This is my biggest gripe about Apple hardware, and if it weren’t for the Mac OS, I’d gladly put up with a slightly less sleek design from another PC manufacturer in exchange for a reasonable number and variety of peripheral ports.
I’m using a Mac Mini right now, and just counted the things plugged into the ports on both it and the display: ethernet, two external drives, two monitors, a mic, a camera, speakers, a thumb drive, a track ball, a keyboard, a dock, and a couple of loose cables with adapters on them for older equipment. Running all this through a couple of Thunderbolt connectors connected to a dock just seems like a bottleneck of a hack designed for nothing more than stylish sleekness that, in the end, means little given the maze of cables and gadgets needed.
I miss the old plastic Mac Towers with all the ports — the ones with the single button that released the entire side panel to expose all the easily accessible and upgradable plug-and-play innards.
Oh I dunno. It might be important to know to look at the number and kind of ports any desktop or all-in-one might have. My old soda couzy mac has a fair number of ports on the back. The photo on the box always looked great, Nice sleek soda couzy, but plug everything it and it looks like Attack of the Medusa Monster. That was solved by parking it next to a cable grommet in the desk and letting the Medusa nest below the desktop.
It’s still part of the discussion. Filed under Cable Management.
Wow, so many replies. All of these terminologies (FFS, MAD, SSD, HDMI…) and numbers of processors are like names of car parts… and even if you explained them to me I still wouldn’t understand their purpose. So, because I lack the hardware knowledge, what I’ll do is find a seller that has them pre-configured and pre-assembled packages, so when I get the PC, everything will be inside the PC and I wouldn’t have to opened it up and install parts. By the way, the PC Specialists website is for Europe purchases, and I am in the US, so I’ll likely go with Amazon, New Egg, or something else that gives me lots of options for pre assembled PCs.
I will go with PC not Mac because it’s cheaper… probably mid to high-end, but not the latest and most expensive for sure.
Monitor – I’ll go by something that has good reviews for color calibration. DP Review had reviews for color calibrated monitors. I’ll research again. I never thought of the curved ones. They’re probably for gaming, but not for color accuracy. I will be fine with one 22". I haven’t felt the need for 2 monitors (at least yet).
RAM is not welded… which means I would be able to double it to 32? I will go for minimum of 32 then and preferably 64!?
Dedicated graphics card? Ok, I should look for the word “dedicated.”
Hard drive space: I will research RAIDS. USB sticks probably wouldn’t do the job and would take too long to backup 4K video. I also have experience with 2 external drives crashing and losing info.
No monthly fees for me for software = No Adobe products… but that’s for another thread.
I’ve always had good experiences with New Egg as well. No affiliation. They just got stuff to me when I needed it and had everything … back in the days of fixing ones own or even building a PC
Watch Amazon if you go that route. Nothing bad … but A LOT are refurbished. Sometimes it’s hard to spot that when glancing. There are also tons of 3rd party sellers who can be really shady.
Is anyone here using a touch-screen monitor to do graphics, 3D, multimedia, or audio? The touch is the replacement for the mouse pointer… except quite more expensive. Do you find any advantages as opposed to using the mouse pointer?
Judging from everything you’ve written, you’ll probably be good with 32GB of memory, for that matter, even 16. You should probably forget about the RAID since it’ll set you back further than the computer you’re aiming for.
All drives fail eventually, which is why multiple backups are important. A RAID will give you that kind of redundancy, but so will backing up to a couple of different external hard drives.
If you were regularly shooting and editing 4K video in a professional situation where doing so is your main, full-time occupation paying the bills, I’d definitely aim for a more expensive setup, but that can likely wait until sometime in the future when buying high-end equipment is worth the investment.
I am browsing through the PCs right now on New Egg and they have a Sort By: Best Rating, which is very helpful. I am looking from the cheapest ones to the ones that are around $2-3000. Yes, a monitor too – 22-30".
The budget is according to the refresh rate for graphics, 3D, 4k video, and audio. When I open big files I don’t want to get bugged that the refresh rate is slow. So, I guess my main priorities is for the processor, the RAM, and dedicated video card to be able to handle big files with lots of layers. If I can get a fast refresh rate with a lower priced PC, then I’ll go for the lower priced ones.
I am old school, so I would probably go with something that still has a DVD. Haven’t transitioned to the no DVD age yet.
For software, I’ve been browsing the software threads in the software section. No Adobe products, no monthly payments.
Operating System: I would’ve preferred Linux or something similar that is open source, but I don’t want to run into compatibility issues.
Writing: Open Office.
Graphics: Affinity suite.
3D: probably Blender for atmospheric and fluid effects, and something with pre-created characters for architectural-like renders.
Video: will look for replacement of Adobe After Effects and Premiere. Maybe Davinci Resolve or something similar.
Audio: undecided. Live and Reason are possible.
I’ll probably just end up getting the latest Windows… not that I wanted to, but because I wouldn’t be a good problem-solver if I got Linux and ran into compatibility issues.
Would there be a way to turn off some of those cooling fans if I am not using the PC for any memory intensive purposes? Half of the time, I’ll use the PC just for writing on word editor.
If you want a 5k monitor you are looking at at least £750 for one with good colour. The LG 27MD5K-B Ultrafine 27-inch display is highly rated (but discontinued) at £1,349.
So, if I will shoot 4k video, I guess I would need a 4k monitor.
This one is $430 and it has tons of 5-star ratings:
LG 27BL85U-W 27" 4K Ultra HD 3840 x 2160 HDMI DisplayPort USB Type-C FreeSync Tilt, Pivot, Height Adjustable IPS Monitor
So many freakin’ numbers and abbreviations… Buying hardware is such a total turn off!
If I have cat hair all over the floor here, is it better for more fans or less fans on the PC?
I would prefer the ones with the solid panel enclosures better than those new ones with the transparent plexiglas and the colorful lights… or maybe those colorful lights can be turned off?
If you have a cat hair problem you need filters that will catch that stuff before it gets in your PC. Of course, if your fans are running high to cool the PC down, they may blow all the cat hair out of the room …
I’m thinking if cat hair is a problem, the number of fans isn’t as important as the covering - you’ll want the kind of mesh filters that’ll catch most of it before it gets in, at least on intake fans. From experience, you’ll also want to dust frequently, because dander and/or littler dust will collect and stick to fans and other components and increase your risk of overheating and/or shorting out.
Additionally, DEFINITELY raise your box off the floor, if you haven’t already planned to. My husband’s box was on the ground in the same house as me for the same amount of time, and his got WAY nastier. Short version, dust and dirt sink, and movement will kick anything there up into the box. And IMO it’s more convenient to not have to bend over to plug/unplug anything.
As for the colorful lights, most of the time those can be turned off - but you’d probably be better off getting a box that didn’t have them in the first place, since the RGB features will up your base price and there’s no telling how easy it’ll be to turn the lights off until you try. More money + more work = yuck.
