PC for Dad for business and will last forever

[NaGoldfarb]

Budget (including currency): $1500ish

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Quickbooks and MS office

Other details: Duel 24in monitors, needs wifi, using 550W 80+GOLD 

 

So My dad really needs a new computer. He is currently has a laptop that he cannot shut because the hinges will break. I want to build him a new computer to replace it. Here is the thing, he will never want to upgrade it. So I want to over design it a bit. He does not really under stand how data works and keeps all (20-30) years of emails and spreed sheets on his computer. I want to make sure in a result of drive failure the data is not lost. I want thinking of running two 1TB drives in RAID. Does this make sense? 

 

Also does it make sense to build to the computer now? 

[Kanna]

I would get a bigger HDD like 2tb instead and a boot drive for some programs and boot, the pc doesn't need to be too powerfull

[NaGoldfarb]

Thats a good point, I was going to separate the boot and data drive. Get some M.2 drive for booting and something else for the data.   

[GDRRiley]

he will have to replace it after 5-10 years it won't lat forever. RAID 1 SSDs is going to better than HDD.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$149.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory	Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	$57.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Western Digital Blue 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$114.99 @ B&H
Storage	Western Digital Blue 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$114.99 @ B&H
Case	Zalman S2 ATX Mid Tower Case	$47.99 @ Amazon
Wireless Network Adapter	TP-Link TL-WN881ND PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter	$18.98 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$619.92
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-06-06 17:50 EDT-0400

this doesn't have a PSU as you said you already have one.

Just now, NaGoldfarb said:

Thats a good point, I was going to separate the boot and data drive. Get some M.2 drive for booting and something else for the data.   

no need just go for 2 big in raid  drives. so much stuff auto saves to the boot drive.

[Kanna]

1 minute ago, NaGoldfarb said:

Thats a good point, I was going to separate the boot and data drive. Get some M.2 drive for booting and something else for the data.   

Yeah HDD would be the cheapest and if it's only notes and documents speed doesn't really matter

[ShortRouter]

RAID is not a backup.

RAID is not a backup.

RAID is not a backup.

 

I would gift him a cheap NAS and set it up for daily / weekly full drive backup. In case his PC hard drive / SSD fails you just replace it and restore data from the external backup.

Migrating from HDD to SSD for boot drive is the first thing to do to speed up any old PC.

[kkpatel87]

15 minutes ago, NaGoldfarb said:

-snip-

Ah building for parents who dont get it...been there, done that.

 

If he is like my folks, they dont understand the difference between the desktop and everything else. I would recommend getting a RAID6 array for the main boot drive, 4 SSDs should provide enough for fault tolerance and performance. 

 

Then you setup an auto backup feature to a NAS to provide a backup.

[The Torrent]

I say just buy a 1tb m.2 or even ssd I mean he ain’t gonna download games it’s just gonna be word documents and the internet I’m assuming?

 

and don’t even need dedicated graphics 2200g?

[Vishera]

9 minutes ago, NaGoldfarb said:

I want thinking of running two 1TB drives in RAID.

RAID is not a backup,and you can't run RAID 5 with this config,you can only run RAID 0 and RAID 1.

[Vishera]

Just now, GDRRiley said:

RAID 1 SSDs is going to better than HDD.

I have seen many consumer SSDs that fail much faster than hard drives.

Seagate consumer drives are crap,the rest are good - especially TOSHIBA consumer drives.

[ShortRouter]

Just now, Vishera said:

I have seen many consumer SSDs that fail much faster than hard drives.

Seagate consumer drives are crap,the rest are good - especially TOSHIBA consumer drives.

That's what RAID1 is for. Any of the 2 SSDs can fail without data loss. Each drive stores all data.

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

I have seen many consumer SSDs that fail much faster than hard drives.

Seagate consumer drives are crap,the rest are good - especially TOSHIBA consumer drives.

The failure rate of the none cheapest SSD is going to be better than HDD.

 

7 minutes ago, kkpatel87 said:

If he is like my folks, they dont understand the difference between the desktop and everything else. I would recommend getting a RAID6 array for the main boot drive, 4 SSDs should provide enough for fault tolerance and performance. 

Then you setup an auto backup feature to a NAS to provide a backup.

raid 6 is pointless. Use a cloud backup like backblaze over a NAS

[Kedohawyr]

9 minutes ago, NaGoldfarb said:

I want thinking of running two 1TB drives in RAID. Does this make sense? 

No. The common phrase "RAID is not backup" is appropriate here. RAID only protects from hardware failures, and only certain types of failures at that. The rest of the time a RAID array will keep two copies of the same corrupted and unusable data, and depending on the RAID hardware you use (like the cheaper controller on your motherboard) may actually make it harder to recover if anything goes wrong. The purpose of a RAID 1 array is for immediate continuation of business (i.e. a drive fails and you don't have to stop while performing a restoration), not to safeguard data.

