Btw, it said it would restart, but it didn’t; completely locked up.
I did some searching for this error and I suspect the HDD is dying. I guess I could get the drive replaced, but the computer is about 12 years old and I understand support for Windows 10 will be ending next year (this computer won’t run Windows 11). As such, perhaps it’s best to just replace it.
We don’t use it much. Neither of us knows much about computer stuff. I primarily use it to rip CDs, SACDs, DVDs, BDs, buy music downloads, transfer music files and perform updates to my Roon streamer (Salkstream III, running ArchLinux). My husband sometimes uses it for some Excel spreadsheets, basic word processing, taxes via TurboTax, simple stuff generally. We don’t use it for games or heavy video/picture editing/processing.
Can anyone suggest a reliable/good PC brand these days? It’s been a long time since I’ve shopped for a computer. What specs should I be looking for?
I greatly appreciate any suggestions/recommendations!
I’m far from a computer expert, but I love my Dell XPS 15 laptop i7 with 1TB SSD and 32 GB ram, 4k touch screen. I use it for most of the things you listed, but it also makes a great “away from home” Roon server. At home, it’s also my main Roon remote ahead of iPhone and iPads. I’ve had it for 5 or 6 years with no issues.
I have built my own PC’s way back in the 90’s and 2000’s. But nowadays I am more than happy with a complete computer.
My NUC has a 12th gen i7 CPU, 32 gb of RAM and a 1 tb SSD on board. If I remember correctly it was around 800 Euro. It is smaller than the connected Loxjie D30 DAC and I have added an external BluRay burner to it. The whole stack is about 10 cm in height
ASUS makes the NUC’s nowadays as Intel has stopped producing them.
Going with the big brands on the market is my advice. From my own experience, I would buy Dell or Lenovo and stay away from HP. Something to note here is that I never bought an (entry level) consumer PC / laptop from any of those brands but business level (usually longer support, Windows Professional and less or no preinstalled demo / bloat software).
Both brands are offering online configuration tools for some models. They may be a great way to get what you want without the need to build-your-own – but pay attention to prices. Simple (to do yourself) upgrades like RAM or HDD / SSD may come with an unusually high price tag attached. I sometimes get the feeling that it needs as much (but different) knowledge about those online configuration tools than to build your own PC.
Jim’s Dell XPS is a solid choice. If I were to spend my own money on a Windows laptop, it would be Lenovo X1 Carbon, which is even lighter than MacBook Air. (I used both, provided from work). The only negative about X1 is price, but there are sales all the time.
I greatly appreciate all the suggestions from everyone.
My thought was to go with another desktop computer since it doesn’t need to be portable. I figured with the larger case (better airflow?), it would run cooler, perhaps increasing reliability/lifespan, and perhaps upgrading or adding components would be easier. Also, I like that the desktop units have more connections/ports.
Is this line of reasoning valid these days?
Also, should I be looking to maximize available drive space and RAM? Currently, I rip all my music to the internal drive on the computer which has a 2tb HDD. Naturally, this takes up quite a bit of space. Would I be better off going with a smaller internal drive, say 1tb to save money and use an external USB drive for my music?
As of my experience, they may know hardware but simply fail when it comes to software. The business laptop I bought from HP (back when Windows 7 was default) came with lot’s of HP software and HP branded drivers. The laptop didn’t boot / run well without me first putting in several hours, uninstalling all this HP software and then working out which of those were essential and which could be discarded safely. Not the experience I expected from a business laptop and for sure not an experience I wish for anybody else – so this is why I don’t recommend HP. Keep in mind that my experience is based on business offerings at the time and not consumer offerings.
Additionally do laptops these days rarely come with integrated optical drives (your requirement for ripping). Adding (lots of) external stuff to a laptop makes a laptop very much not mobile anymore and the higher costs may no longer be justified when used solely stationary. Same is often true for very small form factor PC offerings or all-in one.
So, tome at least, your reasoning sounds solid.
