Hi, my friend is building a PC for a family member and he made a list I’d like some help with:
Requirements:
White build. RGB generally preferred.
The case is fixed. Unless there’s something more novel, with more features, using the same space.
Good quality, because it won’t be updated for probably 10+ years.
Should be fast and definitely quiet. The member in question is quite sensitive to these.
Should have pretty high storage space of probably 4-8TB.
Main uses: browsing, videos, office work. With the “ability” to “maybe” play games.
Budget: up to 12k DKK.
My questions:
Aren’t there any white AM4 or AM5 ITX motherboards? This surprised me.
The GPU is overkill right? But I can’t see what other options exist, if it has to fill a gap, be white and enable gaming.
Is it worth buying some Silent Wings 4 case fans?
Any HDD suggestions? I thought of recommending an 8TB Samsung SSD in order to avoid any risk of noise, but reviews say it slows to a crawl when the cache is full, but maybe that’s the price of silence.
I would like to recommend installing Linux for the sake of stability. But if there’s RGB, how will that work with controlling the lights?
Are there any good monitors which can work as TV’s as well as PC monitors?
Only good case I can think of is perhaps the Jonsbo D31 Screen + Mesh. Bonus though, it has mATX support.
You could also go for something like the SSUPD Meshilicous White Edition, but that would exclude HDDs for sure. Two other contenders there are Loque Ghost S1 (sold out, but some stores still carry stock), and then there is the SFFTime P-ATX which is small and white but not very transparent. And of course, you could always go with a brickless case if you really want to, but that is more hassle than it is worth.
Sadly, no. White computers are no longer viable enough for selling, except for limited editions. Intel might have one though!
Yes, you could get away with a 5700G and no GPU at all, but barring that, the 6600 is one of the best budget picks on the market right now. I say budget but it is more like high low-end tier, maybe even mid-range.
Pretty much only for aesthetic purposes, functionally it makes very little difference. You might make it slightly less noisy, but it could also be fine as is.
Sadly RGB is a shitshow on Linux still, as standards slowly, sloooooowly evolve. You can get RGB but it is hit-and-miss right now and you need to properly do your research here of what brands are supported.
You can, however, often buy an RGB controller, control the RGB via Windows and then install Linux afterwards. It will remember the settings. This is probably the easiest way to do it.
The 8TB Samsung SSD is quite good price for the money, but do be aware of the purpose - it is supposed to be a secondary disk. The “crawl” still beats a good HDD.
In a year or two, an 8TB m.2 drive will cost $300 or less. Sadly, this is 2023, not 2025, and therefore, 4TB options are the way to go. The good news is that you no longer need an HDD in a desktop computer. Like, never again. Ever. Even the ITX boards have at least two m.2 slots now.
HDDs are noisy, especially higher capacities, and you won’t believe the difference until you’ve tried plugging out your HDD for a week and then run it again.
Depends. Are you O.k. with 60Hz, or not? If you are, just buy a 24 inch OLED TV. If you are not, then it gets trickier…
Either way, here is an alternative build that might be of interest, based on Intel 13th gen, it is ~2500 DKK more expensive, but it will last a heck of a while longer. Dunno about 10 years, but 5 years for sure and can then take an update of Mobo + RAM + SSD + CPU for another 5 years.
Thanks a lot everyone, it’s great to get some feedback.
@MarcWWolfe Yes that’s it. But they want something “fancy”, because they’ve never had that before. It’s always just been black boxes.
@diizzy As above, that’s why that’s not going to work. Although I think it’s great your solution is so efficient. Loved the bit about LED strips. I picked the WD NVMe one because of the transfer rates, since I want it to be as fast as can be, generally.
@GoldenAngel1997 Thank you, I’m so glad OpenRGB is a thing! If that worked, that would rock. Bookmarked. It seems they don’t have that motherboard. Only the ASRock B550M Pro4, which still has some white. Good the RX is solid - I also thought it would be good with AMD for the Linux driver support.
Case: The Jonsbo looks really interesting, so I’ll ask. They wanted something “different”, hence the vertigal Tower 100, originally. As well as something where the parts are visible (sorry I didn’t include that in the requirements). I’d love the P-ATX for my personal build!
