[SOLVED] Advice building a PC for the wife.

Nov 21, 2019
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Hello, I have some experience in building computers however i've always been building mid/high end gaming rigs. My wife isn't interested in games (maybe the sims and that's about it) but would like a desktop computer predominantly for web browsing and paperwork. My question is what are the best budget parts that'll do what she needs? Aesthetics are more important to her so the most expensive part will probably be her case and and rgb awfulness that she wants. So far i've got these specs outlined

Processor - Ryzen 2200g - £75 amazon
Motherboard - A320M-S2H (gigabyte) £48 amazon
8gb of ram (does the speed matter too much for office work?)
1tb hdd £30
psu (preferably modular) ?
Lian Li case £110
 
Solution
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor (£41.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock B450M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£52.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Patriot Viper Elite 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (£54.31 @ More Computers)
Storage: Crucial BX500 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£45.00 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£44.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Gold 450 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£55.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £294.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
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Nov 21, 2019
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I don't have an exact budget in mind for it, i'd like it to be roughly around £300 but I don't want to overspend and get her something that is more powerful than she needs. The office work she does is only standard word processing so no demanding software needs to be run on it, i'd just like it to be buttery smooth :sweatsmile:
 

atljsf

Honorable
BANNED
if the budget is limited and you need all the pc parts, including case, psu, monitor, keyboard, ssds the budget is a bit limited but doable

to get the best performance for office stuff i do recomend a 240gbs ssd minimum, no hard disks on the build, or a nvme if the price and the motherboard you mention allows it

for work a 8gb ddr4 2667mhz will be just enough, i would recommend 2x4 kit, but is hard to find such kit now that 8 gb modules are more common and cheap

if adding the case, psu, monitor, keyboard and mouse and the windows license you go over the budget mentioned/suggested i would consider a athlon 200ge, is half the cores and gpu on that 2200g you mention, but costs like 50pounds and is a very decent cheap apu

the motherboard is not the best, because doesn't let you overclock and future support for newer cpus is questionable, but if it is a office pc, it should remain unchanged fro around 5 years i think, so is just ok

the pc, has to be big, small? thinking on microatx or itx size? no restriction on size?

the psu, any evga 430watts is more than enough ,such pc should use like 50 watts under load, so is pretty much overkill but is the minimum one should use these days, it is not modular, so you have to consider if the case has place to hide all the unused cables
 
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Nov 21, 2019
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Thanks for your reply, yeah completely forgot about the ssd, seen plenty on amazon under £40 so i'll pick one of those up. the size of the case doesn't matter but it needs to be "fancy looking" for example the lian li champagne gold ones they sell. I've got keys for microsoft and windows and i've also got all the necessary peripherals (monitor, mouse, keyboard etc.) is the motherboard passable then if you aren't considering overclocking? I doubt we'd ever upgrade it, with a budget like this it'd be best to buy a new pc outright in a few years time I'd reckon.
She wanted a pc since she saw mine and mine's nothing that special (ryzen 2600x, vega 56gpu, b450m motherboard, 16gb ram) so i just took away the "gaming power" :sweatsmile:
 
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor (£41.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock B450M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£52.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Patriot Viper Elite 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (£54.31 @ More Computers)
Storage: Crucial BX500 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£45.00 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£44.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Gold 450 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£55.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £294.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-21 15:52 GMT+0000

This would be a good starting point. I went with 16GB RAM since it is so cheap right now that it made sense. The motherboard is of better quality and if you ever needed more CPU power all that would have to be done is the BIOS flashed and add a Ryzen 1000, 2000, or 3000 series. The SSD at 480 GB should be enough to hold all her files and for a budget drive is from a good brand. The PSU is overkill but is high quality and good efficiency.
 
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Solution

WildCard999

Titan
Moderator
Office work & Sims game worthy, RGB case for aesthetics & motherboard will support the 3400G right out of the box despite the error on PCPer. Decent amount of starter storage and more can be added.

PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£121.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£69.39 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Team Vulcan 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£52.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Kingston A2000 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£56.01 @ Amazon UK)
Case: GameMax Titan RGB ATX Mid Tower Case (£47.98 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Corsair CXM (2015) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£52.97 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £401.32
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-21 16:07 GMT+0000
 
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Nov 21, 2019
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Thanks for both the responses, gonna look into amd athlon (I was under the impression it was go ryzen or go home) a bit more and see if I can find a decent setup based off what you both have shown me :). Unfortunately I wasn't aware that my emails were synchronised with her phone so her surprise isn't a surprise anymore as my forum post kept popping up on her phone home screen :LOL:(n).
Cheers for the help though guys! Didn't expect to get proper and nice assistance but you've all been brill
 
The Ryzen will give you more bang for your bucks, specially the Ryzen 5 3400G it has 4 cores and 8 threads. Yes it cost more, but its way faster than the Athlon CPU and it should make her PC work and gaming expirience way smoother.