Maximizing RAM probably not (may be to costly to go above 64GB currently) and seems to be overkill. I would put in 32 GB and be done with it (if there is a special offer for a cheap preconfigured build that comes with 64GB, it’s fine to buy too I guess). As for storage, keep in mind that you put a lot of time and effort into ripping (and other data may be invaluable). So you need a solid backup strategy too. Then there is the question how many devices need access to the data. At some point a NAS might be a better option as it allows access to the data from all devices and can manage backups (backup management software usually included) to various sinks. If you invest money in centralized storage, your local storage requirements usually go down.
If you don’t want to go that route, you need local storage obviously. Going with enough internal space and use USB for backup is what I would recommend but what is possible in regards of internal storage depends on the offerings. High count of internal storage is nowadays often not for sale (would also require offering higher capacity power supplies in advance). You probably would have to buy an entry level server as PC to get the option to add several internal storage disks. The OS question might become an issue though with server offerings (offers with Windows Server may cost to much and the OS might not be what you want) – you may have to solve the OS question separately.
Mine is a beat up desktop case I just keep having the insides renewed.
If you need extra HDD be warned it’s getting progressively difficult to get cases that support more than 2 drive bays. I have 5 HDD hence why I stick with this case.
I’m noticing even many desktop towers (Dell for example) don’t come with a built in optical disc drive. Is there any advantage to a built in optical drive vs an external USB optical drive?
I guess I should mention I’m trying to keep the budget around $1k or less if possible. That said, I don’t want to cut too many corners such that it I would regret it in a few years.
If the case has the slots, you can usually add one yourself without breaking the power budget or other potential pitfalls. All the drives are essentially the same, either 5.25 Inch or smaller mobile devices, no matter if the come built-in in a PC / laptop or an external case. External cases then add additional components though (SATA to USB chip, things like that) that may need additional drivers, can cause additional problems and may affect ripping (no direct access to the optical drive because of the USB chip). I don’t have experience with external optical drives for ripping, so other users may provide insight to that matter.
Rip disc to internal drive on desktop computer.
Copy files to my Roon server’s (Salkstream III) internal drive.
Backup the music files on the Salkstream to two different external USB drives. One stays connected to the Salkstream all the time, the other I only connect when performing a backup (I also do Roon database backups to these drives). The end result is my music files end up in 4 locations.
It’s not often these days that I add ripped or downloaded music to my collection. As I mentioned earlier, this computer doesn’t get used much; maybe a few times per month? Of course when needed, it’s really needed, lol.
Oh, and there aren’t any other devices on our network that needs access to the desktop computer. It stays powered off the vast majority of the time. The only time it’s used with other devices is if I’m ripping a disc (including ripping SACDs from my Oppo 103 on the rare occasion), copying music to the Roon server, or accessing the Roon server (which is headless) to copy music files or update ArchLinux on the Roon server.
Regarding storage space on the desktop; Windows reports 975GB being used out of 1.8TB. About 577GB of that is my music files. It seems I could considerably reduce the internal drive size needed, and reducing the cost, if I move those music files to an external drive (for example, go with a 1TB drive instead of a 2TB drive).
Is 3rd party virus/malware protection software still needed these days, or is Windows Defender along with our router’s firewall (ASUS RT-AX68U) sufficient?
We currently use Avast along with Windows Defender, but it seems Avast bogs down the computer sometimes, especially at bootup. Then of course there is the subscription fees.
Btw, I managed to run chkdsk on the desktop. It froze twice during the process. Each time I rebooted and chkdsk started again. After several hours it finally finished. I restarted the computer again and it seems to be working, at least for now (it’s really late, so I didn’t do a lot od testing). I don’t know if chkdsk actually fixed the problem or not. I suspect I just got lucky it didn’t freeze after running chkdsk. We’ll see how it goes next time I use the desktop. Hopefully, it did fix it at least enough to make sure everything important is backed up and we have time to consider what to get to replace it (and maybe transfer everything over to the new computer?).
Is there any advantage to a built in optical drive vs an external USB optical drive?