Reccomend a desktop for home office

54and56

Hi all,

I've used laptops for my home office set up for years but my home office is now my main office so rather than fiddle around connecting and disconneting my laptop (which I will still need for external meetings and travel etc) I'd like to invest in a dedicated desktop but am a bit bewildered by the range of workstations and mini PC's offered by Lenovo and Dell who I've generally bought from in the past.

My preference, right or wrong, is to buy from Lenovo as I prefer their laptops.

I want something fairly compact (it has to sit on my desk) which will handle 2 X 27" 2560 x 1440 resolution monitors I already have and have good Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

In terms of spec I'd want 32GB Ram, 1TB HDD and Win 11.

As an option I'd be interested in it also being a Plex server as I have a 6TB HDD I can transfer from an old gaming PC which was converted to a Plex server during Covid so if I could have one machine be both my work device during the day and act as a Plex server at night that'd be great. I guess that might require the desktop to have a better GPU than would otherwise be standard for a work device? The Plex server has about 20 users total (family and friends) with rarely more than 3 concurrent users.

Any recommendations? My budget is +/- €1,000. The Lenovo Think Centres look like they might be a good fit.

Esel

Free bump! 👍

54and56

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123401732#Comment_123401732

Thanks @Esel, appreciate it.

I know it's a boring subject and I should be able to suss out a good spec myself but I know it'd never be as good / smart / value for money as someone who actually knows what they are doing so hopefully someone will point me in the right direction.

Esel

Yeah, I was surprised you hadn't got any replies yet.

Come on, guys! 😃

54and56

Spec'd up the following which comes in at €873 Inc VAT. Any thoughts?

fritzelly

One consideration is the connectivity of your monitors - do they have HDMI and DP? Or can they be daisy chained?

The spec you linked has one of each port

54and56

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123406466#Comment_123406466

Hi @fritzelly, the monitors are currently daisy chained from a usb c port on my Dell XPS 14.

You might be better off asking in the pPC building and upgrading forum to be honest. You say you need 32GB of Ram but no mention of CPU or software your going to be using.

54and56

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123406647#Comment_123406647

Thanks @Murt2024, I'll take a look there.

My software requirement is pretty straightforward, MS Office + Adobe Acrobat and lot's of open search engine tabs as I do a lot of research and use a lot of online services.

The 32GB is just a preference, I always have a lot of tabs and MS Office applications open so like to have plenty of RAM.

The only quirk in my use case is I'd like, if possible, to also use the device as a Plex server. I currently have a 6TB drive of content sitting in an old gaming PC with a good dedicated graphics card which about 30 friends and family use to stream from with never more than 3 streams running concurrently. Ideally I'd like to transfer the 6TB drive to the new device and have it operate in the background as a Plex Server in tandem with being my desktop PC. One device plugged in 24/7 rather than 2. The load balancing should be fine as work use during office hours and Plex use at night tend to be complimentary.

Coyler

Couple of factors to consider:

A 3.5" drive (I assume that's what the 6TB drive is) will not fit into many tiny/mini pcs. That one you list will only accept 2.5".

For Plex, you don't mention if you have a Plex Pass but seeing you are sharing with that many users I assume you do. Hardware trancoding is my concern here.

Stick with Intel for Plex. The integrated GPU on Intel non-F CPUs are fantastic for Plex due to the Quicksync encoders. AMD are fine but this is an area that Intel still holds the crown in. And dedicated GPUs is vast overkill for your use case.

Anything above 16GB or RAM is a little excessive but given the price go with 32GB. Not a deal breaker either way.

If you want to stick to small form factor, check out Beelink's site for options. Minisforum are another. They offer good deals on older stock. 10th gen Intel CPUs and above are perfectly fine for you and 12th is almost ideal given Intel's issues. Very good brands and generally hear excellent feedback on them. Small word of warning, most don't come with Windows pre-installed. But I suspect someone pulling drives from old gaming rigs is confident enough to grab a grey market key and create a Windows USB installer.

Then buy a 3.5" drive enclosure, put the drive into that and plug that either into your dock or directly into the PC. USB 3.1 has more than enough bandwidth to handle media files that are being played directly. Any that do need a transcode, setup your transcoding folder on the SSD drive of your machine to prevent too much buffering. You'll see that in the Plex settings. Just create any folder in the root of the drive and point Plex to it.

Mrs OBumble

Just buy a docking station!

Saves all the disconnection faffing, and the issues of having multiple machines.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058407877/reccomend-a-desktop-for-home-office

I wouldn't be running a plex server on my office machine.

Get yourself a NAS hard wired to your router.

54and56

Fantastic advice @Coyler

Appreciate the info @Mrs OBumble & @Boggles but ATM even though all I have to do is unplug and reconnect two USB C cables (one for power and one to daisy chain the two monitors) I've more or less decided I want a dedicated desktop set up and I like the idea of it doubling as a Plex server. I had a dedicated NAS acting as a Plex server over 10 years ago and to be honest I just can't be bothered faffing around with a separate system for Plex as it's no longer as important to me as it was back in the day so I just want to keep it ticking over now as low maintenance as possible.