High end office pc's Intel i7 NUC or Dell

H

Henri108

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 6, 2013
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Our 8-year old 1st gen i7 Dell machines are starting to fail : one of them has a noisy motherboard (coil whine) and is acting up because of this. I’ll need to replace 4 systems (possibly 10, but this is still unsure). I replaced the HDD's with SSD's a few years ago and this helped a lot with expanding their lifecycle.
They need to be Dell systems, need to have some kind of SSD and 8GB+ ram.
I was also considering the new Intel NUC (with i7 6700HQ).

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? Etc

Large excel spreadsheeds will be the biggest challenge, current 6GB i7 machines run out of ram and are sitting at 97% CPU usage. (first gen i7 in small form factor pc’s)

They will be running several medium demand programs like bookkeeping and payment programs at the same time.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

Around 1000$ for the system itself

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.

Belgium, but systems are very similar. I can get exactly the same ones as in the US for a similar price.

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.

Prebuild Dell system

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

/

6) Will you be overclocking?

No

7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?

Dual 1440p monitors (probably will buy another batch of the 25” Dell’s, really like these and already have 8 of them).

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

Within 2 weeks

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 special needed everything will suffice. Displays have DP passthrough, so I can get away with using only 1 DP port.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?

Yes, but will probably be delivered with a win10 license.
 
Looks like your closest matches from Dell would be the Optiplex 7040.

Micro ($989): OptiPlex 7040 Micro | Dell
Small Form Factor ($1149): OptiPlex 7040 Small Form Factor | Dell

Problem: The micro only comes with a 128GB SSD. Now, if you want to recycle your current SSDs, that might not be an issue.

The SFF comes with a 256GB SSD.

Also the Micro comes with the i7 6700T (2.8-3.6Ghz) whereas the SFF comes with the standard 6700 (3.4-4.0Ghz)

8GB RAM

Win7
 
I was also looking at the 7040. The Micro seemed too expensive for what I would get (lower TDP and lower clock speeds). The SFF seemed exactly what I want. I'll ask my contact if they also ship it with 16GB RAM. These should last at least 5 years and very likely will last 8 like these if I don't cheap out now.
 
Henri108 said:
I was also looking at the 7040. The Micro seemed too expensive for what I would get (lower TDP and lower clock speeds). The SFF seemed exactly what I want. I'll ask my contact if they also ship it with 16GB RAM. These should last at least 5 years and very likely will last 8 like these if I don't cheap out now.
Click to expand...

Honestly, I wouldn't worry TERRIBLY about things like memory. That sort of thing can be upgraded rather easily.
If you have the money for it, by all means, go ahead (though I'd look at third-party (Crucial) memory) rather than overspending on the memory from Dell.

Also, looking at the Dell site, it doesn't look like they allow it in the web interface.
You might be able to call and have them add. But that's likely expensive.

Computer memory and SSD upgrades for Dell OptiPlex Optiplex 7040 SFF from Crucial

The computer comes with 2x4GB with space for 2 more slots and maxes out at 32GB.

A Crucial 2x4GB kit will cost you about $35 apiece.

A 2x8GB kit will cost you about $65 apiece.

Now I know this presupposes you being in the US. And you're NOT.

So basically tack on your normal markup to get an approximate price.
 
If I were you, I'd have have a look a Fujitsu's Esprimo / Cesius series which are very reasonably priced and usually have much better build quality and acoustics. They're easy to find in the .nl / .be area.

Fujitsu CELSIUS J550 | Afuture.nl
That looks like a great deal in general...

You can use tweakers.net or similar sites to find all models.
 
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rhansen5_99 said:
Are you talking about the new skulltrail nucs? They look pretty enticing as they have dual m.2 and the Iris graphics skylake cpus. I know you are in Belgium, and are wanting a desktop, but the XPS15 laptops have been real close to your target price here in the US. See:Dell XPS15 (9550), 15.6" FHD 1080p, 6th Gen i7-6700HQ, 2GB GTX 960M GDDR5, 8GB DDR4, 256GB PCIe SSD, Win10 Home $1125 @ Dell 04-01-2016
They have a nice gtx 965 Geforce too :) Just a thought.
Click to expand...