GPU: I have seen thr 5700G is good. But they don’t want to feel “shortchanged”, so it might look too empty if there’s no apparent GPU. Silly, I know. 6600 will do definitely; it’s just a shame it has no real RGB.
Fans: I just have the impression the Silent Wings 4 are the quiestest case fans. But, they’re also black, so maybe that might disturb the look.
RGB: Got it, that’s an interesting solution.
Storage: Hmmm, alright! Well it would be secondary storage definitely, because I am gunning for at least a 2TB SSD main drive. But I’m just concerned about longevity: are SSDs as good as HDDs when it comes to long term storage? Assuming no other backups. Because I read something about SSD cells losing their charge. . . Currently the 8TB is really pricey; it’s possible to get a 16TB HDD for the same price. I have also been scared away from the high capacity HDDs, such as the Toshiba and Seagate ones, as they apparently make so much noise when seeking and/or writing.
Monitor: 60Hz is fine. The main idea was the ability to use a remote to switch between television and the PC. But maybe I could fit in 2 monitors: 1 TV and one PC, that would be ideal wouldn’t it? Do you have any example OLED Tvs? Because they’re really expensive it seems. 24-27" should be perfect.
Parts: Thanks for the recommendations! But I was also thinking, would it be an advantage to just pay the price of AM5 and hope AMD treats it like AM4, so that the upgrade path will be cheaper (but most especially just more convenient) than Intels?
This is understandable, but kind of unwarranted these days. You are correct that SSD drives do wear out; at the same time they have a pretty good track record now. Looking at the 870 QVO 8TB specifically, the drive has a warranty of 2,880 TB written or 3 years, whichever comes first. After that, it might hold for 5% more or 500% more, no way to tell if you won the silicon lottery here.
Now let us assume a stress test scenario that does nothing but dump /dev/random all day long on the drive. The drive has a theoretical write speed maximum of ~530 MB/s. That is ~31 GB/s per minute, ~1,8 TB per hour and ~43,7 TB written per day. If we ONLY write data all day every day we will wear this drive down in only around 50-55 days, before we are out of write cycles.
This is the theory. Will we be writing 24/7 to this? Probably not. Benchmarks also show this particular drive has a write speed of roughly 221 MB/s. This means we have already gone from 55 to 125 days. IF we hammer it non-stop with writes.
Will you, though? Because the way I use my system, I don’t even write 50 GB on average on a daily basis. Once or twice a year I install a 100GB game, the rest of the time, I barely even touch the thing.
But let us say that you hammer this with 500 GB of data transfer every day, on average. This is almost ten times what the average AAA gamer use daily. That would mean this drive would last for 4 560 days, or 12 years.
Wear and tear happens, but it’s like worrying your car’s engine is going to wear down over time. Yes it will, but by the time it is a concern, unless you’ve been doing serious street racing for five years, chances are the chassi of that car will wear out before the engine does.
I do think at the moment two 4TB NVMe drives make more sense. SATA drives just are too slow in 2023. This also allows you to start with one and easily add another if you really need it.
The 970 QVO is good SSD storage for the money, and it is twice as fast as an HDD at it’s slowest (it destroys on small file transfers), but like you note, it is still pricey.
Eh, doesn’t have to be OLED, I guess I got a bit too excited; my OLED 55" TV only cost ~$500 when I bought it so I figured smaller sets were cheap now. Guess not!
Anyway, I can find 1080p budget TVs for ~$200-$300, and decent 1080p screens for $200. You want 4k though, things get double to triple that price.
It is a gamble, you’d be paying 1k-2k DKK more for the hope that you could upgrade to a great CPU in 2027. If it cost the same as an equivalent 13600k system, it would be a no-brainer. Then again, this DOES have an upgrade path from at least 2025 → 2030, soooo…
Recently seen a Microcenter bundle (CPU, RAM, motherboard) that included a 5600X3d, $300. That plus 3050/3060 (maybe 6650xt) GPU= good times. Just pick a case and adequate PSU and slap it all together. Ought to be like $600-700 total.
White computers are no longer viable enough for selling, except for limited editions. Intel might have one though!