 

Frankly it doesn't sound like the main system needs a large amount of storage (no games, no vast collection of media files), and given the situation I think that backing up his system (OS and application configuration) is just as important as backing up the data since there will probably be vital configurations and passwords that will otherwise be lost. Because of that I'd suggest a simple SSD containing the OS and data with a proper backup process setup, such as using Macrium Reflect with a scheduled backup so that you can restore the whole system onto a blank SSD in 15-20 minutes.

 

It's also preferable to not have the backup on a drive inside the system - something like a PSU failure or motherboard fire that damages the main drive could just as easily damage the backup drive (an internal backup drive will also be lost in the event of a virus/ransomware). For a cheap compromise you want to backup to either a NAS or a cloud storage account, and the "ideal" backup involves at least 2 backups, with them filling some combination of being remote and offline (for a home user the local one would be offline via a USB drive you unplug and store seperate from the computer and the remote one being a cloud account)

[Vishera]

Just now, GDRRiley said:

The failure rate of the none cheapest SSD is going to be better than HDD.

The problem is that the market is plagued with cheap SSDs,also some high performance SSDs fail more than HDDs.

For example the failure rate of the 970 EVO is going through the roof,and all ADATA consumer SSDs have high failure rate.

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

The problem is that the market is plagued with cheap SSDs,also some high performance SSDs fail more than HDDs.

For example the failure rate of the 970 EVO is going through the roof,and all ADATA consumer SSDs have high failure rate.

have any actually data or just anecdotal?

[Vishera]

24 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

have any actually data or just anecdotal?

Just search for it and you will see tons of results confirming this,many of them are recent:

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=fRPcXqv1B5zMgwfApqDwBA&q=970+evo+fail&oq=970+evo+fail&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzICCAAyBggAEBYQHjIGCAAQFhAeUNgNWNgNYN8RaABwAHgAgAFRiAFRkgEBMZgBAKABAqABAaoBB2d3cy13aXo&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwjrp4DDme7pAhUc5uAKHUATCE4Q4dUDCAc&uact=5

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

Just search for it and you will see tons of results confirming this,many of them are recent:

that isn't good data. there isn't a bunch. the only thing it sounds like is to make sure you SSD firmware was up todate

[Vishera]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

the only thing it sounds like is to make sure you SSD firmware was up todate

Having to update the firm of every drive you buy doesn't make any sense,should be plug and play.

And there are real failures among the results,more than any drive should have.

[GDRRiley]

Just now, Vishera said:

Having to update the firm of every drive you buy doesn't make any sense,should be plug and play.

And there are real failures among the results.

all the data I see points to a issues with a 2019 firmware. That doesn't matter. 5, 10 even a thousand people complaining means nothing without the volume known. 

[ShortRouter]

Guys, the discussion has clearly derailed from answering OT. I don't see how debating disk drive failure rates and firmware helps here.

[NaGoldfarb]

So yea, this went off the rails. I want to set up a NAS eventually and I have some big plans latter on. but currently im in school in  a different state and dont have the ability to mange everything. It will just confuse my parents. Its much easier just to attach an external  hard drive that backs up every day. I just convinced my parents to get ride of there old Dell desktop from the 90s. (it booted!!)

 

1. So what I gained from all this is that RAID is not needed. 

2. SSDs for boot and data (which I was going to do)

 

15 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

Motherboard MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard $114.99 @ Best Buy

Will I have to flash new bios on this board to get it working with Ryzen 3? Can I do that with out the CPU in the socket? 

Also how are current prices for computer parts. 

 

 

15 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor $149.99 @ Amazon

Why this CPU over the Ryzen 5 3600x? It seems like this plus a GTX1650 would last a bit longer. 

[koptr]

3 minutes ago, NaGoldfarb said:

So yea, this went off the rails. I want to set up a NAS eventually and I have some big plans latter on. but currently im in school in  a different state and dont have the ability to mange everything. It will just confuse my parents. Its much easier just to attach an external  hard drive that backs up every day. I just convinced my parents to get ride of there old Dell desktop from the 90s. (it booted!!)

 

1. So what I gained from all this is that RAID is not needed. 

2. SSDs for boot and data (which I was going to do)

 

Will I have to flash new bios on this board to get it working with Ryzen 3? Can I do that with out the CPU in the socket? 

Also how are current prices for computer parts. 

 

 

Why this CPU over the Ryzen 5 3600x? It seems like this plus a GTX1650 would last a bit longer. 

It's a MAX mobo => ready for Ryzen 3000.

[NaGoldfarb]

.....MOBO prices are a bit high at the moment.

[GDRRiley]

6 hours ago, NaGoldfarb said:

.....MOBO prices are a bit high at the moment.

yeah well you can try to wait a month for more to come in stock that will drive them down.