I am typing this on a 2014 XPS15 with 3K display, i7, 16GB of Ram and 512GB SSD :D.
I was indeed looking at the skulltrail NUC, if it had 2.5" SSD support it would be a no brainer (I will probably pull the current Samsung 850EVO SSD's out of the older systems and reïnstall the old HDD's to sell them).
I don't like the idea of laptops for a stationary workspace. They are inherently less durable: If something is wrong with any of your components, your laptop is scrap. I useually only get about 3-4 years out of my laptops, which have always been high end (1500$+). I am travelling a lot though and daily I am moving my laptop at least 4 times. This XPS 15 still looks very good and will probably last me at least 5 years (if I don't get the urge to change it out for a Surface Book).
In an office it's more handy to just have two big displays instead of a laptop with an attached display.
Build in graphics on the 6700 is good enough for regular office applications.

Chas said:
Honestly, I wouldn't worry TERRIBLY about things like memory. That sort of thing can be upgraded rather easily.
If you have the money for it, by all means, go ahead (though I'd look at third-party (Crucial) memory) rather than overspending on the memory from Dell.

Also, looking at the Dell site, it doesn't look like they allow it in the web interface.
You might be able to call and have them add. But that's likely expensive.

Computer memory and SSD upgrades for Dell OptiPlex Optiplex 7040 SFF from Crucial

The computer comes with 2x4GB with space for 2 more slots and maxes out at 32GB.

A Crucial 2x4GB kit will cost you about $35 apiece.

A 2x8GB kit will cost you about $65 apiece.

Now I know this presupposes you being in the US. And you're NOT.

So basically tack on your normal markup to get an approximate price.
Click to expand...
For the small additional cost of going with Dell memory, you won't lose the warranty. Which is quite important IMO.
Dell has one of the best support services I know and I don't want to lose that by saving 50$ max on memory.

I order all my tech through a guy that does this for many companies. He gets a much larger discout than we do. I couldn't get a price lower than 340$/display when I ordered 8 25" Dell's, but he was able to give us a price of 297$. We also saved 8% on our servers.
The total price will probably be just under 1000$ for the system with 16GB of Ram (it's advertised as 1560$ without tax here in Belgium).


Thanks for the help everyone. I'll discuss this internally next week. It might be that they want something a bit cheaper, but I'll go with the i5 system then (200$ cheaper and still the same SSD and ram).
 
The Fujitsu systems are very similar in price. I'd rather go with Dell then as we have been happy with their products for over 20 years. In total we have over 70 Dell Products currently in use (including servers and displays). I'd be a little odd to go with Fujitsu then at the same pricepoint.
 
I've been migrating off Dell for the past 6+ years now. Much happier in pretty much all categories including non Dell kludge regarding drivers etc.

Just a suggestion :)

Supporting a EU company (their computer branch is mostly in Germany) is also a bonus in my book.
 
diizzy said:
I've been migrating off Dell for the past 6+ years now. Much happier in pretty much all categories including non Dell kludge regarding drivers etc.

Just a suggestion :)

Supporting a EU company (their computer branch is mostly in Germany) is also a bonus in my book.
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How do you install the Fujitsu drivers then?
It's not that hard for Dell, you just put in Model number or service code and then you press download all drivers. Most drivers install at the same time, but some you need to install manually. Not that hard, I did it last week when I finally upgraded to Win10 on my laptop and second desktop. Was done within 10 minutes.
 
Dell used/uses customized sound chipsets for instance which is a royal pain, IDT and Sigmatel comes to mind that are rarely if ever maintained. Almost all (at least recent models) models by Fujitsu comes with Realtek Audio which have unified drivers that are timely updated. I'm also not fond of Broadcom NICs which Dell tends to use in favor for Intel. Fujitsu DeskUpdate software works surprisingly well and is usually up to date, Dell probably has something similar these days however I imagine. In short, I'm spoiled with "generic" hardware from Intel and Realtek that just works. I also prefer the chassis from Fujitsu by far but that's another story. Looking at newer Dell models they seem to have adapted Realtek and Intel too which is a good thing. I'd personally go for Fujitsu over Dell any day of the week especially if pricing is similar, that said I'm not totally opposed to Dell. Their Dell T20 servers are great bang for the buck boxes for instance.

