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I am going to be buying a new computer but I am stuck between the following three choices. I would appreciate any advice that would help me make the best decision.

Computer Use:

  • Office suite:Outlook, Word, Excel
  • Browsing: firefox, chrome standard but also WordPress development
  • Adobe: Illustrator, Photoshop (no complex 3D work), Brackets (code editor), occasional minor video editing
  • Coding and development

Ideally, I would like to choose the best of the following three systems but I am not sure if the £100-150 difference in price makes a massive difference.

System 1 (preferred choice):

HP Pavilion 23-q105n / £749

  • Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 530
  • Hard Drive Storage: 1 Tb
  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5
  • RAM Memory: 8 GB

System 2:

HP Pavilion 27-n230na / £799

  • Intel® Core™ i3
  • 8GB RAM
  • 2TB Hard Drive
  • 27 inch screen
  • AMD4GB Dedicated Graphics R7-A360
  • Graphics: Discrete: AMD Radeon R7 A (i am not sure if this is the same as the above bullet point)
  • Hard Drive Storage: 2 Tb

System 3:

Lenovo AIO 910 I / £899

  • Intel® Core™ i5 Processor
  • 8GB RAM
  • 1TB Hard Drive
  • Nvidia 2GB dedicated graphics card

It is really a case of whether any of the graphic cards or i3 to i5 upgrade would make any difference to the type of the work that I do.

Any comments are highly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

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    For us to give you a better recommendation, we need to know exactly what CPUs and GPUs are in each computer. You said i3s and i5s, but what model? On the product page you want to look for something like i5-xxxx for the cpu. Similarly, we need to know what model of GPU.
    – angussidney
    Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 4:33
  • These seem to be on the low end of the AIO spectrum, I cannot recommend any of these in good conscience.
    – NZKshatriya
    Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 22:54

1 Answer 1

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First one, HP Pavilion 23-q105n, is out immediately. A desktop with an integrated graphics card? I looked at the Intel 530 graphics card and it gets 1 star. For doing photoshop work, that's terrible. Plus, you'll need more RAM across the board.

http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/Intel+HD+Graphics+530/review

The 27-n230na is looking better, but a regular HDD isn't going to cut it for you in the next few years. See if an SSD is an option for the machines and give specs on the speed rating for the processors. Especially with the HDD speed being so low at 5400RPM, this is a massive damper to pretty much everything you'll be doing on it.

Here is a chart showing SSD vs 7200RPM drive. Your load time for Photoshop would be longer than this, probably be around 30 seconds...JUST for the program to load.

http://www.laptopmag.com/images/wp/purch-api/incontent/2012/03/geeks-geek-app-open.jpg

Furthermore, it appears the HP machines use mobile graphics processors.

Also when using a computer for dev work, an SSD with 16GB+ of RAM (especially in a desktop) would greatly aid a reduction in code compiling and testing time which is the longest portion and most intensive memory functionality of coding.

See if the Lenovo can be configured with an SSD and then you'll be all set with that machine for the next few years.

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  • Absolutely, but can't buy a new mac for the prices he posted....and maybe the OP hates mac...
    – JohnnyBurst
    Commented Nov 8, 2016 at 15:11
  • That is true. Not sure if OP is opposed to refurbs or not. Ya know, I wonder when we are gonna get over the hating systems thing, I personally do not like the Mac culture, but I have to admit their systems have their advantages in situations, just like PC systems have theirs.
    – NZKshatriya
    Commented Nov 8, 2016 at 16:10
  • I personally would have to concur with the Lenovo review. An SSD for the OS. There is a caveat to SSDs that one must remember though. The tradeoff for the high speed, is that you do not get unlimited read/writes.
    – NZKshatriya
    Commented Nov 8, 2016 at 16:15
  • Well no, there are not unlimited read/writes, but the amount of normal disk usage vs the capacity of the SSD virtually guarantee's the limit will never be reached.
    – JohnnyBurst
    Commented Nov 8, 2016 at 17:58

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