

[dalekphalm]

44 minutes ago, Johnatron 101 said:

Just built this PC for my grandparents so that they could access their old files and stream sport... Maybe a little overkill?  

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Johnatron101/saved/3dMjpg

Why would you spend $125 GBP on a GPU they will never use?

 

I applaud you in building your grandparents a PC. But this build was needlessly expensive, unless you already had the CPU and GPU lying around, etc.

 

You overspent on RAM, CPU, and GPU for sure. Fairly good choice in the MB front though - SSD is also overkill but at least it wasn't terribly expensive, so harm there.

[Johnatron 101]

47 minutes ago, Johnatron 101 said:

Just built this PC for my grandparents so that they could access their old files and stream sport... Maybe a little overkill?  

 

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Johnatron101/saved/3dMjpg

Here's the finished build: 

 

 

[nox_]

1 minute ago, Johnatron 101 said:

Here's the finished build: 

If you already built it, what's the point of this thread of yours?

[dalekphalm]

4 minutes ago, Ru5h said:

I think you're being needlessly harsh for no reason.

Not really - I assume that the grandparents aren't exactly hurting for money, and they could afford the $600 GBP - but just because they said they had a budget of $600 GBP doesn't mean that the OP should have spent it all.

 

They're grandparents. They likely have no idea what a PC costs.

 

That's like going into Best Buy and telling them you need a new desktop for "writing emails" and you have a budget of $900, so they sell you a $900 PC (despite the fact that a $400 PC would have been fine).

 

Same thing here. The OP could have saved them significant amounts of money by making smarter decisions. They likely would have been happy about it "Hey grandma, I know you said I could spent up to $600 on this, but I built this system perfectly with you in mind and it only cost $450 - here's the remaining money back!"

 

I'm not trying to be harsh to the OP. In the end, likely no harm, no foul. But it wasn't a good build for the end use-case.

[Johnatron 101]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Why would you spend $125 GBP on a GPU they will never use?

 

I applaud you in building your grandparents a PC. But this build was needlessly expensive, unless you already had the CPU and GPU lying around, etc.

 

You overspent on RAM, CPU, and GPU for sure. Fairly good choice in the MB front though - SSD is also overkill but at least it wasn't terribly expensive, so harm there.

They told me that they weren't bothered about budgets and wanted something that would last, also my grandad loves having the latest and fastest tech. 

[dalekphalm]

Just now, noxdeouroboros said:

If you already built it, what's the point of this thread of yours?

He's just showing it off - nothing wrong with that. Don't think he's asking for advice - though he probably should have  (too late for that now).

[Ru5h]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Not really - I assume that the grandparents aren't exactly hurting for money, and they could afford the $600 GBP - but just because they said they had a budget of $600 GBP doesn't mean that the OP should have spent it all.

 

They're grandparents. They likely have no idea what a PC costs.

 

That's like going into Best Buy and telling them you need a new desktop for "writing emails" and you have a budget of $900, so they sell you a $900 PC (despite the fact that a $400 PC would have been fine).

 

Same thing here. The OP could have saved them significant amounts of money by making smarter decisions. They likely would have been happy about it "Hey grandma, I know you said I could spent up to $600 on this, but I built this system perfectly with you in mind and it only cost $450 - here's the remaining money back!"

 

I'm not trying to be harsh to the OP. In the end, likely no harm, no foul. But it wasn't a good build for the end use-case.

I'm sorry but that's not something that you can dictate. You don't know his grandparents, you don't know the situation and if I'm honest if the budget was 600 that means that they were up for spending that money to get something decent. And yeah sure. They might only want to do one thing, but what happens if they suddenly want to do another thing? The only person who is able to accurately say that is OP and I think saying stuff like "you just screwed your grandparents over" is not only harsh, but not something you have the right to say. 

 

Let's agree to disagree. Good job OP. Nice build. 

[nox_]

4 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

though he probably should have

That's for sure.

I built my grandparents a pc for the same purpose, his hardware choices are odd to say the least, if you have the money it doesn't mean that you have to spend it all. But that train already left the station.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Johnatron 101 said:

They told me that they weren't bothered about budgets and wanted something that would last, also my grandad loves having the latest and fastest tech. 

Well, you have to learn that "something that would last" doesn't necessarily mean "spend the full budget just because they said you could".

 

How is that 1050 Ti going to make the system last longer? If you grandad gonna take up R6 Siege or PUBG? That GPU is 100% wasted on them.

 

You want it to last a long time? A Ryzen 3 2300X would have been fine - maybe go with a 2500X - though I doubt your grandparents would even benefit from the SMT.

 

The 6c12t 2600 is entirely wasted on them.

 

RAM wise, 8GB was sufficient - 16GB is overkill that they won't utilize.

 

MB wise - good choice - no obvious complaints there.

 

GPU 100% wasted. Better choice would have been an APU (3200G or 3200GE) - alternative would be just dropping in a $40 GPU like an HD5450 or similar.

 

Case could have been smaller formfactor and look better, had you saved the money from the GPU (you wouldn't need the space, so you could go smaller, and you'd have more budget, so you could have gotten something that looks better).

 

SSD? No major complaints there. I doubt they'd even notice the difference between a SATA SSD and an NVME one - but if they want "the fastest", then sure. It was cheap, so no big deal here.

[Roswell]

16 minutes ago, Ru5h said:

I think you're being needlessly harsh for no reason.

I don't think so. If my grandmother asked me to build her a web browsing machine and I randomly decided to spend her money building a gaming rig for no reason, I'd feel pretty awful essentially throwing her money out the window.