I will try to avoid the A320 motherboard at this time, its not bad but is the really the very low end choice for Ryzen, pick instead one of the B450 motherboards suggested by others already. A B450 Mobo will let you upgrade to a new CPU later on much easier.

Lastly, by the prices we have now (very, very good ones) get atleast a 2 x 8GB DDR4 3200MHz memory kit (16GB in total), yes I know is kinda overkill for this build, but it will serve you well for future upgrades and is just a bit more expensive.

PCPartPicker Part List

Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £59.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-22 13:16 GMT+0000


Cheers!
 
Nov 21, 2019
13
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I might have to get that ram for my own rig ahah can't have my wife having better speed on ram. I bought ram while the prices were ridiculous so could only manage to get 2x 2400 8gb chips. I use a b450m myself so it's familiar at least. Just the processor I'm pulling strings over still, not sure if I should hold out in the off chance that things are reduced come black Friday
 
I might have to get that ram for my own rig ahah can't have my wife having better speed on ram. I bought ram while the prices were ridiculous so could only manage to get 2x 2400 8gb chips. I use a b450m myself so it's familiar at least. Just the processor I'm pulling strings over still, not sure if I should hold out in the off chance that things are reduced come black Friday

lol don't be evil, get the RAM for both!

Anyways, for working and some gaming the 3400G is really good and it will give her a smoother experience than an Athlon cpu.

If you wana save some money you can geta know brand but cheaer SSD, you wont notice the diference.

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Kingston A400 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£39.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £39.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-22 13:32 GMT+0000
 
lol don't be evil, get the RAM for both!

Anyways, for working and some gaming the 3400G is really good and it will give her a smoother experience than an Athlon cpu.

If you wana save some money you can geta know brand but cheaer SSD, you wont notice the diference.

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Kingston A400 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£39.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £39.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-22 13:32 GMT+0000
I would not go with the Kingston A400 SSD. For all of 5 Quid more you can get the Crucial BX500 which is probably the best DRAMless SSD.
 
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Nov 21, 2019
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lol don't be evil, get the RAM for both!

Anyways, for working and some gaming the 3400G is really good and it will give her a smoother experience than an Athlon cpu.

If you wana save some money you can geta know brand but cheaer SSD, you wont notice the diference.

PCPartPicker Part List

Storage: Kingston A400 480 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£39.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £39.95
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-22 13:32 GMT+0000
Would it work getting a 120gb ssd along with a 1/2tb hdd and sticking the OS on the ssd and her files on the hdd?
 
I would not go with the Kingston A400 SSD. For all of 5 Quid more you can get the Crucial BX500 which is probably the best DRAMless SSD.

Standing on a basic office workload and basic gaming, theres no way anyone (experience or not) can see the diference between the Kingston and the Crucial (the only thing it may change is diferent boot speed, but we are talking about 1 second give or take, for better or for worst).

Work as in speeds decent sorry*

Yes no problem with that, if she have lots of documents, pictures, music, etc. and need lots of space going with SSD for programs and HDD for personal documents, pics and music is a viable choice too.
 
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Love the quality of lian li cases.
Which one did you have in mind?
There is no need for a large case.
I like the TU150 ITX case or the PC-O11 - M-ATX.
If you can find a PC-02(no longer made) it is a tiny case that I love for a desktop.
Have your wife approve of the case before you go any further.

Then, for desktop usage, Consider one of the intel NUC options.
They are tiny and some can fit on the back of the monitor.
Anything you get should have a ssd. That is the most critical desktop/office component.
As small as 240gb is ok if you will not store videos.
 
Nov 21, 2019
13
1
15
Love the quality of lian li cases.
Which one did you have in mind?
There is no need for a large case.
I like the TU150 ITX case or the PC-O11 - M-ATX.
If you can find a PC-02(no longer made) it is a tiny case that I love for a desktop.
Have your wife approve of the case before you go any further.

Then, for desktop usage, Consider one of the intel NUC options.
They are tiny and some can fit on the back of the monitor.
Anything you get should have a ssd. That is the most critical desktop/office component.
As small as 240gb is ok if you will not store videos.
She loves anything gold/rose gold can't remember the exact case name but it's on Amazon for approx £110 champagne in the title or something ahah. Would prefer a smaller case but I can't seem to find any nice subtle gold ones