Buy all-in-one PC - you should pay attention to this
If you want to buy an all-in-one PC, you should pay attention to a few things, because in contrast to the desktop computer, all-in-one solutions can hardly be upgraded afterwards. We give you guidance on the most frequently required PC systems: office and gaming.
Buy an office all-in-one PC
Office PCs usually don't have to be very powerful. Even a 10 year old computer can still handle common e-mail, write, database and spreadsheet programs. That is why you can confidently focus on price so as not to pay for unnecessary performance that you do not get at all. Practicability is also important.
- Check the manufacturer's website for the software you are using for minimum requirements. For example at Microsoft for Office 2016 or SAP for Business ByDesign.
- AMD processors are generally significantly cheaper than Intel products.
- Especially if you restart your PC more often or work with huge databases or PowerPoint presentations, you can really benefit from SSD hard drives, which are, however, significantly more expensive than HDD hard drives.
- As a rule, a 256 GB hard drive and a 4 to 8 GB working memory are sufficient.
- Easily accessible USB ports - especially on the front panel - are very important for quickly plugging and unplugging USB sticks and hard drives as well as other external devices.
Buy gaming and multimedia PC
When purchasing computers for gaming or video editing, the following features in particular should be noted.
- For gaming and video editing, of course, you need a fast graphics card with at least 800MHz clocking, large memory of at least 2 GB and an HDMI, display port or DVI dual link connection.
- In addition, a fast and large working memory makes sense. It should be 8 to 16 GB DDR4 RAM.
- For a quick system start and large swap files, an SSD is useful for the system. Around 128 GB are usually sufficient here.
- In order to install extensive games and store large video files in the long term, an additional HDD hard disk with at least 1 TB capacity is worthwhile.
- For online and LAN gaming as well as to move videos over the network, you should use a Gigabit LAN port.
Further advice for all-in-one PCs at CHIP
In order to get an overview of the market and to get further buying help, the following articles can help you.
- A CHIP article will introduce you to the best all-in-one PCs.
- You will also find a comparative overview of the best all-in-one PCs in the test.
- The CHIP photo gallery of the all-in-one PCs with the best price-performance ratio is even clearer.
- We also tested office computers and interesting gaming PCs, the performance of which you can use as a reference for your own all-in-one PC.
- Whatever you want to use your PC for, you should definitely compare offers from several retailers or manufacturers. You should consider both small retailers and large sales chains.
If you have decided to buy, you can find suitable discounts in our voucher database. As an alternative to an all-in-one PC, we will show you in other practical tips how you can use PC configurators, for example, to put together your own gaming PC.