Good spec build for a home office

hold my beer

Hi all,

Anyone any comments or recommendations on this build? I used partpicker and went with a random bunch of parts that were listed, usually the first one (I'm guessing they're all compatable but I'm not really sure). Thanks

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/7bhpGP

Lumen

What applications are you going to be using it for?

That build doesn't make much sense. For normal office productivity you're better off spending money on a great monitor (or monitors) rather than 400 euro gaming CPU, 64GB RAM and a 750W power supply.

hold my beer

I use a lot of big spreadsheets, and have multiple applications open at the same time. The build is likely overkill. I'm really just looking for a good spec with lots of memory. Should I go down a processor version and build from that?

Bawnmore

I'm interested in this too - I always see builds focused on gaming - does it spec requirement change a lot when the focus is on productivity/office apps or having lots of browser tabs open?

K.O.Kiki

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121123079#Comment_121123079

Eh, most productivity/office apps aren't strenous enough on CPU/SSD/RAM to warrant a big investment.

Any recent CPU with hyperthreading/SMT and at least 4 (or even 2?) cores + 16-32GB is fine.

hold my beer

@K.O.Kiki - Where do you normally start when advising on builds? Is it the motherboard, then add the parts that are compatibile? Do you use partpicker or somewhere else?

What motherboard and processor would you recomment at the minute?

K.O.Kiki

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121163478#Comment_121163478

• Gaming: AMD Ryzen 5600, 16-32GB DDR4, B550 motherboard, GPU for lower budget.
• Ryzen 5 7600 / B650 mobo / 32Gb DDR5 if you have higher budget & can spend the extra 150eur. 7800X3D for high-end gaming.
• Ryzen 5 5600G / 5700G if you need an iGPU that can moderately game.
• Ryzen 5700/5800X / 5800X3D if upgrading from previous-generation Ryzen and you don't want to change anything but CPU.

Some motherboard recommendations: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/user/kikimaru024/favorites/#dg_motherboard

Lumen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121123079#Comment_121123079

For most people doing office work a laptop with 16GB RAM and an SSD will suffice. My company is fully remote and everyone could use a laptop, including software engineers running what used to be considered fairly demanding software compilation workloads. A lot of those workloads are now run on the cloud.

Some people in the company use desktops but not really for performance reasons.

I switch between a two year old Macbook Air, a Linux desktop which doubles as a Windows gaming rig, and various iMacs one of which is now running Linux as it's over 10 years old and doesn't get Apple software updates any more.

The problem with making general recommendations now is that "productivity" applications are more varied now, since video editing and 3D rendering have become mainstream - it's not just web browsers and Office apps any more. To a YouTuber, "productivity" is video editing. Also, a Macbook Air is an amazing all round proposition, but lots of people will face reasons for wanting or needing Windows despite often terrible battery life, bad screens and crappy touchpads.

When I buy Windows laptops as gifts I usually focus on screen quality and battery life. Other than right at the budget end, there are few "slow" laptops now, unless you're gaming, and IMO gaming on laptops will always be madness.

Bawnmore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121171369#Comment_121171369

That all sounds pretty sensible - thanks for the clarification. Could you cast an eye over the final spec on my thread if you get a chance and let me know if you have any thoughts - https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058293956/new-computer-or-upgrade/p1. It seems to be pretty reasonable, but would welcome your opinion!

Lumen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121172137#Comment_121172137

That seems like a completely insane spec for a machine doing office productivity work, specifically:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor (£179.99 @ Amazon UK) 

Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB Video Card (£267.98 @ Amazon UK) 

Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£109.97 @ Amazon UK) 

You'd be fine with a CPU that has an integrated GPU (which the 5800X does not, I think) and ditch the video card.

Then you have no use at all for a 750W power supply, since you'll be drawing hundreds of watts less than that. There's probably diminishing returns in terms of savings, and you will need a PSU, but not that.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't know why that spec was recommended if you have no interest in gaming.

For your use a decent monitor, keyboard and mouse is way, way more important than the PC spec.