I see that you also mentioned "certified parts", Fujitsu doesn't enforce you to use their own parts (memory etc) and you'll still keep your warranty. At least that's their policy here in Sweden.
 
diizzy said:
Dell used/uses customized sound chipsets for instance which is a royal pain, IDT and Sigmatel comes to mind that are rarely if ever maintained. Almost all (at least recent models) models by Fujitsu comes with Realtek Audio which have unified drivers that are timely updated. I'm also not fond of Broadcom NICs which Dell tends to use in favor for Intel. Fujitsu DeskUpdate software works surprisingly well and is usually up to date, Dell probably has something similar these days however I imagine. In short, I'm spoiled with "generic" hardware from Intel and Realtek that just works. I also prefer the chassis from Fujitsu by far but that's another story. Looking at newer Dell models they seem to have adapted Realtek and Intel too which is a good thing. I'd personally go for Fujitsu over Dell any day of the week especially if pricing is similar, that said I'm not totally opposed to Dell. Their Dell T20 servers are great bang for the buck boxes for instance.

I see that you also mentioned "certified parts", Fujitsu doesn't enforce you to use their own parts (memory etc) and you'll still keep your warranty. At least that's their policy here in Sweden.
Click to expand...
They all say that you can swap parts without affecting warranty, but when it comes down to actually needing the warranty they will say it's because you changed the part. HP send me back my laptop that was overheating because it had a SSD in it instead of the 5400rpm HDD it came with... And it was a workstation machine that only took 1 screw to change the HDD. They told me that changing RAM or SSD's won't affect warranty when I bought it. Fujitsu will be the same.

The kind of servers I use are a bit more powerfull than the T20. R630's are in the datacentre and the old R610 and R620 are now used on-site for data storage.

Never had any issues with drivers and Dell. And we are the kind of company that upgrades to the latest and greatest software as soon as it comes out (1 week after most of the time because we first test if all programs still work flawlessly). Some of our machines have run XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win 8.1 and now Win10 (so we had to reïnstall drivers every time). The drivers for the high end machines are up to date for a long time.
 
@ Henri108
I've swapped parts (added RAM for instance) without any issues at all claiming support (on-site).

As far as servers go we are using Fujitsu Primergy servers which are lovely to use with FreeBSD as they usually have all Intel server hardware, they do however the same hot swap-tray crap as everyone else. As far as pricing goes I think they might be slightly more expensive than Dell but it's well worth it in my case at least.

@ the_servicer
That's a more tricky question, I know HP and Dell are the behemoths in North America but here they don't really have an edge unless you're a really large company (service agreements etc). As far as desktop boxes goes I'd probably go for Dell over HP, slightly better choices for hardware but just as bad when it comes to drivers. Their desktops are usually a bit worse in design compared to Dell and they're usually louder and also have more quirks. Do note that I'm taking about business models here rather than consumer models. So in short Dell overall but HP does have some interesting models especially the really small (SFF) desktops. If you're in North America Lenovo might also be an option with good deals but they're kinda like HP when it comes to models so in that case I'd say pricing would be the most important part.
 
Just asked for an invoice for 7 Dell 7040's (i7 6700, 16GB ram, 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, 5 years prosupport) and 8 Dell 25" 1440p monitors. I'll probably get a price tomorrow or the day after.
It feels good going overboard for the sake of future useability.
 
I went with the Precision 3420's. They are the same format as the 7040's, but are 10% cheaper for a better config.
I'm going to price out how much this would cost to do it custom (mini ITX) just to see how good the Dell prices are ;). Just checked it out and the Dell is only 20% more expensive than building it myself. And that price difference is from upgrading from 1 year warranty to 5 years prosupport and because Dell RAM is overpriced at 200$ for 16GB.
 
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