Budget Office Build!

B

babyivan

n00b
Joined
Jun 27, 2016
Messages
8
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Internet browsing, Printing documents, front desk office duties etc...
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$250 Give or take
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Northern California (Sacramento) Amazon Prime Member. Electronic Frys Nearby
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
Motherboard & CPU Combo, Power Supply, Small SSD, RAM,
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
I have a new Corsair 100R Case, a 24inch 1080p Acer monitor, & windows 10 home premium.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1080p
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Sooner the better
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
Nothing in particular. Onboard video will be the cheapest route to go.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Genuine windows 10 64bit, upgraded from windows 7!


Its that time again yall! Building a new pc for the frontdesk of my brothers motorcycle business. PC will mainly used for looking up parts and placing orders and average internet usage.

Must be a reliable build with quick start up if possible. a cheap ssd would be nice for boot times.

Reusing case, monitor, windows. Thanks
 
It may not be a very [H] thing to say, but at that price range, your probably better off just picking up something off the shelf. Your in the price range where the mass produced stuff can leverage large purchase orders and be competitive on price, and you have the nice benefit of having the entire computer covered under one warranty by one company. Something like a Dell Inspirion is right in that budget range: although you'd likely need to upgrade to an SSD on your own, but it will come with a legit Windows license, so more or less even trade.

If you really want to build it yourself, I don't have anything against it. I would do something like a Pentium G4xxx build with Integrated video, whatever cheap B or H-series motherboard I could find from a reliable manufacturer, 8G of some cheap (but warrantied) brand, a ~120G SSD, and a 350W or so Seasonic and call it a day. All those parts, if you buy non-complete junk, and especially if you buy a legit copy of Windows (maybe that upgrade edition you mention is from a Retail copy of Win7, I don't know, but my understanding is if it was an OEM edition it's not entirely legal to transfer), it will probably run more than your budget though since most or all of them are coming retail.

Nothing really against AMD in that price range ,you could save a few bucks on the budget dropping to something like an A4, but it will be a pretty steep difference in performance there, even for just office stuff.
 
Brian_B said:
It may not be a very [H] thing to say, but at that price range, your probably better off just picking up something off the shelf. Your in the price range where the mass produced stuff can leverage large purchase orders and be competitive on price, and you have the nice benefit of having the entire computer covered under one warranty by one company. Something like a Dell Inspirion is right in that budget range: although you'd likely need to upgrade to an SSD on your own, but it will come with a legit Windows license, so more or less even trade.

If you really want to build it yourself, I don't have anything against it. I would do something like a Pentium G4xxx build with Integrated video, whatever cheap B or H-series motherboard I could find from a reliable manufacturer, 8G of some cheap (but warrantied) brand, a ~120G SSD, and a 350W or so Seasonic and call it a day. All those parts, if you buy non-complete junk, and especially if you buy a legit copy of Windows (maybe that upgrade edition you mention is from a Retail copy of Win7, I don't know, but my understanding is if it was an OEM edition it's not entirely legal to transfer), it will probably run more than your budget though since most or all of them are coming retail.

Nothing really against AMD in that price range ,you could save a few bucks on the budget dropping to something like an A4, but it will be a pretty steep difference in performance there, even for just office stuff.
Click to expand...

I have a windows 7 Home premium family pack i picked up from costco years ago, and i've only used it on 2 computers so i have a 3rd unused key.
So it wouldn't be needed, but I am open to purchasing a prebuilt one off the shelf, if you have any suggestions.
I was just hoping to use some of the parts i already have, i've pieced together a computer real quick on PC hound, take a look here

If you have something comparable with a more bang for the buck im all for it. What do you think?
 
Actually, the Kaby Lake Pentium with four threads has completely turned all the value proposition on it's head, since the only "Pentium" systems OEMs tend to ship are the re-branded Atoms. You can easily build it yourself for around $250:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.48 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock B250M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($54.19 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($36.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $267.52
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-05-03 13:12 EDT-0400

And there's no way you'll get an OEM system at that price with an SSD.

You can cut an additional $30 by going with 4GB, but I think the sweet-spot is 8.
 
whateverer said:
Actually, the Kaby Lake Pentium with four threads has completely turned all the value proposition on it's head, since the only "Pentium" systems OEMs tend to ship are the re-branded Atoms. You can easily build it yourself for around $250:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($59.48 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock B250M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($56.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($54.19 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($36.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $267.52
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-05-03 13:12 EDT-0400

And there's no way you'll get an OEM system at that price with an SSD.

You can cut an additional $30 by going with 4GB, but I think the sweet-spot is 8.
Click to expand...


awesome response! Quick update and changes to the PC.

What if I needed the PC to run 24/7? I have custom software I need running 24/7 and I need remote access to it occasionally while i'm traveling. Would you make any changes to this system? I would prefer it to not require much power but I don't know much about PC's Today.
 
Modern PCs use almost no power when idle. And I know Windows allows remote access, so you shold be good.

Just make sure you have the monitor power-down turned on, and th rest of the PC will use 15-20w when idle.
 
whateverer said:
Modern PCs use almost no power when idle. And I know Windows allows remote access, so you shold be good.

Just make sure you have the monitor power-down turned on, and th rest of the PC will use 15-20w when idle.
Click to expand...

When you say idle do you mean like a sleep mode? If i need software running in the backround is that considered idle?
 
Reply
babyivan said:
When you say idle do you mean like a sleep mode? If i need software running in the backround is that considered idle?
Click to expand...

Idle, as in the software is sitting there in the background doing nothing, waiting for you to access it remotely.

Windows will put to sleep all cores but one, and clock it way down, so it's uisng a fraction of the power it does when you're doing something demanding. But it's still instantly available.

Read here if you want more details on S0ix active idle:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/3

You can put it to sleep and make it even lower-power, but doesn't that require something like Wake on LAN? That can make things a little more complicated.
 
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I would buy a Cherry Trail PC stick, stuff it in the back of a monitor and call it a day... price... 100 bucks.
 
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