BestConfigs Poll: Intel-Based Office PC

Which build do you like best?

  • AMD Radeon's Quick Multitasking Office PC

    Votes: 17 53.1%
  • G-Unit's "Burning The Midnight Oil Data Cube" Rig

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • sadams04's Intel Office Rig

    Votes: 6 18.8%
  • Screwy's Office PC

    Votes: 7 21.9%
  • shortstuff_mt's "my computer is too fast, how am I supposed to sleep between work tasks?" Intel offi

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    32

jpishgar

Splendid
Overlord Emeritus
AMD Radeon's Quick Multitasking Office PC

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor ($116.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($65.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: A-Data XPG V1.0 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($63.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($66.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.44 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($46.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-14 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Wireless Network Adapter: Rosewill RNX-N250PCe 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($18.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $489.33
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-13 23:07 EDT-0400)

G-Unit's "Burning The Midnight Oil Data Cube" Rig
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($134.96 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-HDS Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.44 @ Amazon)
Case: BitFenix Prodigy M Midnight MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($99.42 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($65.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $489.78
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-14 01:46 EDT-0400)


sadams04's Intel Office Rig

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H81M-ITX Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial M500 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced (Black) Mini ITX Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 300W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($43.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($22.95 @ Amazon)
Total: $496.88
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-14 09:20 EDT-0400)


Screwy's Office PC

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.29 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI H81M-E34 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($47.97 @ Amazon)
Storage: A-Data Premier Pro SP900 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($119.69 @ Amazon)
Case: Rosewill R379-M MicroATX Slim Case w/300W Power Supply ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($20.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $482.92


shortstuff_mt's "my computer is too fast, how am I supposed to sleep between work tasks?" Intel office build

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD2 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($56.79 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($64.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($113.17 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($46.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 360W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $476.90
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-05-16 00:21 EDT-0400)


 
I went with Sadams04 over shortstuff primarily on size. An office PC needs an optical drive, as desktop techs need those for their diagnostics and/or imaging tools. I would not trust Screwy's PSU in a money-making environment.
 

rhapdog

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Jan 14, 2014
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I can't imagine working with less than 1TB storage in an office environment. Especially in a family owned business where you're trying to image everything for filing to help go as paperless as possible.

Both BestConfigs for office PCs, Intel and AMD, only had one offering that had a decent storage capacity and the SSD. I'd go with just a good mechanical, high capacity drive in my office environment over an SSD if I had to choose between storage and space. But with this budget, AMD Radeon proved you can do both.
 

rhapdog

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You think of Office PC as only being in a corporate office. However, people coming here needing to configure and build their own are either needing a PC for a small family business where there will be no big network storage, or for a home office computer, like I have.

My home computer is my Office PC. I have a fast 120GB SSD, and I have an additional 4TB of storage. 2TB of storage for my data, and 2TB for my backup of my data. I have 2 hotswap bays to insert high capacity drives for backups, and keep my backups stored offline in a media fire safe.

Granted, a majority of Office PCs are in the corporate environment, but they don't build their computers. It's cheaper and more efficient for many of them, due to unionization, to simply throw out a computer that doesn't perform well and buy a new pre-built system from a company that will warranty it. That's been my experience when I worked in corporate IT, at least.

This poll is to help people build their own, which means small office, home office, or small family business more than likely will make up 90% of the people looking to get help from these builds.
 
That is definitely a valid point, but I still tend to think that a business user will use some kind of network storage that also facilitates backups and/or redundancy.
To be fair, I don't use a NAS at home myself, preferring RAID-1 pairs and redundancy across machines as well. It might be interesting in the future if this configuration challenge specifically mentioned "home office" vs. "corporate office," because those two can indeed be quite different.
 

rhapdog

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Small businesses under 5 employees, which is a majority of small businesses in the United States, generally do not have any type of network storage. So, yes, this needs to be separated out from bigger businesses. My point was, however, that generally speaking, businesses that have the type of cash flow to afford network storage solutions don't have the time to spend on building their own PCs, thus would not be looking to this for help in how to best build it. Where this poll will help is for the small business that has no network storage, and those businesses that rely on a single PC or perhaps 2 or 3 PCs at most. My opinion, from being a business owner in several categories, and from working closely with many business owners over the years for whom I have been a consultant.
 
No argument. I've done consulting also, and I (or the small other consultants with whom I sometimes worked) typically did the builds, so it was kind of in-between those scenarios. I'm reminded of the Windows for Workgroups days, where sometimes the "boss" had a more capable system, and shared out drive space to a handful of other users. ArcNet was not uncommon, although that would be intolerably slow by today's standards. Tiny little insurance agencies, TPAs, and even tightwad attorneys may not see spending $2K on a dedicated server.
It sounds to me like we're looking at the same coin from two different angles; you see the head and I see the building.
 

rhapdog

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As long as it's an expensive gold coin, and you let me keep it after your done looking at your half, I'm happy. ;D I likes to keep the money.

Yeah, I guess I just see the tightwad attorney you mention to be more likely to see if he can build his own cheaper, just because he's a tightwad. Come to think of it, probably anyone in business thinking to build their own are probably going to do it because of their tightwad attitude and wanting to save a few bucks.

Oh, man, I remember dealing with the headaches from Windows for Workgroups. Hated that. Glad I'm retired and can do what I want when I want as far as the consulting goes now. Yeah, I retired at age 47, 3 years ago, and loving it. Still a tightwad, but that's what will help me make it through retirement, right?
 
Exactly. Chasing income will never work, long term. If you don't need to spend it, you don't need to earn it.
Unfortunately, it looks like gold, but this coin is one of those foil-wrapped chocolate pieces. Hey, at least it's semi-sweet...
 

rhapdog

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Oh, dude, chocolate! Now I'm gonna have to fight you for it. Think I'll go grab a piece of dark chocolate now. Share it with my 4 year old daughter.
 

1dog

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Hi all,
Looking for a basic machine for my wife. She plans to use it for MS Office, Browsing, Movies. These builds caught my eye. 1. Would these be suitable? I'm eyeing AMD Radeon's and shortstuff_mt's builds. 2. Silly question but I guess these don't need GPUs?
Thanks.