Feedback on PC for Friend

[Devastator0]

Budget (including currency): ~$2000 AUD

Country: Australia

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: No games, Photo & Video editing, also to act as a recording machine for security camera system

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Looking to buy pretty quickly after the XMas/New Years period. I don't have many details of what system she currently has but being from 2010, pretty old.

 

So, a friend of mine has hit me up to spec out a PC for her to replace her circa 2010 PC. Basically she'll be using it primarily for photo and video editing but also to act as her primary storage medium (photos, videos etc etc) and also to act as the recording target for her home security cameras. No dedicated/discrete GPU is needed as there will be 0 gaming being done on this system. I've put together the following:

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G ($275 AUD)

Mobo: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI ($235 AUD)

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CMK32GX4M2D3600C16 ($129 AUD)

O/S SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2 ($99 AUD)

Data Storage Drives: 2 x Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB (She wants data segregated by 2 physical drives) ($278 AUD each)

Security Camera Recording Drive: Western Digital Purple 8 TB ($369 AUD)

Add-in Card: Orico 7 Port USB 3.0 Dual Chip PCI-E Expansion Card (She wants this because she needs more USB connectivity than what the mobo has)

Case: be quiet! Pure Base 600 ($109 AUD)

PSU: SeaSonic FOCUS GX 650 W 80+ Gold ($189 AUD)

 

I would welcome any advice/suggestions/comments on what I've put together for her.

 

Many Thanks!

[Wh0_Am_1]

This is just a comment to take into consideration, but a number of video editing and some photo editing software are capable of utilizing GPU acceleration. I would recommend verifying whether this is the case with the software that the end user will use.

[Devastator0]

9 minutes ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

This is just a comment to take into consideration, but a number of video editing and some photo editing software are capable of utilizing GPU acceleration. I would recommend verifying whether this is the case with the software that the end user will use.

That's a very valid point that I hadn't considered...I'll be sure to ask my friend about that. Cheers!

[Average Nerd]

39 minutes ago, Devastator0 said:

2 x Seagate IronWolf NAS 8 TB (She wants data segregated by 2 physical drives) ($278 AUD each)

For redundancy, or for some other reason?

It might end up being cheaper to just get 1 16TB drive and partition it into 2 8TB partitions.

[Devastator0]

2 minutes ago, Average Nerd said:

For redundancy, or for some other reason?

It might end up being cheaper to just get 1 16TB drive and partition it into 2 8TB partitions.

Well she, unfortunately, has experienced a number of drive failures in the past, most likely due to the cheap drives she had in her previous machine (so she's a tad jaded lol) and even though I tried to reassure her that she could just even get a 12TB drive or something, she said she doesn't want to have a single drive die and make her lose all her data. Fair call I guess and she does understand the cost implications.

[Average Nerd]

12 minutes ago, Devastator0 said:

Well she, unfortunately, has experienced a number of drive failures in the past, most likely due to the cheap drives she had in her previous machine (so she's a tad jaded lol) and even though I tried to reassure her that she could just even get a 12TB drive or something, she said she doesn't want to have a single drive die and make her lose all her data. Fair call I guess and she does understand the cost implications.

Long term, it might be a good idea for her to get a NAS, to handle bulk storage (and the surveillance recording), since their software is often much better at monitoring drive health and maintaining the array than Windows is.

[Devastator0]

18 minutes ago, Average Nerd said:

Long term, it might be a good idea for her to get a NAS, to handle bulk storage (and the surveillance recording), since their software is often much better at monitoring drive health and maintaining the array than Windows is.

I had considered that but she didn't want to go that route. I did suggest that she should keep it in mind as an option in the future. To be fair, I think the issues she's experienced is that whoever built/setup her existing rig did set up some sort of Raid array on it which has apparently accelerated the drive failures, also the fact that she just has 2 x "green" Seagate 2TB drives. My hope is that suggesting her NAS focused & security camera drives, she'll have a much better experience than the current, old rig.

[Average Nerd]

Just now, Devastator0 said:

To be fair, I think the issues she's experienced is that whoever built/setup her existing rig did set up some sort of Raid array on it which has apparently accelerated the drive failures

RAID shouldn't degrade disks.. and she will still have to mirror the drives (which technically is a type of RAID) to get redundancy.

2 minutes ago, Devastator0 said:

My hope is that suggesting her NAS focused & security camera drives

NAS drives are definitely a good call, they are rated for 24/7 operation, so they'll last a long time.

For security camera recording, using a surveillance drive isn't strictly necessary unless she has lots of cameras, or uses cameras with high resolutions.