Home Office setup €400 - €500 budget - seeking help

irishgrover

hi All,
looking for a new home office PC.
I have a Dell Inspiron 531 AMDx2 3800 - was upgrading the memory and appeared to fry 3 of the 4 mem slots on the mobo.
So I've decided to upgrade (and reuse what is salvageable from the original - 2 HD's, peripherals etc)

Primarily what I want is something that can (within budget) minimise load and lag times during normal work usage. Normal usage is having 3 to 5 work docs open for editing, and also having a large number of web sites open simultaneously. (10+)
Other usage might include basic video/photo editing, and also potentially running some background services (eg media server, possibly web server etc)

However primary goal is to get a PC that is as fast as possible when multiple office apps and browsers are being used. On current machine doing this causes significant lag between alt tabs, very slow rendering of web pages etc.

This will be my first build, although I'm fairly comfortable inside a PC and have replaced many components in the past.

I would like an SSD as I believe it would be well suited to the conditions I've mentioned.
I don't need other HD's as I have two from the current machine, plus have a NAS setup.
Also have a existing DVD drive that I would like to recycle.

Thanks in advance for all your help, I'm open to any suggestions




1. What is your budget? €400 - €500

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Mostly business but also video / photo editing

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Yes, monitor, keyboard and mouse, 2 internal hardrives (320GB and 1TB, serial ATA no RAID, DVD drive/burner (16X)

5. Do you need a monitor? No - already have a 23.6" monitor.

5a. If yes, what size do you need. N/A

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? 23.6 inch Widescreen LED Monitor 1920 x 1080 (no upgrade plans)

6. Do you need any additional peripherals? No.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Probably not (have no experience), but am open to influence

8. How can you pay? CC

9. When are you purchasing? 1- 4 weeks

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Galway

irishgrover

Anyone? Pretty please......

Idunno442

You could try the following:

Mobo: MSI H81-P33 40.08
RAM: 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600 62.61
CPU: i5 4440 159.01
Case+PSU: Corsair Carbide 200r + 450W 84.90
SSD: Crucial MX100 128GB 59.50
GPU: KFA2 GTX 750TI 119.82
TOTAL => 525.92

If you want to drop the to within the budget you could:
Lose the SSD => -59.50
Or swap to a i3 4150 @ 99.12 => -59.11

If you wanted to do both, you could upgrade the graphics card to:
HIS R9 280 IceQ @ 174.87 => +55.05 for gpu - 118.61 for other savings

An i3 (or probably Pentium) would be more than adequate for office work.
and a GTX 750TI would also probably be overkill for office work.
In fact you could probably get on grand with 4GB of RAM for office work.

However photo/video editing would almost certainly benefit from 8GB ram. So too for server type stuff. Photo/video editing would equally benefit from the better gpu. Im not too certain whether the better cpu or better gpu would be more useful here, but im thinking gpu. maybe someone can clarify that.

In a way the SSD is unnecessary frills. On the other hand it will make opening things/starting the computer quite a bit faster. This can be especially beneficial if it is a computer used daily for work. That's why I got a small one in the laptop. Didn't think too much about it at the time just it'd be nice, but after using it I'm very happy with on/off times and opening/closing times. Whether that is worth more than the better gpu for photo/video work I can't say for certain.

Well hope this helps if only as a starting point.

oh and I just plucked the prices from a spreadsheet I have, but they are origionally from the site hardwareversand.de after taking each item and searching for it on geizhals.de for discounts. They should be very close to the current price but they might be up/down a teeny bit

EganTheMan

What type of business are you setting up?

I generally find this kind of "tinkering" ( please excuse me for the term - I'm not being smart / derogatory ) is a false economy . . .

If you were to cost the amount of time you spend trying to get this machine up and running at rates that you would usually charge you will probably find that the savings are paying you relatively badly . .

What about approaching your local Enterprise Board for a Tech Grant?

Idunno442

Ya, I guess that's a fair point, especially if theres a grant that can reduce the cost. Can't say I've actually gone looking at PC's at any stage recently so don't really know.

Also, I didn't notice but the motherboard is an atx board but still only has 2 ram slots so perhaps a different board might be preferable. Don't think it has USB 3 either (I think someone pointed that out before) so that might render it a pretty poor choice depending on your exact needs. Sorry about that, perhaps:
ASRock H81 Pro BTC @~50 => USB 3 but 2 ram slots
ASRock B85 Anniversary @~60 => USB 3 + 4 ram slots

but like above said maybe prebuilt with a grant or something is the way to go

irishgrover

Hi,many thats for the replies
@ Egan - it''s not a new business so would not be eligible for a tech grant. Although we did in the past use a tech grant so I would highly recommend it to anyone in a similar situation
Also with regards to tinkering - you have a point (which my wife shares), but sure where is the fun in that. Everything is consumable these days. I personally enjoy tinkering, and getting that sense of achievement from doing something with my own hands.
So yea, I don't expect to save too much money, but it will give the opportunity to build something that is suited to my wifes needs, is upgradeable / expandable and can give me some satisfaction in the build process.
@Idunno: I'll play around with the config and see what price I can come up with.
One more question - whats the story with cabling - will the PSU and components (eg ssd)normally come with what is needed or do I need to purchase separately?