Cheap budget office build

A

Andrew_Carr

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I'm trying to put together a cheap build for a family friend that needs a computer suddenly. It would be primarily for office work but they have two teenagers that game on xbox and probably would want to game on PC. Trying to keep things around $500 or so excluding the cost of components I already have lying around. Does this look like a good choice?

Already have:
Ryzen x470 Motherboard, DDR4 Memory, Seasonic 650W focus PSU, 2 x 2TB HDDs, 1 x 256GB SSD

Plan to buy:
Ryzen 5700G ($240 @ microcenter)
Cheap case ($80)
Windows 10 license ($100?)
Cheap monitor ($140-170 https://www.microcenter.com/product/484761/asus-vp278qg-27-full-hd-(1920-x-1080)-75hz-led-monitor or https://www.microcenter.com/product...920-x-1080-60hz-hdmi-vga-dvi-d-va-led-monitor)

I was thinking of setting up the SSD as the boot drive and the HDDs in raid 1 as storage.


I kind of wanted to leave open the possibility of a cheap GPU later and the 5700G only supports pcie 3.0 so that could be annoying if they pick the wrong GPU later (6500xt or something like that), but probably not a big deal long-term. I also have a test rig consisting of a cheap Intel I3-10100F and motherboard I could use instead of the ryzen parts, but I feel like this would be too much of a compromise. Even if I did that I don't think I'd be lucky enough to find a cheap GPU to put into it (sometimes I find 6600's for $380 but that's still kinda pricey for the budget I'm considering).
 
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Use a CD key company for a key, shouldn't cost more than $15-$20. MLID, AdoredTV, RedGamingTech, Coreteks, they all have discount codes on top.



Go to the description, it will point you the way. I just used it, it worked for me a month ago.

I wouldn't set up the platters in a RAID. Let your buddy decide if that's how he wants it. Tell him it's an option, sure.
 
Axman said:
Use a CD key company for a key, shouldn't cost more than $15-$20. MLID, AdoredTV, RedGamingTech, Coreteks, they all have discount codes on top.



Go to the description, it will point you the way. I just used it, it worked for me a month ago.

I wouldn't set up the platters in a RAID. Let your buddy decide if that's how he wants it. Tell him it's an option, sure.
Click to expand...


Ok. Thanks. It's for a tech illiterate person so I thought raid 1 would be better since if something died they'd have a backup (brand new HDDs but stuff happens).
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Ok. Thanks. It's for a tech illiterate person so I thought raid 1 would be better since if something died they'd have a backup (brand new HDDs but stuff happens).
Click to expand...

It's just that sofware RAIDs can be squirrely. Better to have one be for software and set up the other one as a drive for the SSD to use for scheduled backups.
 
Axman said:
It's just that sofware RAIDs can be squirrely. Better to have one be for software and set up the other one as a drive for the SSD to use for scheduled backups.
Click to expand...

Ah, ok, yeah I think this motherboard may have a raid controller on it. I definitely don't want to do software raid if that's the only option. Also read into some about windows drive extender but not sure if that's still useable. Just got a windows 7 key and got a $50 case at microcenter so I think I'm set.
 
Fakeraid and software raid are both software raid solutions, the only difference is that it's the chipset and drivers vs Windows running the raid.

I don't know anyone else's experiences, but I've never had luck with AMD's chipset raid implementations, especially on Linux. The drivers required for Windows to see the array are a PITA to get working correctly. Intel fakeraid on the other hand has been really good for a long time. You can even move fakeraid drives from one system to another with chipset raid support, enable the raid controller and it'll automatically recognize the existing raid and use it.
 
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GiGaBiTe said:
Fakeraid and software raid are both software raid solutions, the only difference is that it's the chipset and drivers vs Windows running the raid.
Click to expand...

I've had mixed success with both AMD and Intel. I wouldn't use it for anything other than media storage, but even then, today that's almost a non-issue. My desktop has a platter that I use to store the Windows install drive backups on.
 
I went ahead and just did mirrored disks via disk management. I wanted recovery to be as simple as possible and I doubt they'll add more disks in the future (not much room in this case to do that anyway). Had to bios flash the motherboard to get the 5700G to work even though the box said it was 5000 series ready. Uninstalling and reinstalling CPUs got a little old... But everything seems to be working fine now. The CPU is surprisingly quick.
 
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Andrew_Carr said:
I wanted recovery to be as simple as possible and I doubt they'll add more disks in the future
Click to expand...

I did some poking around and the only real benefit to using driver-based RAID seems to be in RAID5 anyway. Might get a teeny performance boost with driver-level hardware, but single digit percentages over Windows' software.
 
Axman said:
I did some poking around and the only real benefit to using driver-based RAID seems to be in RAID5 anyway. Might get a teeny performance boost with driver-level hardware, but single digit percentages over Windows' software.
Click to expand...

The other advantage is if Windows craters, the array won't be trashed in most cases. With Windows softraid, you're reliant on Windows behaving and some random Windows Update not cratering the machine, which seems to happen every other month.
 
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