Help me choose system for a friend please?

simonpuk

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May 27, 2020
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Hi,
My friend has asked me for advice between three systems he is looking at and i'm not totally sure which to advise as one is £1000 more expensive, is probably better quality BUT is it a grand better ?

He isn't worried about storage as he has a 1tb SSD and a WD Black spinner already.

He is trying to choose between :

Medion Erazer X30 DT Core i7-9700, 8GB RAM.1TB Hard Drive & 128GB SSD, RTX 2070 Graphics at £1399 (but he would need another 8gb of RAM so that needs to be factored in).

and

Alienware Aurora R9, Intel® Core™ i7-9700K, 8GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super OC Graphics, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB HDD & 256GB SSD at £2299

Or

Asus Zenbook Pro Duo UX581GV-H2004T Intel Core i7 9750H, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, GeForce RTX 2060 Graphics, 15.6 inch 4K Ultra HD Laptop - This one he would use 99% of the time hooked up to to external displays, keyboard and mouse. But I guess he wouldn't be able to use his existing storage with this.

His primary uses are very light graphics work, programming and gaming at 1440p. Gaming is pretty important to him to be honest.

I know they are very disparate systems but they are the only options available to him at the moment.

Any help is much appreciated.
 
Does he care to be mobile or not? That would cut down the choices quite a bit.

Beyond that the Medion Erazer would be preferable as it has comparable specs and is cheaper than the alienwarez name.
 
Not really - In fact I asked him the same and his response was something like "Maybe I could use it in the kitchen sometimes!" - So I guess, no - He works from home and doesn't really go anywhere LOL.
 
Now a FOURTH option after much discussion he has also got me to agree to build a PC for him if that seems a better option. He already has a case, 750w Corsair PSU and drives.

So, he is looking at the following component line ups :

CPU/MB : Either a i-79700k or a i9-9900K with appropriate MB's (ASUS TUF GAMING Z390-PLUS LGA for i7 and ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO for i9) and Corsair AIO liquid cooling. Both with 32Gb RAM

GFX : Either a 2080s OC or a 2080ti

Total prices come in at :


9700k 2080s - 1649
9700k 2080ti - 2069


9900k 2080s - 1849
9900k 2080ti - 2269

So the top spec is similar price to the Alienware R9 but a higher spec.

Any thoughts please ?
 
Honestly go with the off-the-shelf option. It has warranty and support. Don't be someone's forever tech monkey on a computer you are trying to cobble together.
 
Good advice, it can be a headache even when you do it for yourself. Don't build a computer for someone else, makes you their computer slave. Been there before. If people can't do it themselves, they need the warranty and product support that comes with a box system.
 
Any particular reason he's stuck on Intel? AMD definitely offers more bang for the buck currently, the 9700k with only 8 threads is kind of eh right now in comparison to the 10700k (8/16) and 3900x (12/24) for all around the same price.

I really think the 2080 super is the best bet value wise vs the 2080ti
 
Yeah the 3700x is over a hundred bucks cheaper than the equivalent tenth gen Intel part. Can apply that savings to the video card.

The nVidia Super series is like their refresh, better value with those. They seem to be providing some value options now, probably getting nervous about what's coming from AMD. We could see a price battle if AMD's new gen is as good as rumored.
 
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