A repository for my hardware and software recommendations.
- They have desktop processors, which are generally quad core
- A respectable amount of fast DDR4 memory
- Usually decent graphical performance, with a great display
- They generally have a good amount of storage space
- When bought new or refurbished they come with a nice wireless keyboard and mouse iMacs are pretty good all in one computers as they come with everything you would need with a terrific screen, they tend not to be cheap but are a good investment if you want something reliable.
- Desktop processors, but they aren't very powerful
- A respectable amount of fast DDR4 memory
- generally quite affordable
- they are single units without a screen or peripherals
Specs should be equal to or better than listed specs for the best experience;
- A motherboard with:
- Decent backpanel ports (the ports at the back of the computer, good motherboards tend to have a lot of USB3 (the blue ones) ports
- M.2 flash storage support (a really, really fast type of storage drive)
- At least 4 SATA ports (the cables that you connect hard drives and solid state drives to your computer with)
- At least a quad core CPU (the 'brain' of the computer, it processes everything and physically can't work without one, just like a motherboard or power supply), I recommend at least a RYZEN 3, don't buy the version without an integrated graphics chip unless you have a GPU!
- At least 3000MHz DDR4 memory (the memory of the computer, the amount of live storage it has to handle many things at once), anything above 8 Gigabytes of memory is unnecesary in my opinion
- A good amount of storage, windows 10 is utter crap when it comes to storage efficiency. I'd recommend using an SSD for the OS install drive, thanks (not) to the way Windows boots it is probably a good investment. You should probably buy a large Western Digital hard drive as mass storage too
- Graphics cards (GPUs) aren't actually necessary anymore IMO, the latest RYZEN processors (with integrated graphics!) have really good integrated GPUs that can even handle gaming. If you do decide you need the extra graphical headroom, I either recommend something from whatever AMD's current offering is (maybe an RX 5600 XT) or Nvidia's budget offerings like the 1650)
- A nice chasis; I don't personally think they are worth it but NZXT makes a decent sub-£100 called the H210 (it's quite small compared to most cases)
- Browser: Brave/Vivaldi or Firefox, I personally don't like chromium based browsers, but if you have to I'd choose either Vivaldi or Brave
- Conferancing: I don't really like Zoom too much due to security and privacy issues, so I still use Skype or Discord (despite it mainly being targeted at gamers)
- Recording: OBS, great open source audio and video app
- Photo manipulation: Adobe's software quality has become almost unusable for professional work in recent times, so I recommed either Affinity's products or just a free one like Krita
- Video editing: I personally use Olive, which is free and does it's job quite well, I've also head a lot of good things about Kdenlive for a free app. If you want something that is top of the line, you might want to check out DaVinci Resolve, which even has a free version.